ONMO Cloud Gaming Review: High-end PC gaming on a budget?

Cloud gaming has always sounded a little too good to be true. The idea of playing AAA PC games on a TV or even a smartphone without spending a fortune on gaming hardware felt like something that belonged a few years in the future. Yet here we are. With services like NVIDIA GeForce NOW making their way to India and ONMO joining the race, cloud gaming is finally becoming a realistic option for Indian gamers.

ONMO, the direct-to-consumer gaming platform from OnMobile Global, takes a slightly different approach. Instead of simply selling a subscription, it bundles a wireless controller with cloud gaming access, pitching itself as a complete “Smart Console” for the living room. The promise is simple: connect almost any screen, log into Steam, and start gaming. I spent the last few weeks testing ONMO across my PC, Smart TV, and smartphone in Gurugram to see if it can really replace a gaming PC for everyday play. Here’s how it fared.

Table of Contents

A controller that doesn’t lock you in

The entry-level ONMO+ Core Edition costs Rs. 4,999 and comes with the ONMO Pro Wireless Controller alongside a three-month Essential Pass subscription.

The controller immediately feels familiar. It borrows the tried-and-tested Xbox layout with asymmetric thumbsticks, textured grips, and responsive face buttons. It also packs a few welcome surprises for the price, including Hall Effect triggers, programmable rear buttons, Bluetooth, a 2.4GHz wireless dongle, and USB-C connectivity. No, it doesn’t feel like a premium ₹15,000 controller. The plastic shell is fairly lightweight, and the buttons don’t have the same refined tactile feedback as Microsoft’s or Sony’s offerings. But considering a chunk of that ₹4,999 asking price goes towards the bundled subscription, it’s hard to complain.

The bigger surprise? You don’t actually need to use it. Much like NVIDIA GeForce NOW, ONMO doesn’t force users into its own ecosystem. During testing, I had no trouble using an Xbox controller, DualSense, third-party Bluetooth controllers, or even a keyboard and mouse. That flexibility is something I genuinely appreciate, especially for anyone who already owns gaming peripherals or wants to play couch co-op without buying multiple proprietary controllers.

The game library is fine. Steam is the real attraction.

ONMO’s Essential Pass includes access to more than 100 games covering everything from platformers and racing titles to puzzle games and indie adventures. There are some genuinely enjoyable games here like The Forgotten City, Arise: A Simple Story, and Gravity Circuit.

That said, the built-in library isn’t the reason I’d recommend the platform. The real selling point is Steam integration. Simply link an existing Steam account and stream supported games directly from ONMO’s servers. Popular titles like Red Dead Redemption 2, Grand Theft Auto V, Cyberpunk 2077, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 all worked without needing to download massive game files locally.

There is, however, one annoying catch. Unlike GeForce NOW, ONMO doesn’t provide an easy way to browse every supported Steam title from its dashboard. Instead, users have to launch a cloud session, open Steam, and manually check whether a game is supported. It works, but it feels far more cumbersome than it should. A searchable compatibility list inside the app would make the experience considerably smoother.

Surprisingly capable under the hood

Behind the scenes, ONMO is powered by AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX GPU servers running on ASRock Rack infrastructure, with server clusters located in both North and South India. One limitation worth pointing out is that Steam is currently the only supported storefront. Xbox PC Game Pass isn’t available, which may disappoint gamers who have already invested in Microsoft’s subscription ecosystem.

From my testing, the backend appears to rely on a Linux-based environment using Proton compatibility for Windows games. If that’s indeed how the platform operates, it also explains why Steam is the primary focus. An official explanation from ONMO regarding Proton compatibility would certainly help answer a few lingering questions.

Performance that genuinely surprised me

Cloud gaming lives or dies by latency, and thankfully this is where ONMO performs much better than I expected.

Testing from Gurugram on a 1Gbps fiber connection placed me fairly close to ONMO’s Delhi NCR servers, giving the service an ideal environment to show what it can do. On my desktop connected via Ethernet, gameplay felt almost native. Input response was immediate, and I never found myself blaming the cloud when I missed a shot. Switching over to a Smart TV on a 5GHz Wi-Fi network was equally impressive. Controller inputs remained responsive, and ONMO reported roughly 4ms of latency throughout most of my sessions. Racing games, platformers, and even shooters felt remarkably comfortable from the couch.

The biggest surprise came from mobile gaming. Using 5G while away from home, latency increased to around 10ms. While competitive players may still notice the difference in twitch-heavy shooters, story-driven games, RPGs, and action adventures remained perfectly enjoyable.

Of course, these numbers won’t be universal. Since ONMO currently operates server clusters in Delhi NCR and Bengaluru, performance will naturally depend on how close users are to either location and, more importantly, the quality of their internet connection.

Good performance, average visuals

ONMO currently streams at up to 1080p and 60FPS, and for the most part, gameplay feels smooth. Visual quality, however, doesn’t quite reach the same level.

Compared to NVIDIA GeForce NOW, which continues to set the benchmark for cloud image quality, ONMO lands somewhere closer to Xbox Cloud Gaming. Image compression is visible during fast camera movement, especially on larger 4K televisions. At times, the stream almost resembles an upscaled 720p feed rather than a perfectly clean native 1080p image.

That’s not to say games look bad. They’re absolutely playable, text remains readable, and gameplay stays fluid. But users expecting pixel-perfect visuals similar to a locally rendered PC shouldn’t set their expectations too high.

Verdict: A gaming PC? Not quite. A clever shortcut? Absolutely.

ONMO isn’t here to convince anyone to ditch a high-end gaming PC, and honestly, it doesn’t need to. Instead, it fills the gap between mobile gaming and an expensive gaming setup by making a Steam library accessible on almost any screen. The bundled controller adds good value to the package, Steam integration gives the platform legs beyond its built-in game catalog, and the consistently low latency I experienced during testing makes it feel far more capable than its price tag suggests. Sure, the interface could be cleaner, and image quality still trails the likes of GeForce NOW, but neither is enough to take away from the overall experience.

More importantly, ONMO shows that cloud gaming in India is no longer just an interesting experiment. For gamers with a stable internet connection and an existing Steam library, it offers one of the easiest and most affordable ways to jump into PC gaming without spending upwards of Rs. 50,000 on new hardware. It may not be the most polished cloud gaming platform around, but it delivers on its core promise remarkably well. And that’s exactly what matters.

Editor’s Rating: 8.3 / 10

Pros:

Cons:

Home Gaming
Related Articles
© 91digital Web Private Limited. All Rights Reserved.