If you ask me my favourite handheld portable gaming machine I would say PS Vita in a heartbeat. The console was underpowered for sure, but it launched with an OLED display, had a very good library of games and was super ergonomic to use. While we have devices like the Steam Deck, ROG Ally (review), Legion Go and more available today, my go-to portable console is the Nintendo Switch for its exclusive library and lighter-weight design when compared to its peers. Sure, it isn’t as powerful as the Windows-powered handhelds (and Steam Deck) but it has been the primary reason for the revival of the handheld gaming market.
At MWC 2024, Tecno showed me a unique take on the handheld gaming space. They shoved ROG Ally-like hardware in an Xbox controller-like form factor and put the display on your face. The Tecno Pocket Go and AR Pocket Vision run on a battery which is user-swappable and while I didn’t see the UI, I did play Cyberpunk 2077 for 30 minutes. I didn’t want to leave.
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Specs at a glance
The Tecno Pocket Go runs on an AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS (35W, 8-cores, 16-threads, up to 5.1GHz) and an AMD Radeon 780M (12 x RDNA 3 compute units). It has 16GB LPDDR5 RAM and 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD. It has a 50Wh user-replaceable battery. In terms of connectivity, it has a USB-C port for charging and a headphone jack.
The AR Pocket Vision has a 0.71-inch micro-OLED screen with a 2K resolution but gives you the experience of gaming on a 215-inch screen sitting a few feet away! So the angle of the display wasn’t the best for me, but I could have on the AR glasses without using my spectacles.
Hands-on with the Tecno Pocket Go and AR Pocket Vision
One of my biggest problems with the PSVR2 headset (review) is that it gets uncomfortable with prolonged use mostly because of my glasses. In the case of the AR Pocket Vision, there are individual dials for each eye to adjust the focus. So even though both my eyes have a different number, I could adjust the experience for a crystal clear experience.
All the hardware is inside the controller making it slightly bulky but not uncomfortable. It has an asymmetric design like the Xbox controller with a little RGB thrown into the mix. For the time I played Cyberpunk, the controls felt responsive with no input lag. There is vibration too for the added immersion and if you used an Xbox controller in the past, you will feel right at home. Maybe the final version of the system can implement some form of adaptive triggers found on the PS5 Dualsense controller.
Moving over to the AR headset they are super sharp and clear. Like I said before, the angle of viewing could have been slightly better for me as I felt the bottom of the visual area was getting a little cut but this isn’t the final unit. The glasses have an OLED display, but they don’t support HDR.
Closing thoughts
While handheld consoles today come with LCD and OLED display technology, it is fascinating to see Tecno go in a different direction with AR glasses for the display. It isn’t the first AR/VR headset to do so, and we have experienced something similar from Lenovo recently during the Lenovo Techworld India, but in that case, the glasses were connected to the Legion Go. Here, the unique thing is that the handheld Tecno Pocket Go does not have a built-in display. While we are still waiting to see the UI, battery life and most importantly price of the Pocket Go it is definitely one gamers need to keep an eye on.
