Abxylute One Pro If you want to stream games without tinkering with settings or dealing with Android jank, the Abxylute One Pro is a great pick. But if you want a little more, you can get better performance for the price.
If you had asked me six years ago, I would have told you that game streaming was the future of gaming. Now that Stadia is dead and Xbox Cloud Gaming hasn’t made any significant improvements in years, the world seems to have shifted focus to gaming handhelds.
But there’s a unique category that straddles the line between both. These handhelds are designed for game streaming rather than native play, which has advantages and disadvantages. The Abxylute One Pro is the latest entry in this category, and after testing it for a few weeks, I can confidently say it’s the best so far.
That said, it’s not a perfect handheld, and it faces much stiffer competition than streaming handhelds did a few years ago. The market has evolved, but has the Abxylute One Pro evolved with it?
That screen, though
Nick Fernandez / Android Authority
Without a doubt, the main selling point of the Abxylute One Pro is the screen. The massive 7-inch FHD IPS panel is one of the largest you can buy on an Android gaming handheld, and certainly the largest in this price bracket. It’s not an OLED panel, and it’s limited to 60Hz, but those feel like reasonable trade-offs for a handheld like this.
Playing games on this screen feels very immersive, but only if they are 16:9. This isn’t a screen that’s meant for retro gaming, so you’ll be dealing with huge black bars on older systems. More on that later.
The other advantage of such a large handheld is full-size controls, and the One Pro mostly nails the landing. The sticks are big and have a great range of motion, but I wasn’t a fan of the hard finish on the caps. It’s easy enough to pop on a new set of caps, and Abxylute actually sells a pack on its website.
The rest of the controls are great. The D-pad is a little mushy, but the inputs are solid, and the buttons are nice and quiet. The combination of asymmetrical sticks and well-placed, stacked triggers makes this design ideal for first-person shooters and action-oriented titles.
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