is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
I can’t believe they’re actually making these, was my very first thought, as I powered on a working prototype of the OneXSugar Sugar 1.
This week, One-Netbook is crowdfunding a gaming handheld on Indiegogo like none I’ve ever touched before. It’s got two OLED touchscreens, two power buttons, two sets of volume controls, and two hinged rotating gamepads that let it transform into entirely different modes.
Folded down, it’s like a Nintendo Switch, with a single 6-inch screen flanked by half-gamepads. Pop open the 3.92-inch secondary screen and rotate the gamepads, and it’s like a Nintendo DS with one screen on top of the other! Whichever mode you pick, the main controls instantly and automatically remap themselves to their new orientation.
And that’s just the start. Check out my video below for an extended look:
This is a handheld that can emulate Wii, GameCube, and play the most demanding Android games like Genshin Impact on high settings — and, according to RetroGameCorps, its flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon G3 Gen 3 and 16GB of RAM can even play original Nintendo Switch games smoothly with the right drivers.
But there’s only so much I can show you in a two-minute video, so I expect you’re wondering: just how competent is this handheld? How does it actually feel? Do you think it’ll be a worthy product by its planned September ship date? Will it be worth the $599 early bird price, let alone its now-revealed $799 MSRP?
I can’t say for sure — it’s a prototype, after all — but so far, the fun is outweighing the frustrations.
Two things I forgot to show on video: RGB lighting inside the grips and around the analog sticks, and the secondary screen as kickstand. Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge
First, because I know you’ll ask: yes, the multitasking is real. I’ve played with dual-screen phones where the manufacturer artificially limits what you can do with the second screen, but that’s not happening here. You can send any app to either screen, even press a virtual button to swap which screen is “primary” as far as Android is concerned. You can turn off either screen to save battery, too, and use whichever you need. As I show in my video, there are all sorts of fun possibilities!
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