the Steam Deck just got $300 more expensive — so which handheld should you actually buy in 2026?

The easy answer to "which gaming handheld should I buy" used to be "the Steam Deck, obviously." Then, on May 27, 2026, Valve raised the Steam Deck OLED's price by up to $300 — the 512GB model went from $549 to $789, the 1TB from $649 to $949. Overnight, the handheld that won on value stopped being the cheap option. So the real 2026 question isn't "is the Deck good" (it is), it's which of the three big handhelds — Steam Deck OLED, ROG Ally X, or Lenovo Legion Go S — fits how you actually play. Here's my honest take after the price reshuffle.

What actually separates them

On paper these three look similar — all are palm-sized Windows/SteamOS PCs that play your existing library. In the hand they're different machines. The Steam Deck OLED has the only genuine OLED panel of the three, and it's the smallest and lightest, which matters more on a two-hour session than any benchmark. Its trump card isn't hardware though — it's SteamOS, which suspends and resumes games instantly, manages battery sanely, and doesn't drop you into a desktop to wrestle with drivers. The ROG Ally X is the muscle: a 7-inch 1920×1080 120Hz IPS screen with VRR, 24GB of RAM, the only eight-core CPU here, and an 80Wh battery that dwarfs the others. The Legion Go S goes wide — an 8-inch 1920×1200 display and, uniquely, a real choice of operating system at checkout.

So which one — honestly?

Here's where I'll commit. If you have a big Steam library and you want the thing to just work on the couch, get the Steam Deck OLED — even at $789, the software experience is still a genuine notch above Windows handhelds, and OLED on a handheld is lovely. If your priority is hitting 1080p 60fps in demanding games and you'll accept fiddling with Windows to get there, the ROG Ally X is the performance-per-frame winner, and that 80Wh battery means you're not tethered to a wall. The Legion Go S is the one I'd point a friend to who wants a bigger screen and hates being locked to one OS. What I wouldn't do is buy on raw spec sheets — the Deck loses most benchmarks and is still the one most people should own, because the experience is more than the silicon.

The handheld race is closer than it's ever been, and the Deck's price hike is what made it a real question again. For where Valve's bigger hardware bet sits, see our Steam Machine reservation breakdown and why the Steam Deck still dominates handhelds despite the ROG Xbox Ally. Want to play your older library on one of these instead of buying games again? That's what emulation is for.