abxylute One Portable Streaming Handheld Review

Portable gaming has kind of seen a resurgence over the past few years. With the Steam Deck, PlayStation Portal and Switch 2, every gamer out there owns or has thought about picking up one gaming handheld device in some form or another. You can either get something that can run games natively like the ROG Ally or Switch or perhaps be at the whim of your internet and location and play games remotely on devices such as the PS Portal and this abxylute One device.

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The abxylute One is a remote device meaning it relies entirely on the internet to function. There is some native functionality but it is very limited, more on that later. So remote gaming is the biggest sell here.

Remote gaming comes with its perks while at the same time, its own downsides. First off, very few platforms do streaming well. Steam, of course is the best with Steam Link supporting incredibly high bitrates, frame rates resolutions and even HDR across supported devices. Then you get the PlayStation Portal that is a great product, but its streaming quality is likely the worst on the market. Low bitrates and input lag really make it look and feel cumbersome.

Remote gaming is also limited to your location. In South Africa, where I am based, Cloud Gaming is seen as something of the future – a perk we’ll likely never get. So we are restricted to local streaming. This means there’s no GeForce Now, no Xbox Cloud Gaming and even the PlayStation Portal is limited to streaming from your console and only from your console.

abxylute One, while relying mostly on remote gaming, does marry the best of all platforms into one. In a perfect world, it does cloud gaming while at the same time, links to your PC and PS5 for remote gaming. So instead of owning a PlayStation Portal for PS5 and another remote play device like the Logitech G-Cloud for your Steam games, you can just get this product.

From the outside, the abxylute One looks like your average portable gaming handheld. It has a large 7-inch 1080p 60Hz display, a rather flat and thin design and the front is covered in buttons. The joysticks are Hall Sensor and the entire device weighs only 430grams.

I have to say that I enjoyed the overall look and feel of the abxylute One. It might not be the most comfortable handheld around, but its thin body and large screen was great to see on a product that costs R5000. I say the device is thin but it does have a decent amount of grip on the back as well as curves to support it in your hands while gaming. The trigger buttons make up the side bumps and the heightened sides grips travel all the way down the device to the bottom.

The abxylute One is also packed with ports and features. It has a MicroSD card slot, uses USB C for charging the 5200mAH battery, packs stereo speakers, an audio jack and the right amount of buttons around the device. The D-Pad was especially nice to see given the possible focus on emulation here. The additional options and settings button also means it will easily support whatever platform you’re streaming from.

I did wish the volume rocker was a bit more to the right and perhaps swapped around between the on/off button. I feel like I really had to reach to adjust the volume on the device. This is likely my only issue with the build. That and the white model just gets dirty. I got it after another media site reviewed it and this thing was so horribly dirty.

It runs a special skinned version of Android 12 but unlike the PS Portal that also runs Android, it isn’t limited to the special abxylute One UI that is overlayed over the OS. You can install apps here, and take advantage of all the APKs and open-source opportunities that come with Android.

Inside, the abxylute One includes 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. The MicroSD card slot can be used to expand this but I can’t see any reason to unless you’re downloading hundreds of ROMS for its very-limited emulation support. That leads to my next point, the abxylute One packs a MediaTek MT8365 processor with a 2.0GHz 4-Core. On paper, this isn’t a very powerful chip so you can expect a rather basic experience across all on-board features.

This means the unit can often feel sluggish with the UI lagging and freezing. I had menus feel unresponsive and times even when I was trying to launch a basic streaming app. The same experience then naturally stems to the native support for games and apps. Emulation is possible on the abxylute One  but it is limited to much older, basic platforms. So you’ll be able to play Gameboy Advance games and Nintendo DS games on this for sure. Some later 3D hardware like the PlayStation, Nintendo 64 and 3DS also work.

However, moving towards anything more 3D-intensive such as GameCube and PS2 is a hit or miss at times. PSP games, from my testing, ran at around 30FPS during busy scenes. Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters was a mostly stable experience at 30FPS but God of War: Ghost of Sparta struggled. GameCube was a similar experience. Games stuttered and just didn’t work. But I will say PSP was likely the cap here as the low settings on the PPSSPP emulator did provide some decent performance.

The brand is working on a new abxylute One Pro device that claims to be the best for emulation but the company hasn’t shared exactly what chip the new so-called “upgraded” model will include. The website simply states it supports PPSSPP, Dolphin and Drastic. It delivers “significantly improved emulation” but until we see how improved, I can’t say whether it will be worth it. Especially considering this Pro model will retail for the same price as the non-Pro model.

If emulation isn’t your thing, the abxylute One works quite well with remote play. I played a lot of Steam Link and games streamed to the handheld with around 23ms of input lag, and an incoming bitrate of 35000 kb/s and a video bitrate of 28000kb/s. This was on the 1080p Enhanced setting. I did have an occasional stutter here and there which is strange given it was only 1080p enhanced.

I was impressed by the PlayStation Remote app here. In fact, it was performed better than the actual PlayStation Portal. The Leo bitrate on the Portal results in noisy pixels that fog up the screen as you lose detail of the game. I noticed this less on the abxylute One

If Steam ran at 28000kb/s of video bitrate, the PS App is likely 20000kb/s. The Portal is then likely 15000kb/s. The input lag was pretty much on par with the PS Portal device though so it seems that is a problem with the PS5 console itself and not the remote players.

There was nothing else I could test unfortunately. Due to the lack of cloud streaming in my country, this abxylute One is just an emulator and remote player. But I kind of enjoyed it. The display here is the best part. The 7-inch panel is bright and vivid it really helped deliver games at the best of the device’s streaming capabilities. Steam was, of course the best experience here as the bitrate resulted in sharp and clear images.

The speakers were also decent. They are likely on par with every other handheld on the market, meaning, just okay but they get the job done. They get quite loud and are clear even if they lack bass and power.

The battery life is also great. You’ll get well into the 15 hour mark here if you are cautious about screen brighteness. Native gaming however,  will get you around 5 hours.

With the abxylute One Pro around the corner, I am keen to see where the brand takes the handheld. This non-Pro model is a good device in a best of all world scenario. If you can cloud stream, great for you but if you’re restricted to remote gaming, this handheld holds up. I kind of do want a bit of more power from the native emulation feature which is likely where the Pro would suit my tastes.