We live in a very interesting time at the hardware level: computer manufacturers like Apple are moving to mobile chips. And portable consoles, which until now had used mobile processors, are moving to portable ones. It is the case of the Steam Deck and many other similar consoles that have been appearing on the market in recent months. The thing does not stop advancing, and in some consoles like the OneXPlayer Mini it’s already possible connect an eGPU to the laptop. The result is simply impressive.
The OneXPlayer Mini can absolutely do it all
OneXPlayer does not sell the cheapest portable consoles on the market, but it does sell the most innovative ones. Each model of this brand exceeds a thousand dollars in price, but they allow us to play lying on the sofa with specifications very similar to those that we would obtain in a gaming laptop.
In recent tests, the youtuber ETAPrime has demonstrated the capabilities of the new OneXPlayer Mini with processor 12th generation Intel Core i7. To demonstrate the potential of the laptop, he carried out numerous tests emulating video games. It started with Midnight Club 3, one of the most legendary games on PSP. And the console handled the title perfectly using the PPSSPP emulator. With Playstation 2, more of the same. He was able to scale up to 4K resolution using PCSX2 and got very interesting results. However, the youtuber proved that not all games behaved the same, as he had to reduce Gran Turismo 4’s resolution to 1440p to make it playable.
The most modern consoles can’t resist it either, and if not, there’s plan B
The OneXPlayer Mini demonstrated impressive capabilities with the Dolphin emulator, running games from Wii in 4K and also with citra (Nintendo 3DS). And, although he had to censor the screen so as not to receive a nice letter from Nintendo’s lawyers, everything indicates that the console is also very good at emulating the switch. However, the only thing that made the OneXPlayer Mini choke was the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. But luckily, the console is prepared for these cases, and can get around the problem thanks to its docked-mode already one external GPU.
The PlayStation 3 is one of the most complicated consoles to emulate that exist. In fact, not even Sony itself has been able to create its own emulator. Hence, if you want to play PS3 titles on your PlayStation 5, the only legal option out there is Sony’s cloud play. And the Xbox 360 is also not known for being an easy console to emulate, since it requires quite a few resources.
The eGPU changes everything in the OneXPlayer Mini
Using an external case, ETAPrime has been able to squeeze the full power of the OneXPlayer Mini’s Intel Core i7 1260P using a graphics card Nvidia RTX 3060. The results using Xenia are incredible, and even the youtuber has been surprised by the capabilities of this equipment, since there are not a few emulators that benefit enormously from the Intel + Nvidia combo.
The OneXPlayer Mini with i7 1260P is worth about 9,999 yuan, which would be about 1,400 euros to change. It is not a cheap console, but it makes things very complicated for the Steam Deck, since it is the most versatile portable that we have seen to date in terms of emulation.
