GPD Win Max May Be Too Hot To Handle In More Ways Than One
Few people might find a small laptop that can barely sit on your lap to be practically useful but there will probably be more who'd find the ability to play their PC games anywhere a dream come true. That's the promise of game streaming services like Google Stadia and NVIDIA GeForce NOW but there are many advantages to having the game installed locally on your computer. That's where GPD's upcoming WIN Max is going to come in but its official specs make you feel that there will be a catch or two.
One of the problems of having a small PC is that you can only cram so much inside, or at least that was one of the problems a few years ago. Although the GPD WIN Max, which is now officially revealed to have an 8-inch screen, is a lot larger than the very first GPD WIN at 5 inches, the specs that the company has released today reveal just how much the world has changed in a span of three years.
Perhaps you wouldn't have expected an 8-inch laptop to run on a current-gen Intel Core i5-1035G7, paired with 16GB of RAM and 512GB M.2 NVMe SSD storage. Nor would you expect it to have a plethora ports, including an Ethernet port and full-sized HDMI and USB ports along with USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 ones. And all of that gets a 57 Wh (3x 5000 mAh) battery, QWERTY keyboard, and gamepad buttons.
It's not all perfect, though, but the compromises might not be terrible either. The 1280x800 resolution might be low for gaming but it takes a load off the system that doesn't have a discrete GPU inside. The gamepad controls are also a bit awkward but do carry the advantage of not having to rely on external gamepads when on the go.
The biggest problems with the GPD WIN Max, however, might be exactly because of that power. This thing will most likely run hot and vents might not be enough to keep it from throttling or, worse, overheating. And then there's the price, which might be somewhere upwards of $900. The company isn't yet revealing dates though, which, given the virus situation in China, is completely understandable.