Gaming handhelds are amazing. They make it so much easier to fit all kinds of games into my day. Sadly, they’re less affordable than they’ve ever been — due to an unprecedented, AI-fueled shortage of memory chips, an unforced oil crisis, rampant inflation, fallout from tariffs, and more.
Technology
How to Watch a Baby
Parenthood is abrupt and total.
When I went to the hospital, I understood that I’d be sent home with a vulnerable being who would require constant care, but it was impossible to prepare for what that actually felt like.
I’d loved being in the maternity ward, a leisurely four nights thanks to a C-section and a few complications, where I was surrounded by perky and competent nurses who took care of me and my baby, checking my bandages and bringing me ice and answering my questions.
(I had a lot of questions.)
“If she doesn’t want to eat, is that okay?”
“What does that raspy noise mean?”
“Her lower lip keeps quivering, is that okay?”
“Does she need to keep the hat on all the time?”
“How often should I change her diaper?”
When we were discharged, my husband and I secured our newborn into a car seat on the checkered linoleum floor. The strap tightening system was confusing, and there were warning labels explaining the baby might become airborne or get strangled.
I asked a nurse on the way to the elevator if she could take a quick look to see if we’d strapped the baby in properly.
“Oh, I’m actually not legally allowed to help with that,” she said. “Sorry!”
The moment we stepped out of my hospital room, we were on our own.
We arrived home to an apartment that had rendered itself strange and irrelevant in its structure: it had belonged to different, childless people. We spent hundreds of dollars over the next two days overnighting bottles and breast pumps and swaddles: we needed diaper cream, and we needed it right now.
Somewhere within those bleary first days, I downloaded an app on my phone that promised to help me keep track of everything.
There are dozens of them, where caregivers can log how many ounces of milk their baby drank or how long they breastfed, how many minutes or hours a child slept, when they last had a bath or their diaper changed.
The reasoning behind this cataloging is pretty simple. A baby’s health is often determined by its regularity: how much the baby consumes, how much the baby excretes, how much the baby sleeps.
When things deviate from the norm, it can be a sign that something is changing or that something is wrong: the baby is sick, the baby has an allergy, the baby is not getting what she needs.
When a child is cared for by more than one person, she can be handed back and forth between two or three tired people without a lengthy explanation of how much she’s slept or eaten: we can just check the app.
I was a woman of advanced maternal age, which means I’d taken a very long time to decide that I wanted to be a mother, and now that I was one, I wanted the data.
And the data was adorable: when I logged my baby’s diapers, the app said: “Eloise had a little poo and a little pee.”
I opened the app dozens of times throughout the dreamy yet punishing expanse of a day, the tracker neatly converting our care back into minutes and hours, which had otherwise lost all meaning.
There were so many mistakes that I could make, but the data was unimpeachable.
She was safe, she was loved, she was cared for: here was the proof.
But a lot of my friends didn’t feel like they needed an app to keep track of their babies.
Tara said: “Proud to say I avoided these! I’m too lazy to track my baby’s every poop and nap, plus it just seems absurd, and I know it would exacerbate my already-spiraling postpartum anxiety.”
Whit said: “I was so tired and overwhelmed, I wouldn’t have been able to keep on top of tracking, and the last thing I’d have wanted is to be obsessing over what some metric means.”
And some who did so more aggressively than I ever did.
Leah is a project manager at an education and social impact firm who spent 10 years working in operations at elementary schools, experience she calls “a Venn diagram of thinking about kids and data.”
So when she became pregnant with her son, she approached the pregnancy with the same tools she used at work, creating spreadsheets to track her progress preparing for the baby’s arrival.
She describes her baby’s data as a well of private joy.
Tracking was a way to feel in control during a period when new parents — especially those who just gave birth — can feel powerless.
For me, the exhaustion of early parenthood felt enhanced by the fact that my love for my daughter was imbued with responsibility: since the moment I became pregnant, that obligation was relentless.
I could marvel at how sweet she was or how cute her sounds were, but I couldn’t totally relax into that feeling because I had to simultaneously remain vigilant in keeping her alive.
But at night, as she rocked peacefully in a $2,000 SIDS-risk-reduction self-soothing robotic bassinet, I could watch videos of her and sink unambiguously into my delight in her, scroll through the week’s data and bask in the ounces she consumed with the certainty that they were making her stronger and less vulnerable every day.
When she outgrew her bassinet and moved into her own room, we propped a Nest Camera up on the bookshelf overlooking her crib.
Now, I didn’t even need to be home to see her.
The Nest provided a strange, sweet record of us together, in moments that would otherwise be invisible: in a way, it allowed me to experience her twice.
But sometimes the freedom that the monitor promised also felt like a liability. No matter where I was, I could open an app and see if my baby was asleep. Sometimes, I realized I wasn’t checking to see if she was asleep so much as if she was still alive.
I’d be sitting at dinner with friends, or on the subway, zooming in on my spookily night-visioned baby, looking for confirmation that I could see the folds in her rainbow-speckled pajamas rise and fall with her breathing.
I have access to a space parents before me never got to see, and that is both a comfort and a burden.
When the first baby monitor was invented in 1937, 6% of babies died of illness or accident before their first birthday.
But the impetus for developing the technology had nothing to do with those very real threats.
Instead, the baby monitor rose from an event so sensational that it was constantly in headlines: the abduction of the Lindbergh baby in 1932.
The president of the Zenith Radio Corporation was terrified that his daughter might also be snatched from her crib, so he started rewiring some radios at home before assigning the task of concocting a one-way monitor to his employees.
The model was designed by the not-yet-famous Isamu Noguchi, who’d go on to popularize mid-century modern home decor.
But the radio nurse was expensive, and the unit didn’t take off.
The whole concept didn’t gain real traction until the 1980s, when Fisher-Price released the baby monitor that my parents bought when they had me.
Once, they left it too close to the oven and the plastic warped vaguely in a Dr. Seuss sort of way, and sometimes at naptime they’d hear the muffled sounds of a neighbor chatting on their cordless phone over the crackle of the monitor’s static.
I couldn’t relate to the inventor’s fear of child abduction, but there were so many things to be scared of. The possibilities swirled around me: SIDS, mass shootings, political instability, gas leaks, rising sea levels, button batteries, war, food allergies, drowning, RSV, the hottest year on record, fascism, bulletproof nap mats, fascism, sleepovers, car accidents, nuclear weapons, and the vague threat of ultraprocessed foods.
The companies that push ads to my Instagram while I’m rocking my baby to sleep know this. They capitalize on the fact that there is no greater loss than that of a child, that even imagining it for most parents is utterly unbearable, and that we’ll often shell out as much money as we’re able to give ourselves some semblance of hope that we can control the untamable world into which we’ve born our children.
When Chloe* [name has been changed] and her partner had their first child, they bought a monitor that promised peace of mind.
The Miku Smart Baby Monitor provides baby sleep analytics, tracks respirations per minute, and “analyzes and stores data to build a bigger picture of your child’s behavior over time.”
She found most of the Miku’s features unhelpful — it constantly gave off false alarms that their son had stopped breathing — but she became fixated on its motion detection.
“If my mom or my partner would do his routine, I could see how they were doing it — and I could critique it.”
Sometimes, when her husband put their baby down at night, she’d watch on the monitor and see him take a phone call or respond to an email while he stood next to the baby’s crib, and it enraged her.
He’d gone back to work much earlier than she had, so she’d created all the systems that maintained their son’s daily rhythms. “There was a specific way I wanted things done, and the only way I knew he was deviating from it was because I could see and hear it on the monitor.”
Her husband wasn’t putting their son in danger when he looked at his phone, but it was still painful for her to witness. “I would be holding him to standards that I didn’t keep myself. I remember being glad that there was no one monitoring me.”
Chloe’s desire to surveil her baby only increased after she returned to work. She bought cheap, low-res security cameras and hid them under the living room bookshelves so she could observe her baby’s nanny.
“Then my husband confiscated them,” she said.
Once, she hid an Apple AirTag in her baby’s diaper bag. When the nanny took her son out for a walk, Chloe followed in her car.
“I was driving by the bench where the nanny was sitting with my baby, and my heart rate kind of rose up and I got that feeling in my stomach like, ‘I’m about to find something out that I want to know, but it’s going to change something.’”
“You’re seeing something that you’re not supposed to be seeing.”
“What sort of bad things might I uncover if I looked? The baby trusts me to be looking after him.”
Nanny cams and GPS tracking of childcare workers raise all kinds of ethical questions, but Meg Leta Jones, a policy and privacy scholar (and mom of three) says, “The high-level takeaway is that it feels bad to be far away from your kid.”
The ways in which technology complicates this distance is a common scholarly argument against tools like video monitors: they keep us both too far from and too close to our children.
In the book Supervision: On Motherhood and Surveillance, Sophie Hamacher says, “All of these baby monitors create a distance that seems unhealthy. If you closely observe and are caring for your child you don’t need all of this technology. Doesn’t care also have to do with proximity of the body to another body? With all this technology there is no proximity.”
Conversely, in the same book, Laëtita Badaut Haussmann says, “I think there is a forced, even unhealthy, proximity through surveillance tools, Let’s say you are in a different room from your child. You are going to have the monitor and you will be regularly checking while you read a book or whatever. So your screen will be lighting up every minute — it’s automatically and regularly updating. You cannot get a proper distance because you are constantly tethered to it. It’s actually terrifying.”
But figuring out the right distance from which to parent is a problem that existed long before pregnant people added video monitors to their digital gift registries.
In 2001, novelist Rachel Cusk published A Life’s Work, her first memoir, about becoming a mother. It investigates the ambivalence of parenthood so honestly that one critic called for the removal of her children from her care. It’s also the book I’ve seen my experience in more clearly than any other I have ever read.
Cusk writes, “It is as difficult to leave your children as it is to stay with them. To discover this is to feel that your life had become irretrievably mired in conflict, or caught in some mythic snare in which you will perpetually, vainly struggle.”
I’ve felt this struggle since the beginning of my pregnancy, when I couldn’t rationalize my inability to walk away from my role as incubator, even for a moment, pop off my belly for a quick breath of relief, or a bloody steak, or a martini.
I understood then and now as a parent that it is my consummate duty to keep my child safe, but I remain suspicious of the narrative that my biologically imbued motherly intuition is always and only the strongest force in ensuring her care.
What if surveillance can provide relief from the demands of parenthood that are otherwise so mind-bendingly total?
Ten months after my daughter was born and I’d undergone the categorical shift from woman to mother, I stood at a backyard party a few miles from our apartment, where her father had just put her to bed.
I’d spent the day with her; she’d eaten watermelon and gotten magnificently sticky and coated in its juice, and now I was out, on a perfect New York night, without her.
At some point in the evening, I reflexively slipped my phone from my pocket, opened the Nest app, and propped it up next to me so I could occasionally glance over and see her, asleep in her crib.
It wasn’t as if I thought I needed to watch my daughter on camera to ensure that she was safe and happy. I knew, rationally, that she was fine.
But witnessing the contented curl of her tiny body took away any vague guilt I had about being present somewhere without her. The presence of that shame was perhaps a bigger problem than whether I had a video monitor or not.
Some of my watching is twinged with terror, but most of it is more banal: she’s going to continue to grow and change, and I’m going to miss parts of it.
Surveillance sometimes feels like a way for me to try to hold onto the parts of her that I know I cannot keep.
Continue Reading
But that’s not going to stop you. You’ve decided now’s the time to buy one, before the next shoe drops.
I won’t talk you out of it! I genuinely don’t know when or if prices might come back down. So instead of telling you to hold off, I’ll try to help you navigate this “new normal” I keep hearing so much about.
We’ll do this four ways:
- First, if you just want me to tell you what to buy and be done with it, grab an Xbox Ally X if it’s still $999 at the time you read these words. It’s the handheld I’d buy for myself if I were buying today. It’s the only top-tier handheld that hasn’t hiked its price, and it has a good mix of performance, comfort, and battery life.
- Second, let’s talk bargains. There are a few refurbished and open-box handhelds worth nabbing on closeout — if you can find them at all.
- Third, I’ll ask you some questions. Assuming you’re buying new, are you looking for the most powerful handheld? The one with the most battery life? The most affordable? The best screen? The easiest to pick up and play? Because all of those are different handhelds, and none are the Xbox Ally X. Click the links in this paragraph to find out which.
- Fourth, I’ll list every other handheld PC you’re likely to find when you shop around, and why you should probably skip them. I want you to know whether that seemingly good closeout deal is actually worth your money.
But before I go down the list, let’s talk Windows and Linux.
While I’ve dinged many of the handhelds I’ve reviewed for The Verge for Windows woes, that’s not as big a deal today — because you can install Bazzite or even SteamOS on many of them for a better pick-up-and-play experience. The same exact handheld is often more stable and performant with Linux, and you often get instant sleep and resume that’s hit-or-miss on the operating system they shipped with.
It’s still true many competitive online multiplayer games don’t work on Linux because of anti-cheat fears, though others do. It’s also true that Windows has gotten better at sleep and resume with certain handhelds like the Xbox Ally X. But it’s a misconception that Linux can’t play as many games as Windows. The reality is that Linux can play more — decades of Windows games work better on Linux thanks to Proton patches and community profiles that translate old mouse and keyboard controls to your gamepad.
Ready? Let’s go down each list, from least to most expensive.
Open box and refurb bargains
Refurbished Valve Steam Deck LCD (typically $279-$359)
If you ever see it in stock, do not hesitate: buy a refurbished Steam Deck LCD. Valve discontinued the original in December 2025, but Valve refurbs are now the best deal in town. The Steam Deck OLED meaningfully improved on the LCD model in many ways, but it is absolutely not worth $400 more than a certified refurbished LCD model.
Reddit is flooded with examples of Valve’s excellent customer support, so I wouldn’t be worried about getting a lemon, and the Steam Deck LCD is one of the easier handhelds to pick up and play thanks to preloaded SteamOS and well-placed controls. It has enough performance for games as intensive as Elden Ring, but expect to play higher-end titles at low settings, with lots of upscaling, for less than two hours on battery. Light fare can last longer.
Open-box Asus ROG Ally Z1 Extreme (typically $500-$550)
At $500, if you’re willing to install Bazzite, and if you don’t play far from a cord, I can genuinely recommend the ROG Ally Z1E in today’s economy. It’s one of the weaker devices to carry that chip, with one of the smallest batteries at 40 watt-hours, but it’s also got the same kind of smooth (if not colorful) 7-inch 120Hz VRR screen you’ll find in the Xbox Ally X. When plugged into the wall, or in short sessions on battery, its turbo mode gives you Steam Deck-beating performance.
Open-box Lenovo Legion Go (sometimes $600 open box, normally $850)
The original Legion Go is an acquired taste I’m never going to acquire: big, bulky, with extra buttons weirdly squishing under my hands when I grip. The battery’s only a little bigger than in the original ROG Ally, it doesn’t have a variable refresh rate screen, and the 2560×1600 resolution is far more than the chip can power in modern games. (Lightweight stuff can look good.)
But Bazzite works great, you get a big 8.8-inch screen for those who need it, detachable controllers with a mouse mode; a built-in kickstand; you can use it as a tablet in a pinch. I’d pick a Steam Deck over it any day, but the Z1 Extreme’s turbo mode makes it far faster for short sessions or plugged into the wall. Twin USB4 ports too. And you can add the Legion Go 2’s more ergonomic controllers for roughly $100. (Don’t forget you need left and right ones.)
As a $600 open-box deal, it’s worth it. But I wouldn’t pay much more.
Closeout Lenovo Legion Go S Z2 Go with Windows ($550 closeout, normally $1600)
Almost the polar opposite of the original Legion Go, with no detachable controls, a smooth variable refresh rate screen at a more sensible 1920×1200 resolution, comfortable grips — and a much slower AMD Z2 Go chip that couldn’t meaningfully compete with the Steam Deck in my Windows tests.
At $550 closeout like we saw the other day, sure, put Bazzite on it. It should slightly beat the Steam Deck in performance using its turbo modes after that. Please don’t pay much more. Also please don’t expect its tiny trackpad to be useful.
Refurbished Valve Steam Deck OLED 512GB ($629)
I hate to admit it, but if you ever see a refurbished Steam Deck OLED for $629, you might want to spend the money. Yes, Valve is charging $190 more for the refurb model than it did before RAMageddon, but it’s still a discount of $160 compared to what a Deck OLED costs brand-new today and “only” $80 more than what a new one cost before the price hikes. As I’ll explain a few paragraphs below, the Deck OLED is still one of the best handhelds you can buy.
So those are the closeouts. Here’s what I’d suggest if you’re buying brand-new:
The most affordable handheld you can actually find: Asus Xbox Ally
($600 MSRP, sometimes $500 on sale)
When the Steam Deck OLED could be had for $549, there was no way I’d have ever recommended a vanilla white Xbox Ally instead. Now that the Deck starts at $789, I have to reconsider. The Xbox Ally has very comfortable prong-shaped grips and effectively the same chip as the Steam Deck, only you can crank it up to 20 watts instead of 15 watts for more power, you get a smoother 120Hz VRR screen, and a slightly larger battery.
I’ve never been able to get the Windows version to sleep reliably — I retested this month — and the screen feels cramped and dull by comparison. But Bazzite fixes sleep and performance, making it more than a match for the Deck. The build feels a little cheap (I broke the top off an analog stick and had to superglue it back on) and it’s nowhere near as powerful as any handheld with a Z1 Extreme or better. The Xbox Ally X and MSI Claw 8 have larger batteries, too, and you don’t get the Steam Deck’s twin touchpads, four back buttons, and community controller profiles.
But I’d buy it if I didn’t want to spend more than $600.
The easiest to pick up and play: Steam Deck OLED
($789 for 512GB, $949 for 1TB, $629 or $759 refurbished)
When it comes to portable PC gaming, nothing “just works” like a Steam Deck OLED. You power it on, you scan a QR code to connect your Steam account, you download, you play, you get a solid two to eight hours of battery life on a fantastic screen without having to think about what performance mode to put your handheld in. The controls are infinitely customizable in ways the competition hasn’t even tried to match, and you can just browse community controller profiles instead of needing to roll your own.
At $789, it’s a way harder sell than at $549, because if your budget stretches to $1,000, the Xbox Ally X’s performance and battery life are much better — and you can put Bazzite or SteamOS on that one, too. But I’d still buy a refurb Steam Deck OLED at $629, and I could see some paying $789 for its ease of use and unprecedented support: no company ships updates like Valve ships updates, regularly making the Deck better.
The handheld I’d buy for myself: Xbox Ally X
Like the Steam Deck, the Xbox Ally X originally shipped half-baked. Now, it’s suddenly the best deal in handheld gaming. While the 7-inch IPS screen feels a lil claustrophobic and muted compared to 8-inch rivals, it’s now the most powerful handheld under $1,000 with its Z2 Extreme chip, one of the longest-lived with an 80 watt-hour battery, and (IMO) the most comfortable to hold with its huge prong grips.
It’s also the best-supported outside of Valve’s Steam Deck; Asus and Microsoft keep shipping a flurry of updates. I can finally trust the Xbox Ally X to sleep and wake reliably, picking up my game right where I left off, and I can control the virtual keyboard by joystick instead of smudging a touchscreen. I can now tap the triggers to scroll the long clickwrap agreements that pop up before some games, too.
Just know it’s not much more powerful than a Z1 Extreme or Z2 handheld, and the controls leave a few things to be desired. There’s no touchpad (and the joystick mouse mode is still finicky to enable), the ABXY buttons are very clacky, my triggers developed a noisy squeak, and I hate accidentally pressing the Library button thinking it’s Start and getting yanked out of a game. A future Ally fixes lots of these things, but it’ll be pricey.
The longest battery life: MSI Claw 8 AI Plus*
($1,300, often $1,120 on sale)
Frankly, I’m astonished how good the MSI Claw 8 can be. It’s got a bigger, better screen than the Xbox Ally X, and I find its Intel chip faster in the games I want to play — it gives me a smoother experience in 007: First Light and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. And, it lasts very slightly longer on the same capacity (80 watt-hour) battery, the longest I’ve tested so far.
There are only four reasons it’s not the one I’d buy for myself. The scalloped grips aren’t as comfortable, the controls aren’t as customizable (and gyro doesn’t work as well), MSI just isn’t offering the same level of support (I’ve had to manually download drivers several times, for example), and it now costs a good bit more. I’d pick it if it were $900.
*The newer EX version of the Claw 8 will come out this month with even better life, performance, and comfort, it seems — but it could cost much more. Read my preview.
The Best Screen: Legion Go 2 Z2
If your eyes are the priority, the Legion Go 2 has the best handheld screen money can buy today — not only is it the rare handheld with an OLED panel, with the inky blacks and gorgeous colors that can afford, it’s an HDR panel with 500-nit brightness and 1,000 nit peaks, plus variable refresh rate that goes all the way down to 30Hz and up to 144Hz for smoother gameplay. It’s a joy in person.
The grips are far more comfortable than the original Legion Go, you still get the unique kickstand and detachable gamepads with optical mouse mode, the controls are competent, it has top and bottom USB-C ports, and the 74 watt-hour battery’s only a little smaller than other flagships.
The things holding back Legion Go 2 at launch were a high price and Windows. And while the price has gone up, the Z2 variant’s price hike isn’t quite as ridiculous as that of the Z2 Extreme. And the Z2 Legion Go 2 is pretty close to the Z2 Extreme version in performance — you should watch ETA Prime’s whole comparison video to see just how close. As for Windows, Bazzite seems to work well on my review unit of the Z2 Extreme model, though the gyro and some of Lenovo’s unique buttons can be a chore to configure there.
The most powerful: GPD Win 5 or OneXPlayer Apex
I can’t afford a $2,500 handheld, but for those who want the ultimate in performance, AMD’s Strix Halo is the most powerful chip that fits between two hands. When I tested the GPD Win 5, it felt like a portable PS5, comfortably playing intensive games at 1080p resolution with ultra levels of detail.
But beyond price, you should consider just how “portable” the Win 5 and the rival OneXPlayer Apex truly are: to cram in that power, they rely on either bulky external battery backpacks that won’t last an hour at full power, or a big power cord plugged into the wall.
I also haven’t been offered full review units yet, so I don’t know whether GPD or OneXPlayer have nailed other fundamentals or are offering proper support. Proceed with caution.
What if you’re not finding any of those handhelds? Be careful before you buy these alternatives instead:
The handhelds you probably shouldn’t pay for
Open-box Asus ROG Ally Z1 (typically $380-$450)
Don’t be fooled: the Asus ROG Ally with a weaker AMD Z1 chip may look identical to the one with the Z1 Extreme, but this one’s less capable than a Steam Deck and less efficient last I checked. With one of the smallest batteries in a handheld (40 watt-hour, tied with the Steam Deck LCD) it’ll die quick, and it’s not as potent plugged in as the Z1E version. Unless you can find it for under $250 like ETA Prime did, leave it be.
MSI Claw 7 ($650 to $750)
Somehow, Target still has stock of the original MSI Claw for $100 less than its original asking price, while Best Buy still has it at MSRP. Here is what I wrote in 2024:
- “No one should buy an MSI Claw.”
- “[T[he $750 MSI Claw feels like an inferior clone of the Asus ROG Ally.”
- “The less expensive Steam Deck OLED all but completely wiped the floor with the MSI Claw in power and performance. “
I hear Bazzite doesn’t fix this one, either. Just skip it.
Lenovo Legion Go S Z2 Go with SteamOS ($990)
Another case of “don’t get fooled.” The Legion Go S with AMD’s Z2 Go is far weaker than the version with the older Z1 Extreme processor — or any other Z1 Extreme handheld. It can have a slight performance and battery advantage over the Steam Deck in more intensive games, but fall behind on battery in less demanding ones.
Nice large smooth variable refresh rate screen, comfy grips, comes with SteamOS, but it wasn’t a good pick even when it cost $50 more than a Steam Deck OLED — now that it costs $200 more, forget about it.
I have never been able to recommend an Ayaneo handheld PC, because the company tends to ship them before they’re ready and quickly move on to the next thing. As exciting as it sounded, the Ayaneo 3 seems no different; I never got its awesome-sounding swappable controls to stay connected reliably, and the company didn’t have a solution for me. $900 for an fancy OLED handheld sounded enticing in 2025, but I wouldn’t recommend my experience at $400 let alone the $1,183 asking price now.
MSI Claw A8 ($1,300, often $1,200 on sale)
I haven’t used this one myself, but it costs substantially more than an Xbox Ally X for basically same internals. Even used ones will cost you nearly $1K. Bigger grips and screen, though.
GPD Win Mini 2025 ($1317)
Haven’t used this one either, and I’m intrigued by the idea of a tiny handheld cyberdeck after my good experiences with the GPD Win Max 2 below. It’s got a 1080p VRR screen that should be better for gaming than the Win Max 2. But it also shot up in price from roughly $900 to over $1,300, and its Ryzen 7 8840U laptop chip will chew right through the small 44Wh battery in more than light-lift games.
The Win Max 2 is not a comfortable gaming experience with weird grip and a fixed 60Hz 1600p screen, and the nearly $1,500 pricetag hurts for something that cost $1,000 last year. But do you want maybe the tiniest laptop to ever have a keyboard this excellent, one that can double as an awkward gaming handheld in a pinch? I wouldn’t pay for it, but I will continue to hope a future version adds the bigger battery, VRR, vibration dampening, better mousing and better webcam it needs.
Lenovo Legion Go S Z1 Extreme with SteamOS ($1580) or Windows ($1680)
$1,600 for a handheld with less performance and smaller battery than the Xbox Ally X and MSI Claw 8? Get outta here. It’s a legitimately good handheld, but even back when it cost $830 I’d have picked a Steam Deck instead. Now it costs nearly double – even more than the Legion Go 2 with a far better screen.
This giant honking 11-inch rebranded Tencent handheld theoretically has the same Intel guts as the MSI Claw 8 AI Plus, but it certainly doesn’t feel that way. The autostereoscopic 3D screen is terrible for gaming in my tests. It’s not very smooth even at its fixed 60Hz refresh rate, and gets ridiculously choppy in 3D mode without even providing a convincing 3D effect, even in 3D native games like Trine 2. I saw all kinds of crosstalk that better 3D screens cracked ages ago. I’d rather play Nintendo 3DS.
Lenovo Legion Go 2 Z2 Extreme ($2,000 to $2,350)
Pretty much identical to the Legion Go Z2, save you’re paying $425 more for twice the RAM (32GB instead of 16GB) and slightly better battery life due to the more efficient chip. I wouldn’t.
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Your iPhone can feel nearly useless to a thief once you mark it as lost. Apple’s Activation Lock can help turn a stolen device into a locked brick. That should make phone theft less profitable. Yet thieves have found a nasty workaround.
According to new research from Infoblox Threat Intel, the cybersecurity research team at Infoblox, criminals are using fake Apple pages, smishing texts and Telegram-based unlocking tools to trick stolen iPhone owners into handing over their passcodes.
Infoblox Threat Intel tracks cybercriminal activity partly by studying DNS, the system that helps devices find websites online. Think of DNS as the internet’s phone book. By watching patterns in suspicious website names and traffic, researchers can spot fake domains, phishing pages and larger scam networks.
The scary part is how personal the scam can feel. The thief may already have your phone. The message may arrive right after the theft. The fake page may even show what looks like your iPhone moving on a map.
WHY IPHONE USERS ARE THE NEW PRIME SCAM TARGETS
Cybercriminals are using fake Apple pages and text messages to trick stolen iPhone owners into giving up their passcodes. (Kurt CyberGuy Knutsson)
Researchers found that many thieves care less about the data on the phone and more about turning the device into resale cash. Once they get your passcode, they can remove protections, wipe the device and sell it.
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How the stolen iPhone passcode scam starts
Here is the part that feels especially cruel. When you lose an iPhone, you may put a message on the lock screen with a phone number to call. That feature can help a good person return your device. A scammer can use that same number to contact you.
In one case described by the researchers, a stolen iPhone owner received a text shortly after the theft. The message linked to a fake Apple-style website. The page showed what looked like a moving phone location on a map. Then it asked for the phone’s PIN code. Had the victim entered it, the thief would have gained control of the device. That is what makes this scam so believable. The thief may really have your phone. The message may arrive at the perfect moment. The fake page may look close enough to Apple’s real Find My experience to catch someone who is stressed and trying to recover an expensive device.
Why thieves want your iPhone passcode
A locked iPhone has limited resale value. An unlocked iPhone can be wiped, removed from an Apple account and sold for much more. The researchers found Telegram groups selling phone unlocking services. Some tools target older phones. Others help criminals collect information about newer devices so they can build a more convincing phishing attack. These services can include “Find My iPhone Off” kits, fake Apple login pages, AI voice call tools and prerecorded messages that impersonate Apple.
The pricing also makes this underground business easy to enter. Some unlocking attempts cost only a few dollars. According to the research, unlocking a recent iPhone can cost anywhere from $5 to $50, depending on the seller, with an average price below $10.
That low cost helps explain why this scam can spread. A thief no longer needs deep technical skills. They can buy a kit, follow instructions and send a polished scam message.
Fake Apple texts make the scam feel real
The scam does not stop with one generic text. Criminals can customize phishing pages with details pulled from the phone or from linked accounts. That can include the victim’s name, email address, device details and even whether the passcode has four or six digits. The fake page may also show a chosen location on a “lost iPhone” map. Then the scammer sends the link by text, WhatsApp or email.
Once the victim enters credentials or a passcode, the information can go straight back to the attacker through Telegram. From there, criminals can remove linked devices from the Apple Account and prepare the phone for resale. That is why the message can feel oddly personal. The scammer may know enough to make the alert feel urgent and official.
Stolen iPhone scams are growing fast
Researchers identified more than 10,000 domains tied to these phone unlocking tools and smishing campaigns. Many used Apple lookalike names or generic customer-support wording, such as fake location and phone-finding themes. They also found that traffic to verified smishing domains rose 350% in 2025 compared with the previous year.
Some tools even try to fight security blocks. The research found scripts that check whether smishing domains are blocked. Then those scripts submit fake explanations to try to get them removed from Google Safe Browsing warnings. That means criminals are not only building fake pages. They are also working to keep those pages online long enough to fool victims.
DON’T GET CAUGHT IN THE ‘APPLE ID SUSPENDED’ PHISHING SCAM
A stolen iPhone owner may receive a fake Find My alert that appears to show the device moving on a map. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
What this iPhone scam means to you
If your phone gets stolen, the most dangerous message may arrive after the theft. You may be worried, angry and desperate to track your device. That is exactly the moment scammers want. A message claiming to be from Apple, Find My or customer support can feel helpful.
However, Apple will not ask you to enter your iPhone passcode through a random link sent by text or WhatsApp. The passcode is the prize. Once you give it up, you may help the thief turn your locked phone into a sellable device.
Ways to stay safe from stolen iPhone scams
If your iPhone goes missing, a few calm steps can help you avoid handing thieves the one thing they need most: your passcode.
1) Never enter your iPhone passcode through a text link
Your iPhone passcode should stay on your iPhone. Do not type it into a website that arrives by text, email or WhatsApp, even if the page looks like Apple.
2) Go directly to Find My
If your iPhone is missing, use the Find My app on another Apple device or go directly to iCloud through your browser. Do not use a link from a message.
3) Treat urgent recovery messages as suspicious
Scammers love pressure. A message may say your phone has been found, moved or scheduled for removal. Pause before you click. Open Apple’s tools yourself instead.
4) Use a strong iPhone passcode
Avoid simple codes such as birthdays, repeating numbers or easy patterns. A longer alphanumeric passcode gives thieves a much harder target.
5) Keep Activation Lock turned on
Make sure Find My is enabled before anything happens. On iPhone, go to Settings > your name > Find My > Find My iPhone and confirm that Find My iPhone is turned on.
6) Do not remove the stolen iPhone from your Apple Account too quickly
If your iPhone is stolen, keep it listed in Find My and your Apple Account. Removing it can also remove Activation Lock, which helps stop someone else from erasing, activating and reselling your phone. If you use Find My, select the stolen iPhone and choose Mark As Lost or Erase This Device if needed. Avoid Remove This Device unless Apple Support, your carrier or law enforcement tells you to do it.
FIND A LOST PHONE THAT IS OFF OR DEAD
Apple’s Activation Lock can make stolen iPhones harder to resell, but scammers are trying to trick victims into disabling protections. (Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
7) Use strong antivirus software on your devices
Strong antivirus software can help block malicious links, phishing pages and scam sites before they do damage. It can also warn you when a site looks unsafe. Get my picks for the best 2026 antivirus protection winners for your Windows, Mac, Android and iOS devices at CyberGuy.com.
8) Report the stolen iPhone
Report the stolen phone to local police and your wireless carrier. Your carrier may be able to suspend service or block the device from the network.
Yes. Android phones have their own anti-theft protections, but thieves may still try a similar trick. Instead of asking for an iPhone passcode, a scammer may send a fake Google, Find My Device, Find Hub, Samsung Find or carrier message after your Android phone is stolen.
The message may claim your phone was found, moved or ready to be recovered. Then it may send you to a fake page that asks for your Google account password, Samsung account password or screen lock PIN, password or pattern.
That information can help a thief get around protections that make a stolen Android phone harder to reset and resell. Google’s Factory Reset Protection can require the previous Google account or screen lock after an unauthorized reset. Samsung says Google Device Protection works on Galaxy phones when a Google account and lock screen are set up.
The advice is the same: do not use a link from a text, email or WhatsApp message to recover a stolen Android phone. Go directly to Google’s Find Hub, Samsung Find or your carrier’s official website yourself. Never type your phone’s screen lock or account password into a recovery page that arrived by message.
Kurt’s key takeaways
A stolen iPhone used to be a headache for thieves because Activation Lock made resale harder. Now, criminals are trying to make you part of the unlocking process. They do it with fake Apple pages, carefully timed texts and slick-looking maps that play on panic. The safest move is to slow down. If your phone disappears, use Apple’s official Find My tools and ignore any message that asks for your passcode. That very code may be the one thing standing between a locked brick and a payday for a thief.
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Should phone makers and wireless carriers do more to stop stolen phones from being resold, or is the responsibility mostly on users to lock down their devices? Let us know by writing to us at CyberGuy.com.
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Organize by r …
Read the full story at The Verge.
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