The Best Handheld Gaming Consoles

Out of the 12 best-selling gaming consoles of all time, 5 are handheld systems, and that's not including the Nintendo Switch. These devices offered much more than portable gaming. For instance, the Game Boy enabled convenient local multiplayer without the need for Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, the Nintendo DS introduced a touchscreen, and the PlayStation Portable doubled as a mobile video player, all before the advent of the iPhone.

But a decade ago, it seemed that handheld consoles were on the brink of extinction. With everyone owning a large-screen phone, the question arose: why not use it for gaming?

Over the past decade, performance stagnation at the lower end of the market, coupled with concerns over cooling and battery life, pushed the mobile market toward simpler games, often relying on ads and pay-to-win mechanics. More critically, while a touchscreen could substitute a basic mouse, it struggled to replace multi-button controllers ...