The market for handheld gaming consoles inspired by the Steam Deck is on the verge of saturation, but beyond designs and prices, the public demands more firepower from their hardware, which is no easy feat given the format's limitations. However, alternatives like AdLink Pocket AI exist — while it was designed to accelerate AI models, nothing stops us from using it as a portable graphics card…
Handheld consoles are making a lot of noise lately. Steam Deck, Lenovo Legion Go, Asus ROG Ally… it's clear that players welcomed this new generation with open arms, but the question is: "What's next?". The original Steam Deck will turn two years old in February, and not a few are talking about the need for an update to its hardware.
Increasing the specs isn't complicated… but keeping the form factor and maintaining battery consumption at reasonable levels is. And that's how we get to external graphics cards. Usually, these solutions use custom boxes with their own power supplies, however, ETA PRIME on YouTube has explored a solution that could give rise to a new series of products. It's about the Pocket AI module marketed by AdLink, and in essence it works like a pocket-sized graphics card.
Pocket AI: Is There a Future for Portable Graphics Cards?
The official specs of the AdLink Pocket AI talk about an Nvidia RTX A500 graphics card with 4 GB of GDDR6 memory, a 64-bit interface, 2048 CUDA cores, 64 Tensor cores and 16 RT cores. The original frequencies suggest it's the "Embedded" model, with 435 MHz base and 1335 MHz Boost, but ETA PRIME indicates that Pocket AI received a firmware update with a slight overclock.
Its size is 106 by 72 by 25 millimeters, a format that reminds us of power banks and portable hard drives, but the most impressive thing is that it only needs 30 watts to work, a value that is definitely within reach of many portable batteries. The minimum connection to the computer is Thunderbolt 3, but if there's the option to use Thunderbolt 4 or USB4, there's no need to think twice.
The numbers of the Pocket AI card are interesting, but ETA PRIME mentions that they could be much better. Being a product for AI development, Pocket AI has no real video output, and its only alternative is to go through a "round trip" over the physical link, devouring available bandwidth. Personally, I don't think AdLink has any interest in entering the gaming market, but if something similar appears in the future at a good price and with an HDMI or DisplayPort output, it will likely explode on the Web.
(Editor's note: The last price I found for Pocket AI is $430.)
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