This Gigantic Handheld Fails at ‘3D’ PC Gaming

There comes a point in every consumer tech writer’s career where they have to lie down on the railroad tracks and take the heat for a tech category nobody else believes in. For me, it’s stereoscopic, glasses-less 3D screens. So when I agreed to test the Abxylute 3D One, a tablet-sized handheld PC, it only made my lust for stereoscopic screens grow ever more heated.

The 3D One is a kitchen sink handheld that throws so much stuff at the wall that something is bound to stick. Sure, it’s big and heavy—especially at 2.45 pounds with the controllers attached—but it also houses a huge screen, removable gamepads akin to the Switch 2, a keyboard that attaches to the bottom like a Microsoft Surface Pro 12, and the horsepower of an Intel mobile chip used in the solid MSI Claw 8 handheld. It misses out on anything resembling good battery life for its size, despite its good performance. Beyond all else, the 3D One fails to deliver on its main promise. Based on my tests with a pre-production unit Abxylute sent me for review, you can get a 3D effect in all your games, but they weren’t playable by any stretch of the imagination.

Could the 3D One ever be my one handheld I take everywhere? Of course not. Look at the size of that thing. In its plus-sized case, it would take up most of the room in my backpack, whereas a laptop and a controller would eat half that space. The “handheld” is up on Kickstarter now for an early-bird price of $1,500, but it will sell for more later. This is very cool tech, even if it’s expensive. For mostly selfish reasons, I’m hoping some updates will see the 3D One pick up steam. I don’t want the dream of 3D screens to die.

Handheld PCs keep getting bigger, not necessarily better

I first spied the 3D One at CES 2025 on a forlorn shelf within Intel’s demo room. Back then, Intel only described it as an effort with Chinese games publisher Tencent on a 3D handheld. The 3D One sports an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V “Lunar Lake” CPU, which has proved a strong contender even with the most recent AMD handheld APUs (accelerated processing units). The Lunar Lake chip inside the 3D One offers just enough juice to game at the device’s max resolution in some titles.

I’m not a huge person. I rarely hold tech that makes me feel small. While other people think near-9-inch gaming handhelds like the Lenovo Legion Go 2 are too mammoth for their miniature digits, you don’t know what a big handheld feels like until you get to grips with the Abxylute 3D One. It includes an 11-inch IPS LCD display that runs at 2,560 x 1,600 resolution with a 120Hz refresh rate, which is equivalent to many 14- or even 16-inch laptop screens. For comparison, the Legion Go 2 can go to 1200p, while most 7-inch devices like the $1,000 Asus ROG Xbox Ally X max out at 1080p and 120Hz refresh rate.

The display is decent for a handheld of this size, though it may not be as bright as other LCD screens at its peak of 480 nits. The display is also a little too reflective for playing underneath any bright lights, but games end up seeming extra beautiful when pushed to the system’s max resolution, even ignoring the 3D effect. Audio-wise, there’s not much here to set it apart from any other handheld, big or small. Even when pushing the volume to its limit, it won’t fill a room with sound.

The case also comes with a controller attachment point for the two Legion Go-like removable controllers. I could play from a comfortable sitting position even when I didn’t want to prop the device up with my arms on my lap. You just have to hunker close to the 3D One to use it, or else hook it up to a monitor. Despite the size of the two removable controllers, I found the face buttons to be clicky and responsive. I didn’t have to reposition my hand that much to inch a finger around for the bumpers and triggers. The back ridges aren’t ergonomic enough to feel form-fitted for my hand. Otherwise, I could still use them as separate controllers or alongside the screen. There are also two touchpads, one on each controller, though only the right one seems to offer any mouse controls.

The keyboard does a lot of the heavy lifting to make Windows 11 usable on a device that would normally have to rely on the touchscreen or trackpads to get anything done. The keys on the device feel particularly nice and hit with a small though satisfying clacking sound. The keyboard’s touchpad is not my cup of tea and feels too rough and sticky despite its minuscule size. Hell, you could treat this as an overlarge, somewhat janky laptop. I did get some work done on the 3D One while on vacation. Was it worth the hassle of dragging it around? Probably not.

While I could feel safe in my efforts to use the 3D One like any other gaming handheld—albeit one that adds more muscle on my shoulders holding it aloft—my desperate attempts to turn it into a modern Nintendo 3DS went awry.

What’s up with the stereoscopic screen?

Abxylute told me it went with such a large display because, in their tests, this is the screen size needed to show off the 3D effect properly. The 3D One isn’t offering customers what many think of when they hear the word “3D screen.” You won’t see images pop out at you like an annoying jack-in-the-box at a horror-themed carnival. Instead, the screens are essentially showing an offset image to your left and right eyes individually. Your brain combines them into a singular image with the effect that makes some elements on the screen pop. Cool, right? Well, it gets even more interesting. The 3D One uses the built-in front-facing camera to track your eyes. Even if you’re off-center, you should still be able to see the 3D image. It’s the same type of technology employed by the Samsung Odyssey 3D I tested earlier this year. That display was capable of 4K resolution with 165Hz, though it required a beefy computer to run games with the 3D effect.

This screen works for the most part, but if you swim too fast in and out of view, the handheld’s eye tracking will struggle to keep up. You need to maintain position when playing with the 3D effect, though you’re punished less for shifting around. A single switch near the top of the device (you can also enable it through the system’s quick menu) lets you swap between 2D and 3D modes. There are certain games that Abxylute says support the stereoscopic screen natively. Otherwise, the handheld will employ an “AI 3D Mode” that takes an image in 2D and transforms it into 3D. The company said it hop

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