The Odin 2 Portal Just Replaced My Steam Deck

Dual booting Android and SteamOS on a base-model Odin 2 Portal shouldn't work this well. The results have blown my mind.

Dual Booting a Base-Model Handheld

I’ve been dual booting Android and SteamOS on my Odin 2 Portal to see if it could replace my Steam Deck, and the results have blown my mind. What’s really crazy is that I pulled this off with the base model of the Odin 2 Portal, which has 8GB of RAM and a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip. This model is limited to 128GB of internal storage, but by loading ArmadaOS onto an SD card, you can play as many Steam games as you can fit on there.

ArmadaOS is different from apps like GameNative or Game Hub, which emulate Windows games on Android. It’s actually a Linux distro that runs a SteamOS-like experience, borrowing from projects like ChimeraOS. It’s still in its infancy and isn’t available for every handheld yet, but its website lists compatible devices, which covers most of the Retroid and AYN range. Installing it onto an SD card takes under an hour, though it’s worth taking your time, since a wrong move could break your device. In practice it was pretty straightforward, and once it’s installed, you just hold the volume-down button while booting to switch between Android and Linux.

Punching Above Its Android Weight

Lightweight Steam titles run brilliantly. Hollow Knight hits around 100fps, compared with the 60fps I struggled to reach through Game Hub. That gap gets even starker with a game like Disco Elysium, which is unplayable through Game Hub or GameNative on this device but runs perfectly through ArmadaOS. It blazes through most 2D Steam titles, and pushes into 3D for something like Dredge if you’re willing to drop to 720p, which still looks beautiful on this display.

Astoundingly, it even pushed into Persona 5 Royal at 60fps. It takes five to ten minutes to pre-load the Vulkan shaders the game needs, but I’m pretty amazed it runs at such a decent frame rate at all. The Steam Deck can obviously punch much higher, and plenty of titles simply aren’t compatible with ArmadaOS yet. I couldn’t get Project Zomboid or Slay the Spire to boot at all.

Built to Actually Hold

The real draw of a device like the Odin 2 Portal compared with the Steam Deck is how much lighter and more comfortable it is to game on. The 7-inch OLED display is typical of AYN’s design, and it’s a sublime experience. The Steam Deck OLED probably just edges it, partly because the Odin 2 Portal has a glass cover across the front that gives it a glossy, reflective look, though it gets bright enough to compensate in most situations. Unlike many Android handhelds, the larger frame gives you more room to move between the thumbsticks and buttons, and it’s so lightweight and well balanced that you can play for hours without feeling cramped. That extra space also makes room for two front-firing speakers, which isn’t a given on an Android handheld. The sound doesn’t match the Steam Deck’s, but that’s a trade-off I was happy to make for a sleeker overall device.

Streaming, and a Note on the Steam Machine

The Odin 2 Portal still has some tricks up its sleeve. If you can’t get a PC game running on it directly, you can hop back to Android and stream instead. Using the Decky Sunshine plugin on my Steam Machine with the Moonlight app on Android, I’ve been able to stream almost perfectly to this device. It supports Wake-on-LAN, and you can adjust the bitrate and resolution if needed, and it’s a bit surreal playing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle at 40fps on an Odin 2 Portal. If you want to know more about how I stream from my Steam Machine to the Odin 2 Portal, my Steam Machine review from last week covers that setup.

Since getting the Steam Machine a couple of weeks ago, I’ve put around 15 hours into gaming this way. It also happens to be a brilliant device for streaming from a PS5 via remote play. I’ve been doing this through a relatively new app I paid around £5 or £6 for, which streams from the PS5 with many, if not all, of the settings you’d be used to on a PlayStation Portal, making it even better than the official app in my experience. If you’re still paying for PlayStation Premium, you can even stream directly from the cloud to the Odin Portal using this method. I’m not, so I couldn’t test that part.

Back to Emulation

Now that you’re back on Android, it’d be rude not to try some emulation. PSP looks incredible on this display, and I was genuinely blown away by how good it looked. The same goes for PlayStation 2, especially games that run natively in 16:9. I noticed some artefacts here and there in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3, but that’s the kind of quirk you get on any emulation device.

I haven’t done too much retro gaming on it, mostly because on anything natively 4:3 I find the black bars either side of the picture off-putting. That said, the colours and brightness make GameCube games look stunning. One slight disappointment is that I couldn’t get the Android version of Pokémon Champions to boot past the title screen, which is odd, since it runs on my AYN Odin 4, though that device does have a bit more RAM. I’m not going to let that upset me too much.

Final Thoughts

What is a genuine shame is that the Odin 2 Portal is about to become a rare breed. AYN is only now selling the base model in this indigo colour to use up remaining parts before winding down production for good. It’s on their website at a discounted $259, but I can’t imagine it will stick around much longer.

I wanted to know whether the Odin 2 Portal could replace my Steam Deck, a much more powerful device. But the Steam Deck is currently out of stock and listed at $789 in the US, making the Odin 2 Portal around a third of the price. The Steam Deck can play far more power-hungry games than the Odin 2 Portal, even on a modded OS, but it still can’t hit newer titles at acceptable frame rates across the board. That leaves it in a kind of no-man’s-land between powerful Android handhelds that handle lightweight indie titles brilliantly and more powerful PC handhelds that can reach newer games, albeit at a restricted frame rate.

I’m a bit spoiled, since I review so many handhelds on this channel, but if I were just starting out, I’d absolutely go for the Odin 2 Portal as a device that can pretty much do it all at a genuinely affordable price, which is a rare thing these days. In fact, I think the time has come for me to sell my Steam Deck and reinvest that money into the channel, so I can get access to even more devices to review.

My recommendation: If you’re after a handheld that can do a bit of everything at an affordable price, the Odin 2 Portal with ArmadaOS is genuinely brilliant value, and it’s the one I’d point a newcomer towards. If you already own a Steam Deck and need its full power for newer, more demanding titles, keep it around rather than replacing it outright.