An experimental new Steam Deck rival from Intel and Chinese behemoth Tencent has just been announced. The Sunday Dragon 3D One is a fully featured gaming handheld PC that comes with Nintendo Switch-style removable controllers on each side and an Intel Core Ultra 7 285V APU powering the proceedings. However, its biggest feature is the huge, 11-inch display on offer, which Tencent suggests makes it the first glasses-free 3D gaming handheld.
This isn’t the first Intel Lunar Lake gaming handheld that’s been announced, but it’s certainly the biggest. In fact, this Tencent handheld easily dwarfs any of the best handheld gaming PCs that you can buy right now, including the Steam Deck OLED, with an extra three to four inches of screen real estate.
The details of this intriguing Intel-Tencent experiment have been shared in a report by Chinese tech site ITHome. The 11-inch, 120Hz display puts it into iPad Pro territory for size, but there are some surprising extras. For instance, there’s an eye-tracking sensor that, along with an “image interlacing algorithm”, allows for what ITHome describes as “naked-eye 3D visual effects,” with games like Path of Exile specifically mentioned as being optimized for the technology.
Along with this glasses-free 3D tech, Tencent has also put together a pretty powerful gaming handheld. Intel Core Ultra 7 285V benchmarks show that this handheld’s APU is twice as fast as the AMD APUs used in both the Steam Deck and original ROG Ally, while the 32GB of LPDD5X RAM gives it a dominant edge in resource-greedy games.
There’s also 1TB of storage available, but Tencent hasn’t made it clear what operating system this handheld is likely to run. Windows 11 would certainly be possible given the Intel Core Ultra 7 285V APU, but a custom flavor of Linux (like the Steam Deck OS) can’t be ruled out, either. Tencent hasn’t shared how big a battery is included, although it is rated for 100W charging.
The removable controllers on either side of the screen are another intriguing feature on this experimental handheld, giving it a Nintendo Switch-like quality. However, the 3D One does appear to have both USB Type-A and Type-C ports, so keyboard and mouse support might be possible as an alternative.
Unfortunately, details are light, including any information about a release date – and it might not get one. This is still an experimental product, launched by Intel and Tencent jointly, so it might simply be a showcase for this Intel Lunar Lake APU. It could also be a statement of intent of a move by the Chinese gaming powerhouse into the gaming handheld industry.
For now, we’ll just have to wait and see what Tencent is cooking. In the meantime, check out our Asus ROG Ally X review for a high-powered gaming handheld that you can pick up right now.