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History of the GPD Win 4
I’ve reviewed this device each of the last few years now, the 6800U version and then the 8840U version and now the AI 9 HX370 version, which is the latest – so it’s fair to say I’ve seen it all with the Win 4.
This year’s refresh is pretty mild, it’s pretty much just the processor that’s changed here and so we are flying with the new HX370 CPU and if you’re curious how well that does, I did a full other video benchmarking it against the ROG Ally X for performance and battery.
But today, it’s all about the Win 4 only, so let’s jump into the review and let’s split this up into the great, the good and the bad.
First up, a quick look at the specs and price.
I have here the Ryzen AI 9 HX370 version with 32GB of LPDDR5x 7500MT RAM and 2TB of m2 2280 storage.
Same 6” 1080p 60hz screen as usual, with touchscreen, the slide out keyboard that the Win 4 is known for, little trackpad for mouse input on the side, 46wh battery, Oculink port with a USB4 port and another USB-C port, microSD card slot, headphone jack, WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2.
Great Performance
So let’s jump into the great, and it’s the performance.
The long and the short of it is the HX370 is super good, allows you to stick to 18w and get the same or in a lot of cases, better performance than the Ally X gets at 28w.
That would apply to older 8840u devices as well, so it’s safe to say this processor is fantastic at mid range wattage, better battery life, running cooler and all of that fun stuff.
A question that came up in my last video, was what wattage do you need with the HX370 to match the Ally X’s 18w performance and so I did a few tests on that and found that 14ish watts on the Win 4 will get you the Ally X’s 18w performance.
Not a massive difference there, like it is for 18w versus 28w, but a 4w saving isn’t completely nothing – this is also where the Ally X’s battery life will shine for differences, as napkin math here would put that at about 4 and a half hours on the X, and 3 hours 15ish minutes on the Win 4 – if games actually capped at 14 or 18 watts of course.
Bazzite
I’m using Bazzite on my device, and I suppose I should do a quick tangent to mention there is currently a bug on Bazzite where your screen will sort of flash yellowish or get a yellow tint in the menu’s occasionally on the Win 4, but I haven’t seen it in-game.
Seems to just be a Bazzite menu thing that hopefully they’ll solve in the future. Minor issue.
But anyways, being able to run modern AAA games at respectable framerates, or just being able to run older games a lot better, on such a small device, is the best part about the Win 4.
The HX370 processor is the first where I’ve felt like it can do true 40hz or 60hz gaming for a lot of games that were on the bubble with previous devices and you don’t need high wattages to do so.
Screen is still the same
It’s still the same 6” 1080p 60hz screen unfortunately here, with no changes on that front and no addition of variable refresh rate, but thankfully it’s pretty easy in Bazzite to cap your screen to 40hz for the games that require that to avoid a lot of the issues that come with not having VRR.
But it is still a miss in 2025 now to not have a better panel on the Win 4, especially with the better power upgrade we get this year.
I think my biggest issue with this years refresh is just the lack of effort put in, they kind of just put the new processor in and that’s it, when there’s plenty that could be upgraded to be better on the Win 4.
Good design
On the good front, or I guess the neutral part, it’s the same design of the Win 4 for better or worse.
That means, for those that love the PSP/Vita style design, the size of the device, the slide up keyboard and everything that we’ve gotten used to for years, it’s all still the same here.
I have a love hate relationship with the ergonomics – some days I’m perfectly fine with it, but others I find it too bulky or digging into my hands a bit and so on – it’s not super consistent and I’m pretty neutral on the ergonomics of it.
Keyboard
Last year’s model was the first where I forced myself to use the keyboard a lot more, and that continued this year as well, found myself sliding the keyboard up to enter quick passwords or type quick things when I could, but never more than that – I still don’t find it a great experience to write out long sentences or anything like that for example.
One fun part is I actually like playing with the screen up in a lot of scenarios to help balance the weight out a little bit.
I go back and forth, screen down or up, but in many cases – I find up to be better overall.
Thankfully, with Bazzite, everything is fairly integrated including their keyboard, so in a lot of actual scenarios – I don’t really need to use the slide up, but it’s fun to do so. I keep going back and forth on my last years conclusion of thinking this would be better without the keyboard and I think I’m still leaning into the camp of that being the case, I just don’t think I need the keyboard in all honesty and it could probably save a lot of the bulk, and weight, by not having it even if it is kind of the number one feature of the Win 4.
Good battery life
Another part on the good is surprisingly the battery life. This could be on the fence of both good and bad, but I’ll say it’s surprising.
The HX370, as I pointed out earlier and in the previous video, allows you to play games at Ally X framerates, at a much lower TDP and that lets you get really good battery life.
It’s still the same 46wh battery here, so no difference, but you just get a lot more for your TDP than the 8840u and previously.
Given the lack of need to go higher than 18 watts on this device, that means the lowest end of battery is right around an hour and a half for a heavy TDP game, as I showed in my previous video, and you can go all the way up to 9 or so hours at a very low TDP, so it’s quite the range for a lot of things.
But 14w or 18w are good points to use this device at, and that does put you in the multi hour camp for battery life, which is better than previous years.
I still would like to see a bigger battery in here, but I’m just not sure they can fit one at this size.
Bad fan noise
The fan is just too loud.
This can be negated by going lower than 18w, but in my testing, I’ve still found it to be too loud even on lower wattages.
I don’t think they changed anything fan wise this year, but I’ve found the thermals to be a lot better than last – which could be the chip not getting as hot or a variety of reasons, but I was surprised to notice that heat wasn’t a problem this year.
You can, of course, try and customize the fan percentages and curve, but you trade heat for doing so and so there’s no real winning in both scenarios.
A lot of the community tends to open these up, replace the thermal paste and do all of that sort of thing to help bring temperatures down, but that’s just not something I want to do on a $1200 US dollars device.
I don’t know what the solution would be on this, I just always point to the Ally X’s fan noise and say I want that, always, which translates to never hearing the fan and still having it do its job.
High price
And then we get to my second issue, and it’s the price.
Whatgeek sent me this device for review, and with my code JOEY12 you can get this shipped for $1200 US dollars.
But $1200 USD is still a lot, mainly because the HX370 chip is so expensive and so you’ll see all new devices this year, with this chip and the pricing is a lot more expensive than the 8840U counterparts.
Even my current favorite x86, the Ally X, is $800 US dollars shipped and $400 more is a lot to ask.
This changes depending on where you are in the world, but is there $400 US dollars more in benefits here over the Ally X?
I’m not sure there is, for me, but you might have a different opinion on that.
Input lag issue
But I think the last and most important bad issue with the device, is actually something that’s existed for three years now.
The Win 4 has a problem with input lag, and this affects the 6800u, 7840u, 8840u and this year’s model – it’s been present for years and it has not been fixed.
This is something that I’ve missed in previous year reviews, and even in this one, if I didn’t know about it – I wouldn’t have noticed the problem.
So for me, it’s hard to notice, but that doesn’t mean it’s not an issue to be fixed.
The basic idea is this is adding 3 frames or 50ms of input lag, doesn’t matter if it’s Bazzite or Windows, it’s a hardware issue because of the panel being rotated.
This is all my understanding.
There’s some sort of good news – there is a fix, however for everyone except 7840u users it requires a hardware flash and looking at the steps, it’s beyond even something I want to do.
7840u users are lucky with a software fix.
Long story short, for some reason they haven’t fixed it from the factory and the fix isn’t something normal users will want to do, so there’s an inherent 3 frame or 50ms input lag on these devices that you may or may not notice.
Overall Thoughts
Otherwise, overall – if you’re someone who likes the Win 4 and has used one or maybe has the older 6800u version, this is the best iteration of it so far, especially with the HX370 processor and the battery savings it brings.
Given that this is only a mild refresh, I don’t see anything here that would change anyone’s minds if you were not interested in this device previously, or on the fence about it, but improvements are still improvements.
My Thoughts
If you’re asking me, my advice is still the same as I’ve been saying for months.
This year will have a lot of new devices, with new upgrades and price points and I think it’s fair to wait and see where we land by the summer.
One of my biggest hiccups with the GPD devices is price, and even this $1200 US dollar price is hard to swallow as a fan of these products, so while my general recommendation for x86 devices to almost everyone is the Ally X – if the Win 4 has what you need and what you want, and you can stomach the price, then it’s overall a better handheld than it was a year ago.
It’s also a much smaller device, so two different size categories there, with I believe the OneXFly F1 Pro really being the only competing device in this size range besides the Win Mini.
I’m hoping that 2026 will bring new designs, new hardware and new changes to the Win 4, as I think it’s time at this point and maybe that might be the one to wait for – but for those that just want a better Win 4, in its current form, then this is definitely that.