This $700 HP Laptop Won't Game — Your Handheld Will Thank It
Deals roundups usually test your filters — most of what’s discounted is stuff you never needed. This one actually earns a read. Best Buy has the HP OmniBook X Flip 2-in-1 down to $699.99 from $999.99, a $300 cut on the kind of school laptop you’d dismiss as irrelevant to portable gaming. It mostly is — as a gaming machine. As a support system for your handheld life, it’s another story entirely.
Here’s the thing: a cheap, long-lasting laptop is the best co-pilot a Steam Deck or Switch can have. It handles library management, mod staging, ROM curation, and cloud streaming while your handheld stays in your bag, battery untouched. And buried lower in the same roundup is the deal handheld players should actually circle first: an Anker 20,000mAh power bank for $26.99. The OmniBook is the headline. The Anker is the one that earns pocket space.
A 22-Hour Laptop With a Clear Job Description
Don’t buy the OmniBook X Flip expecting it to replace your handheld. It’s a thin-and-light ultraportable leaning on Intel integrated graphics — light indies might squeak by, but anything demanding belongs on your Deck, not this display. That’s not a flaw; it’s a division of labor. Its real job is the unglamorous infrastructure of a handheld ecosystem: organizing a Steam library, staging mods, curating emulation ROM sets, or running a Moonlight stream from a beefier desktop while the X Flip’s 1920x1200 touchscreen serves as a second display for Discord, patch notes, or a walkthrough.
The convertible hinge is where this gets interesting for our crowd. Tent and tablet modes let you prop the screen upright like a recipe card — a build guide or wiki page standing beside your Switch while you play, without eating desk space. HP’s 22-hour video playback claim is best-case testing by definition, and real-world mixed use will land lower, but the efficiency story is what matters: this is a ‘survive a week of classes’ machine, not a ‘plug it in every night’ one. Paired with 16GB of LPDDR5X and a 512GB SSD, that makes the $700 price tag easier to justify when your actual gaming hardware lives in your hands.
The $27 Power Bank That Outshines the Laptop
Here’s the deal handheld players should actually act on: an Anker 20,000mAh power bank on Woot for $26.99, down from $49.99. Do the math and it’s roughly 74Wh of nominal capacity — after conversation and charging losses, about 1.5 full refills for a launch-era Steam Deck and just over one for the OLED. The catch is output: 15W over USB-C won’t keep pace with a Deck under heavy load; it’s trickle-charge territory that slows the drain rather than reversing it. Against a Switch, which sips power by comparison, 15W will genuinely top it up mid-session. At this price, it’s the emergency reserve that’s worth its pocket space. If you need a bank that can actually fast-charge a Deck on the go, higher-wattage Anker power banks cost more — but that’s a different purchase for a different trip.
The rest of the roundup is easy to triage. Pixel Buds Pro 2 at $189 slice $40 off Google’s excellent earbuds, and they pair cleanly with the Switch’s Bluetooth audio or a Steam Deck — nice, not essential. The DJI Osmo Pocket 3 is a fine camera, but your phone already owns that job. The OmniBook is the compelling hardware story and the Anker is the compelling value story. Spend accordingly.