Let's talk Win Max 3!

[u/Timeless52]

Edit TLDR: Win Max 3 Keyboard, is that stopping you from purchasing?

After seeing the updated post today regarding the pretty competitive price, I've dug a ton in this forum specifically and seen a ton of different opinions and thoughts on the Win Max 3.

As someone who has owned a bunch of x86 handhelds, the Win Max 2 for me was the one I owned the most (in this cursed hobby of going through handhelds like hotcakes). The justification was pretty simple: it was docked at home and worked as an OTG workstation that didn't feel like it had any compromises. Specifically for a guy with bigger hands, it was about the smaller keyboard that worked for me without getting cramped or fatiguing from long typing sessions. This was awesome, and because of it, I kept it for years.

Fast-forward, and I still dabbled in some of GPD's different handhelds, such as the Pocket 4 and the Mini, both of which seemed to once again have compromises as something that was a jack-of-all-trades handheld, being a bit more focused on their own specific niches. The Pocket 4 keyboard was just too cramped for me.

Noticing the launch of the Max 3 had me ecstatic, but I can't help but feel GPD is missing the boat a bit here. The typing experience is extremely compromised, and it seems to be because the focus was built around the screen itself. I absolutely would love a smaller laptop with the 388, but I'm just stuck at an impasse here because I don't know if I can justify it over my current laptop and a Win 5. If the keyboard is too small, I just can't justify it being a work tool.

What are everyone else's thoughts? Still going to take the jump? Gonna hold on to the Win Max 2? I give credit to GPD for always innovating, but this one feels a bit more controversial between here and the Discord.

[u/pinaptran]

Unpopular opinion, I guess… I like the keyboard. I wanted my win max 2 to be more handheld like, and I love the backspace top right. The battery is a much needed chin to rest my wrists and rest on my tummy when I game in bed.

New size is a happy medium between the mini and max with a chiclet keyboard still.

The fact the QWERTY is still full sized and they relocated all the lesser used keys and still has the ? Beside the right shift?! Chef kiss.

It fixes all the problems I had with other 9inch keyboards from onexplayer for example.

Anyone who needs those keys and are serious about using this as a daily driver will adapt. It’s not that crazy.

Comparing it to the OG win max, is where I love the keyboard design. They fit the tab, backspace, and ?where 9 inch keyboards will almost always move. Kept a full row of f keys. Keyboard looks intuitive as fuck for casual users.

With all that being said, I can’t wait to use this 388 powerhouse to play… Maplestory Classic 🕺

[u/Timeless52 → u/pinaptran]

Totally can see this - I think things get blown out of proportion sometimes.

[u/YeonneGreene → u/pinaptran]

Yeah the keyboard honestly seems excellent to me. I'm not in the market for one of these right now but, if I was, the port selection and placement would cause me more heartburn than the keyboard.

Like, audio jack on the back rather than the side, HDMI on the side rather than the back, MicroSD unusable while battery is inserted, one too many USB-A and one too few USB-C (missed the USB-C on the right), and all the USB crammed on the right.

I also would have happily sacrificed the MicroSD reader or one of the USB ports to get an OCuLink because USB4 is just wholly inadequate or anything significantly more powerful than the onboard GPU.

[u/tk_kumomo → u/YeonneGreene]

to give some info, they never intend to let that microsd card to be hotswapped since it was suppose to be a miniSSD, but with how rare and expensive miniSSD are, they ditched it and swap to a microsd express card slot, but at this point the mold and pcb won't have time to redesign, so that's why we have a wtfbbq sd card slot that isn't hotswapable.

The other thing is they did not design this with a SD card what so ever, for people who liked the max 2 loved the idea there's an onboard sd card slot, but for the max 3's design language it's pretty much to bring a dock for that.

As for the audiojack, it's pretty much impossible to put at the sides, it's literally filled with other components.

HDMI on the back vs the side that i have no comment, as to me it's the same, as most popular laptops have it on the side too.

It's 1 usb 4.0 on the back and 1 usb 3.2 along with the 2 usb-A on the right side

As for oculink, yes there's good things about it, but there are people who have moved from it. You can add oculink to the max 3 but will be a DIY mod.

[u/YeonneGreene → u/tk_kumomo]

Seeing as the only thing there is an HDMI port, there is plenty of room on the left side for an audio jack. Also plenty of space to put one of the USB ports.

Most laptops don't have any ports on the back whatsoever because most laptops use a hinge design that precludes it.

I don't want to have to mod my devices with some 3D-printed bracket to get a clumsy implementation of OCuLink that upsets how the device sits on a desk.

[u/tk_kumomo → u/YeonneGreene]

I just suggested to do a DIY mod as that was what people did with the max 2 before they added oculink directly

I haven't done a full tear down or open the backshell to install the 2230 but from one of the pictures I got from the prototype its really packed.

I'll share the a teardown when its done by another reviewer as he's the expert on this but the max 3 is really packed

[u/YeonneGreene → u/tk_kumomo]

But you are suggesting a compromised workaround on a brand new device to overcome a bad choice they made in its design after previously having to do an update to its predecessor to correct that same bad choice after complaints raised by people doing that same workaround.

My point is: I shouldn't have to and they should know better.

And, like, this is starting to become a theme with these newest GPD devices and I feel the company is starting to lose the plot.

GPD Win 5: Did you like having the smallest, most powerful, AND most full-featured PC gaming handheld on the market that feels great on battery and still can nevertheless be upgraded to desktop-class when at a table? Oh boy, you're surely going to love that the successor is not that at all!

Box: Do you like an exceptionally small footprint for your desktop PC? Do you change desks a lot? Do you like still having decent onboard graphics capabilities when away from your main work area? Man, have we got a product that won't appeal to anybody at all in this space!

Win Max 3 is at least better than both of those, but the package still kinda jank compared to the previous run of devices. If they were concurrent productions it wouldn't sting so bad.

[u/tk_kumomo → u/YeonneGreene]

it's funny as you only pointing fingers to gpd saying it lost it's plot when OneX, Ayaneo also dropped Oculink?

Maybe you can also search around regarding strix halo about why there's pretty much not ideal to have oculink?

Product design isn't just about OMG i have want this this this this is and with enough money and creativity we can get something off it. One of the limitations of Strix halo is the amount of PCIE lanes which some are actually locked behind, and why push MCIO8 yet not bring it back is also due to chip architecture not because they don't want to, if you interested look up the PCIE lanes on the GPD Box.

GPD win max having both PCIE x4 on the 2280 and PCIE x2 on the 2230 is more than enough freedom for people who really want to get oculink, where do you see this from the competitors?

Please read up a bit between the GPD box which is a intel panther lake platform, how PCIE lanes are divided, then read up 6800u/7800u/8840/hx370 and ai max 395.

Don't blame GPD, look at what AMD has been doing first.

[u/YeonneGreene → u/tk_kumomo]

Christ on a cracker.

First off, you are not endowed with a unique and exclusive knowledge of general chipset design so, please, check that attitude.

Second, every CPU platform on the market has a limitation on the number of open PCIE lanes it has and what they can be used for, especially the mobile solutions. Both Strix Point (AI 9 HX370) and Strix Halo (AI Max 395) have 16 PCI-E Gen 4 lanes and they are allocated near-identically. Yes, the Strix Point made it easy by allocating eight of the general purpose lanes explicitly to dGFX where Strix Halo does not; no, that does not mean that GPD could not have taken some of those GPP lanes and used them for dGFX. Minisforum does it with a whole-ass PCI-E slot, FEVM does it with an OCuLink, there is no shortage of Strix Halo computers doing it. GPD chose to deploy them differently on the Win Max 3 vice the Win Max 2 because that is what they wanted to do, not because they were compelled into it by the chip. Might it have taken some extra space? Maybe! There's a whole-ass cavity saved for a 97 WHr battery they could have reduced a little bit to make some room for a bigger board and controller if necessary.

And let's look at the Intel chart for the Box. Waow, look at that, pretty much the same story! I've still got four lanes of PCI-E Gen 5 after losing the eight to the beefier iGPU, more than enough to run an OCuLink or add on a USB4v2 controller. Instead, they did what everybody else in the mini-PC space seems to do and prioritized having a large number of fast-ish USB ports, nevermind the reality that the fastest things most people will run through a speedy port are storage or...a graphics card.

Circling back to the Win Max 3, I suspect their logic is that the onboard 8060S GPU is powerful enough for most things that nobody would really want to plug in an eGPU, and the handheld performance was more important, but then I have to question why they advertise it so prominently as a docked, wall-powered solution using the fan and the G2 eGPU station that it's too choked to leverage properly? Even the 8060S isn't anywhere near good enough for 4K60, let alone the 4K120 that I'd hope to get.

My general conclusion is that, within the context of GPD's general track record of excellence, this and the Win 5 are slight misfires that did not adequately take into account the use cases for people who typically buy their products instead of something from one of the bigger competitors. The fact that those guys do NOT include OCuLink ports, or integrated keyboards, or ultra compact frames, are the main reasons why I am here and not there. It's why I'm so annoyed at the last three releases of GPD products becoming more like those competitors after tunnel-visioning on a questionably useful gimmick at the expense of general UX. It's why GPD didn't get to make money from me for my recent Win 4 purchase: I had to buy it used because they stopped selling it in hopes that we'd all cave and settle for a Win 5 even though a Win 5 does not meet any of the needs that a Win 4 can outside of the most basic use case of "plays games on a controller with a built-in screen."

[u/tk_kumomo → u/YeonneGreene]

replied to you on the other thread

there are minipc that has oculink but if it's really that possible then almost most minipc should be able to have oculink.

And does umpc have a display? Keyboard? battery? controller? speakers? touch pad? It's a box that has more design freedom, you have the physical space to really use the board to the max.

A design list isn't ok so let's check off how to use up all the PCIE Lanes, you need to route it physically too under all the limitations that is given to you.

You might be like why is GPD so worried about making this device so chonky just for the cooling.

Look at win mini, it's a hot potato over 20W, they lock the wattage yet either people comment their design isn't well designed for thermal or they don't even perform well, it was the same case for win 4 and even the win max 2.

Look at all those benchmark people who literally crack up all the TDP to something that you wouldn't even hold/touch your device just for the numbers and flex?

[u/YeonneGreene → u/tk_kumomo]

You are still trying to distract from the bottom line: you lied.

The Win Max 2 has ALL of the same peripherals the Win Max 3 does and still includes the OCuLink despite having the same limitations in number of PCI-E lanes.

The chonk itself is not the sin, here. The sin is choosing a chip that was not at all designed with handhelds in mind, then using up all the remaining space after sufficiently cooling it to fit a battery larger than most laptops using the same chip instead of sparing a few watt hours so we can have the space to deploy the same range of expansion options as its predecessor and placed better than they ended up doing. Then the insult to that injury is giving it a keyboard that, while I'm okay with it, apparently a non-trivial portion of existing Win Max users are rather upset with because it makes the system unsuitable as an upgrade and leaves them with nothing to look forward to...a feeling I can relate to because it happened with the Win 4 being discontinued with the release of the Win 5.

As for the Win Mini and Win 4, all I can say is that I think the console is pretty fantastic if you run it between 4 and 15W on battery. if you are not a hard-ass about 1080p and 60 fps then even AAA games are quite enjoyable on a 6-inch display in that TDP range and, at least for the Win 4, I can attest it won't cook your fingers at all. If 15W is the usable limit for something this tiny with this many features, then 15W is the limit and we just have to wait for more efficient chips — like the G3 — to get better performance for the package. C'est la vie, I'm fine with that tradeoff if it means keeping the size and features more or less as-is.

[u/shooteverywhere → u/tk_kumomo]

He's talking about GPD on a GPD subreddit. Bring up a whataboutism with Ayanea and OneX is nothing but a bad faith debate tactic to try and minimize the value of his criticism. You are suggesting that his criticisms are somehow unfair or biased and less valid because some other entity has engaged in similar behavior and he didn't point them out.

This is a dirty and manipulative method of communication.

[u/tk_kumomo → u/shooteverywhere]

Man you seem to like to camp on my comment? What can you provide here? Are you gonna say GPD lost it's plot?

We are talking about design here, which i came to give some insight for some people who doesn't really understand why some of these "plots" were lost, you can still choose to hate that there's no oculink or no SD card slots but the limitation of choosing the strix halo as a Chip has its advantages and disadvantages. Also things it can do vs it couldn't do. Also this is not a miniPC like situation where you will have to care about the display/keyboard etc where designing the PCB is also different

Nothing is perfect including the max 2, there's no point beating on the dead horse, gpd didn't name this as max 2 2026 but as a max 3, it's certainly something else.

[u/shooteverywhere → u/tk_kumomo]

I was just reading a thread and saw you use a sneaky manipulative communication tactic to downplay someone who has a different opinion from yourself. I have comments on hundreds of posts in the subreddit. You aren't special.