X-Plus Piccolo G-SERIES1 10.5″ handheld tablet gaming PC review – interesting hardware held back by weak internals

REVIEW – I’ve owned multiple mobile Windows gaming PCs now, including the excellent Asus ROG Ally and the larger Lenovo Legion Go. I also frequently play Windows and Xbox games streamed to mobile hardware (Android phones and tablets) combined with controllers. Mobile gaming is great if you’re commuting, traveling, or simply away from your desk all the time. Even if you don’t do those things, you may be like me and simply prefer to get away from your desk (especially after working at it for long hours), and curling up on a couch or chair with a handheld gaming system can be great. The X-plus Piccolo G-SERIES was a mystery device when I agreed to review it, and I was eager to see how this budget handheld gaming tablet would do!

⬇︎ Jump to summary (pros/cons)
Price: $359.99-$494.99 ($359.99 sale at time of review for the 16GB/512GB model I reviewed)
Where to buy: X-plus store

What is it?

The Piccolo G-SERIES1 10.5″ handheld tablet gaming PC is basically a thick 10.5″ tablet with two controllers that clip onto the sides. This form factor is like an enlarged Lenovo Legion Go (or even more similar to the recently announced Acer Nitro Blaze 11). It has an Intel N95 quad-core processor inside, and can be configured with up to 32 GB of RAM and up to a 2TB SSD hard drive. It runs Windows 11 Pro and is activated out of the box. 

What’s included?

• X-Plus Piccolo G-SERIES1 10.5″ handheld tablet gaming PC
• AC adapter
• User’s Manual

Tech Specs

• Size: 12.75″ wide x 6.75″ tall x 1.75″ thick (with controllers), 9.25″ wide x 6.75″ tall x 0.80″ thick
• Weight: 2 lbs 3.6 oz (1010 grams)
• Processor: Intel N95 (4 cores/4 threads, 3.4 Ghz max turbo)
• Screen: FHD+ (1920 x 1280) LCD IPS touchscreen, 60 Hz, “100% RGB color gamut”)
• Camera: Front-facing 2MP 30 FPS HD
• Memory: 16 Gb @ 4800 Hz (8-32G available in other configurations)
• Hard Drive: 512 Gb M.2 2280 (64Gb-2TB available in other configurations)
• Bluetooth: 4.2
• Wifi: Dual Band 2.4G/5G
• Speakers: Stereo
• SD card slot: Micro SD
• USB: 1x USB 3.0, 1 x type-C

Design and features

The X-Plus Piccolo G-SERIES1 10.5″ handheld tablet gaming PC is a pretty standard-sized 10.5″ tablet (if you ignore its width) with two controller halves that clip onto each side. The build is mostly plastic, with a metal stand that folds out on the back. The display is brighter and more colorful than I expected for a budget-oriented tablet. I don’t have a light meter, but comparing it against my other devices, it is probably hitting over 500 nits on max brightness. However, there’s no anti-glare coating, and fingerprints on the touchscreen will accumulate, so it’s probably not great for outdoor use, but it should hold up to brighter rooms as long as you position yourself to avoid glare.

The bottom of the tablet has speaker grills and not much else. The speakers are good for a budget device, but they’re not winning any awards for maximum volume or sound quality. I didn’t mind playing games with them, but the internal fans do get loud enough to drown out the speakers at lower volumes. 

When viewed from the side, you can start to appreciate the thickness of this “tablet”. It’s one of the thickest devices I’ve used that dares to call itself a tablet (though other handheld gaming PCs are also thick, so it’s not alone in the category it’s trying to market itself to). 

My only complaint about the build quality is a worry about the controllers, they have some wiggle when attached, and overall weight of 2.6 pounds seems like it could break the plastic controller’s connection to the tablet if you’re careless. When you set it flat on a table or desk (like in the picture above), all that weight is putting strain right on the controller connections which results in them bowing slightly, a worrying sign. Only time will tell. I quickly developed a habit of deploying the kickstand to set the tablet in a near-vertical position when charging or at rest rather than flat. 

The controllers themselves seem to be a pretty decent Bluetooth controller setup. The buttons and sticks all worked fine for me and reminded me of a standard Xbox 360 controller. I don’t believe these are Hall-effect sticks (so they may drift over time), and the unique bottom right button is mapped to the Windows key, so if you press it mid-game, it often minimizes the game and shows the start menu (an odd choice for a gaming handheld PC). Before first use, you also need to press and hold the “+” and “-” buttons on each side to set them in pairing mode and then connect to them in the Windows Bluetooth-Add Device menu. 

The left controller is similar but with a “Back” button. The D-Pad is flat but functional. I’ve used worse, but it’s not my favorite. 

Both controllers have shoulder buttons and analog triggers that work akin to most other Xbox controllers. Also, note the micro-SD card and headphone jack. 

On the top right side of the table are Power/Volume buttons, a full-sized USB-A 3.0 port, DC-power-in, mini-HDMI, and a USB-C port. The USB-C port is listed as a 3.0 type port, which is good for file transfer or connecting to a hub but doesn’t support power input or display output. The top of the device also has exhaust fan openings.  I REALLY wish they’d simply used USB-C Power Delivery type charging rather than a proprietary DC jack style power cord. This simplifies charging amongst my many devices, hopefully they change that in future models. 

The controllers are detachable and work while detached. When connected, they recharge their internal batteries. You can see the connection rails and power pins in the photo above. There’s also a mappable (though how they’re mapped is still a mystery to me with no info on their website or in the manual) back button on each controller, as well as the small physical button that releases them from their docked position. 

The metal kickstand is great, it holds position well and can be adjusted down pretty far for a wide range of angles. This is how I’d prefer to play most of the time, since the whole device is fairly heavy. With both controllers detached, you can find a more comfortable position for your hands (they can even be by your sides). There are also air intake vents on the back. 

I cracked the tablet open (just 6 screws and a guitar pick makes for easy access to the internals). There’s a full sized M.2 SSD that you could replace, as well as a single RAM stick that is also replaceable. 

Assembly, Installation, Setup, Malware scan

The Piccolo G-SERIES1 10.5″ handheld tablet gaming PC was set up and ready to use out of the box, with a local Windows account already set up (called Admin). As far as I could tell, there was no additional bloatware, and a full deep Windows Defender scan found no viruses or malware. There was also no control software, which may make it hard for some users to use the device to get into games. Other handheld PCs that I’ve used have all had control center software that allows for power settings to be adjusted, fan profiles to be changed, and game libraries to be easily managed from a controller-based centralized screen. Without that, you’re navigating Windows 11 entirely by touches and swipes (though you could make the setup process a lot easier with a mouse and keyboard to a hub or the two included USB ports). There are third-party programs that you could look at to bridge this gap, I’m using Razer Corte,x which includes a great handheld mode that aggregates all your games and provides a nice UI (it also has a great PC game streaming option that I’m using to play things in other rooms of the house on this device from my main gaming PC). 

Performance

I’ve played PC games for a solid 35 years now, and the Piccolo G-SERIES1 10.5″ handheld tablet gaming PC is only a “gaming PC” in the loosest interpretation of that word. The hardware is fine for web browsing or streaming games from the cloud (or other machines on your network), but it can really only play very old or very lightweight games. Here’s some footage of my game testing: 

Just to give you an idea of the integrated graphics performance, here it is compared to two other recent mini-PCs I reviewed that also have integrated graphics:

Benchmarks never tell the whole story, but that performance gap was immediately evident in the inability of the device to even run AAA games from a couple of years ago. I did enjoy playing some older games like Battleblock Theater, but unless you’re really into specific indie games, your best use case for this device will be emulation of retro games and/or game streaming. I fired up a couple of emulators, and it did a great job playing anything through PlayStation 2. Newer consoles like Playstation 3 were unplayable in emulation. 

For streaming, I tested both Xbox Gamepass cloud streaming as well as Steam Streaming and Razer’s beta PC game streaming (which is excellent). The Piccolo G-SERIES1 10.5″ handheld tablet gaming PC is excellent as a streaming gaming device, the internet card was stable and fast for everything I threw at it and I had a blast playing Halo and other titles on it.

The screen is nice, the speakers are adequate, and the battery lasted for at least 2 hours in each test session. 

Final thoughts

X-plus/Piccolo has an interesting product here in the Piccolo G-SERIES1 10.5″ handheld tablet gaming PC, with a nice large screen and decent controllers paired with an unfortunately underpowered CPU/iGPU. They are already teasing an AMD-based G-SERIES2 device, which I hope to be able to review someday since the latest AMD hardware has proven to be excellent for portable gaming devices (both the Asus ROG Ally and the Lenovo Legion Go use the AMD Z1 chipset that can even play the latest AAA games – though with lowered settings). If you’re a retro/emulator/game-streaming gamer, this tablet might be worth checking out (especially at the sale price when I reviewed it). 

What I like about the Piccolo G-SERIES1 10.5″ handheld tablet gaming PC

• Great screen – bright and colorful
• Decent hardware and controllers
• Sturdy adjustable kickstand
• Great for game streaming (Xbox GamePass, Geforce Now, Playstation/Xbox remote play, etc.)

What needs to be improved?

• Underpowered hardware can only play very old or very lightweight games
• Low refresh screen (60 Hz)
• Big and heavy
• No USB-C PD charging
• No fan control software – fans get loud and turn on/off intermittently

Price: $359.99-$494.99 ($359.99 sale at time of review for the 16GB/512GB model I reviewed)
Where to buy: X-plus store
Source: The sample of this product was provided for free by X-plus. X-plus did not have a final say on the review and did not preview the review before it was published.

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