Plenty of NUC hardware is pretty beefy, most more tough than most of those gaming handhelds. I've dropped a couple of Intel NUCs down concrete stairs and they only got a few scratches. They've also had really good Linux support for ages, and had Intel's Iris Pro GPUs for a while. Unsure they'd really fit your needs though. AMD sells a number of APU boards though, they've got modern GPUs. Still not breaking any benchmarks though.

Also, those gaming handhelds are pretty power and temperature limited. They're often a good bit less powerful than a halfway decent gaming laptop, just a more convenient form factor for portable gaming.

NUCs are basically office machines though, I don't think any of them have the kind of graphics capabilities of a Legion Go, for example.

There are SFF PCs a little bigger than NUCs that do have strong graphics but they're crazy expensive.

What you'd want is a NUC with AMD. With an iGPU of 780M or higher, you'd equal or beat a Legion Go. You'll find plenty of NUCs like this from Beelink, Minisforum, etc. Usually at $400-800. Depending on sales.

Intel's Lunar Lake is another option. The iGPU on that line will match or exceed a Legion Go too. Right now, it's mostly in laptops but some NUC models have been announced.

> I've wanted this for ages, Laptop ergonomics are horrible. When traveling I use a portable monitor, keyboard, mouse. Yes it's annoying to travel with all that but worth it not to end my work days with neck pain and a migraine.

Have you considered dropping the portable monitor for an angled laptop stand that will elevate the screen to eye level? I've got one that collapses down small enough to fit in a reasonably deep pocket.

I do actually use the laptop as a second screen in this way most of the time. However, it's amazing how many hotels lack any table deep enough to place a 15" laptop on a stand with a keyboard in front of it.

Wow, that's obnoxious. You may be able to call down and ask for a folding table of some kind. But yeah, you shouldn't have to.

Fwiw, with my 15", unfolding flat and standing vertical, with keyboard etc in front, gave a plausible screen position. So I just kludged vertical-ish stands (and fretted over an eventual tip and crash). I considered hanging a portable monitor off the side (brick of a thinkpad, accustomed to gaff taped extensions), but didn't get to it.

Minisforum machines are excellent in that regard. Sturdy little bricks with price and performance.

I have one and my main gripe with it is how large the power brick is. It's practically like carrying a second mini pc; I didn't take this into account when I got it, lesson learned.

I've seen some newer models pop-up recently with inbuilt power supplies.

considering https://streacom.com/products/nano160-fanless-psu/ stuff like microPSU, miniPSU, and nanoPSU exist, this is unacceptable. I've used these mini PSUs - which are a barrel power jack, a hdd molex power cable, and the N pin ATX plug on a breadboard the rough size of the N pin ATX connector from large PSU - in remote inaccessible locations to do "in box UPS" for vm hypervisors on intel atoms/celerons and the like. Plug this in to the board, wire in a 12v stamped aluminum PSU that takes a battery as backup (used to be like $22 on amazon) and a SLA battery, toss that in one of those "mini desktop" cases - not the elitedesk - like the ones you saw in every office 10 years ago.

anyhow you can get a 12V PSU that does whatever amps (12? 15?) in a pretty small formfactor, and the "additional" stuff the motherboard needs is, as shown above, insignificant. The PSU can be pretty dirty, as in in the US do literal 10:1 winding to get 12V out (i know it'd be slightly different winding amount to account for losses in rectification and lines and whatnot but 10:1 looks nice to the math) and rectify it straight into one of those nanoPSUs. believe me i've seen me do it.

also don't ask to see my laptop DC-DC supply for running straight off a solar panel... it's larger than most NUCs, too. oh wait, you still need a laptop brick, plus the DC-DC. So you gotta DC-DC -> DC-DC -> laptop which -> DC-DC and probably DC-DC again (1.2v/3v3 rail probably clocked off 5v rail, that's what i'd do naively)

those "dashes" in "DC-DC" are doing a lot of heavy lifting

Yeah they look good. Unfortunately from what I've seen they have limited availability outside of the US and EU. I could probably get hold of one but not sure if they'd cover the warranty outside of their sales area.

Not very power efficient, and warranty is meh.

Had to do a repaste to get proper cooling.

"not very power efficient" -- definitely some of the most power efficient x86 machines you can find today. Until the latest generation, Ryzen APUs provide better performance with lower power consumption than Intel ones. And you can lower CPU frequency if you want -- even at base frequency, they run fast enough for everyday tasks with fan almost completely quiet. Of course this is oversimplifying things a bit.

i9 power efficient, OK lol. If you want power efficient, get a Kontron. Below 3W idle we can talk. My MS-01 does 16W idle.

There is a bunch of AMD-based tiny boxes for under $1k, and fancier boxes from HP or Zotac with discrete NVidia GPUs for $3-4k. They are somehow larger than a Mac Mini, but still very much the form factor of a small box to push into a backpack.

> Zotac with discrete NVidia GPUs for $3-4k

Crazy expensive.

A 32 GB Mac Mini with substantial SSD is also around $1k.

Less highly specced AMD-based NUC-lookalikes are like $600, comparable to low-specced mac minis.