Turning EVERYTHING (PS4/Xbox/PC) into the Switch

I love portable gaming like a lot seriously an unhealthy amount there's just something about sitting back gaming on a car ride playing a game comfortably late at night in bed it's just nice 2017 really changed the portable game giving us the switch and letting us play console quality games and a nice portable HD screen I really love the switch and that believe it or not is a problem the forbidden fruit has been tasted and now I don't just want HD portable Nintendo I want HD portable everything sure I can play all these awesome experiences on the go but it sure would be nice if I could play all these games on the go too plus the tiny handful of Xbox exclusives your heck what about my whole PC library I want it all I want every single game possible in the palm of my hand for today's video I looked at as many solutions possible for taking games and making them as portable or close to a sport abow as the Nintendo switch some of our solutions were incredible others were a disaster but I'm gonna lay it all out there we're gonna split it up into two huge sections one for the PC and one for the consoles here's the deal I'm trying a new way to help support the channel besides trying to sell you some audiobooks or a shaving kit or whatever we made a bunch of crazy projects in today's video and we bought a bunch of stuff to make it every gaming product that you see in today's video was bought out of my own pocket so I'm gonna talk about what worked well and what didn't I'm not gonna sugarcoat anything but if you decide that one of these devices looks cool and you'd like to have one of your own I'm gonna have an affiliate link for everything in the description you can also see a variety of tech and game recommendations that have made at my direct Amazon shop link amazon.com slash shop slash the J wits any purchase you make here directly helps my channel especially more videos where I review and disassemble tech thanks as always for your support now let's get weird all memes aside the PC is the top of the gaming food chain for a reason it has the largest library massive price discounts and shopping flexibility and infinite upgrades it's the most expensive but most impressive gaming tool out there but how on earth are we gonna take a huge box like this and make it portable I mean what a a portable PC I've never heard of such a thing okay so obviously laptops are a thing but getting a decent modern gaming laptop is pretty expensive and not quite portable here's my beefy 17 inch gos origen laptop it was pretty dang expensive at about $2,000 a couple years ago and my wife and I only own this thing because we streamed for a living and we need a solution to keep streaming when we travel it has great specs for something on the go handles streaming in modern PC games but this thing is one boh it's over eight pounds which is almost 10 times heavier than a switch with the Joye cons it barely qualifies for what I would consider to be a laptop modern 15-inch gaming laptop will cost you about half as much like the Acer predator 300 or the Dell g7s they both run i7 processors GTX 10 60s and they are both still over 5 pounds gaming laptops are great but this is just not even close to as comfortable as this they're called laptops but there's nothing less comfortable than a giant chunky warm gaming laptop right on your good stuff there is one little quality-of-life fix I found though if you're like me and you liked a game on the couch or at night in bed try a laptop desk I'm currently using this one from new Vontae it takes all the weight of a laptop off your body and you can tilt the set up or even put things in this random mini drawer the real estate is kind of snug if you want a ton of space to play with a mouse but setups like this are awesome for playing on a controller so laptops aren't exactly close to the ideal portable gaming solution that I'm seeking out but what about this new wave of tablet PC hybrids that run off of standard operating systems you can hold those in your hands no problem here's my thoughts on these the plus and in my opinion the only plus is that they are smaller and lighter which gives you a better form factor for traveling or portability you're looking at around one or two pounds which is perfectly reasonable to carry or hold as a handheld now here's the cons one is that they are way less powerful the specs and even the highest-end surface pro just doesn't compare to PCs or even gaming laptops there's a solid article from Windows central that I'll link in the description that goes into why they aren't great for it in general the specs and heat distribution just isn't there for a high end and sometimes even mid end gaming session and big con number two is that attempting to make one of these things powerful is really really expensive the absolute strongest gaming tablet right now is probably the surface laptop - even with the best specs which are still worse than the laptops that we talked about earlier it costs as high as $3,000 so eight let's back up here why am I talking about these well for one we are in a really sick age of lower graphical strain indie games these days I get is excited by a good indie as I do by a good Triple Aim less taxing games like holo night Celeste into the breach Oh Brad in there's a lot of new good stuff out there that won't melt your PC I have an ancient surface pro one and it runs most 2d based indie games no problem so that is a portable solution gaming tablets also opened the door to one of my favorite random devices I came across in today's adventure the IP --ga 9023 it's a controller on its own it is a pretty crappy cheap low quality controller it is USB and Bluetooth compatible but there's one huge thing that this controller does this thing is telescopic which means as long as your device is relatively thin and less than 10 inches across this bad boy can stretch it's clunky plastic arms open and give your games a nice big hug slap something like a surface pro in there and hey wait a second it's starting to look kind of familiar it ain't pretty but it gets the job done the final way and in my opinion the best way to get your pc portable is streaming your game feed there are like a billion different services for streaming a video game right from the internet directly to a device and some don't even exist yet but they're right around the corner but today I'm gonna be focusing on services that stream your existing hardware somewhere else the idea is that you use an existing PC to do all the heavy lifting and play any game you want and then you take that video feed from your computer and push it over local connection or the Internet to almost any smart device you own there are a variety of different ways to do this but in general every solution I'm about to offer requires one important thing a decent dual band router that supports a 5g connection 5g gives you the lowest latency connection over your own local network standard 2.4 gigahertz connections support longer distances but in general I found that they lag a bit more for game streaming like this here's the router that I currently use but pretty much any dual band router should do the trick there are two major platforms that I use to play my PC games on something smaller Steam and NVIDIA let's start with steam the old-school way to stream your steam to another screen is using one of these babies the steam link hardware it's very hard to gauge the value of this thing it debuted is a $50 product back in 2015 but it eventually saw ludicrous discounts on the steam store before they discontinued production of it I finally bought one of these for 2 dollars and 50 cents if you can find one of these at a price point in between these two extremes that's probably your ideal sweet spot the gimmick for the steam link is that it connects to your home computer typically over your own local network you then use the tiny link device to play on any HDMI screen that you can think of it has multiple USB inputs and Bluetooth as well and it supports just about any controller that you could normally get working with steam on your PC even though the steam link hardware got discontinued in 2018 the software concept lives on you can stream steam through in-home streaming to any other computer you might own for example this old macbook definitely can't run modern games but it can stream the feed from my pc to play them just fine steam one cosa works as a beta app on Android devices and it so just recently got official support as an app on Raspberry Pi 3 B + 3 B + if you learned how to use one of these bad boys it's basically a steam link just like it it's got HDMI Ethernet and a bunch of USB ports PI's are also really cheap although you will also want an 8 to 32 gigabyte micro SD card as well to get yours up and running the biggest plus for owning a PI over a steam link is that it's a fully functional microcomputer giving you a tool that can be used for web browsing emulation or permanently displaying your subscriber count' is a vague way to represent the cultural relevance of your own internet show your choice on my own local network it just works here's my pc running side-by-side with the steam link device hooked up to a monitor right next to it my PC is connected via ethernet but my steam link is only connected over Wi-Fi to the 5g when you play at full speed these two videos almost look perfectly synced but if you slow the speed down you can see that you still experience a small delay on the console that you're streaming to I ran a lot of different tests but on average I found that streaming to the steam link had about 4 frames of video and audio delay which isn't even a full tenth of a second for some games this is still gonna be noticeable like a high-intensity multiplayer shooter or a fighting game but even for high action titles like Devil May Cry I was able to stream it without any issue at all it's also worth noting that no you don't just have to play your Steam games on a steam link you can add whatever to your steam in the ad game section in the corner perfect for DRM free games games on other platforms or heck you can even straight up control your desktop if you give it the windows remote desktop connection and if you're looking for it you can typically find that one in C windows system32 and the app is called MST SC steam link is almost flawless if you can get it connected via ethernet as well but for the sake of portability I'm gonna assume that that isn't an option but hey this is cool you can string your PC to any laptop any Android device and any HDMI screen connected to a steam link or Raspberry Pi we are getting a little off track from the big picture though so let's bring it all together how can we make these solutions as portable as possible starting at the Android devices for the most part especially phones just is portable already the only problem for a phone is that it doesn't have nice slots on the side for you to slide your joy Khans into most game streaming apps have those touchscreen controllers but let's be real dual analogs multiple buttons multiple triggers all just by touching a screen that is the worst wait but do you guys hear that by god it's IP cos music telescopic baby you can snuggle your phone or tablet under this screeching hunk of plastic jump through a couple of hoops to connect your Bluetooth and boom instant PC switch I also tried this newer IP go model called the 90-87 it's made for Android phones specifically making it smaller and a bit more elegant than its clumsy cousin the right stick is below the buttons this time but a huge minus for me was that the buttons felt kind of mushy it's a lot easier to travel with but the IP can ie 23 still has my heart I swear though someday one of these videos is gonna be me building my own telescopic controller because everything in the market is garbage if you don't want to use something a little more familiar but keep it portable Android phones typically support both ps4 and Xbox controllers over Bluetooth without too many major problems they make a ton of super cheap phone clips that allow you to play portably just like this or this the next comes the steam link in the pie both of these devices are pretty small and light so if you can find a way to power them and attach them to a portable HD display you can customize a bill that fits the size and control scheme that you enjoy the most since I'm lazy and I wasn't sure if I wanted any of this to be permanent I just used some velcro strips since the pie is completely exposed on its own and it generates a bit of heat I recommend grabbing a case I got this case in a bundle from Kanaka as a Christmas present last year it's very simple keeps room for all your ports and even has this little box where you can install a heatsink if you're worried about the device heat I tested two different portable HD displays for these projects the you perfect 10.1 and the we max it this is a personal preference but for someone with huge hands my goal was to make a portable that's a little bigger than what's already on the market both screens offer a nice crisp 1080p 10 inch display well bigger and higher resolution than the 6.2 inch switch display that you perfect is much thinner and lighter and it powers via USB which makes using a power bank easier it's actually thin enough to fit with the IP guy but it is kind of hard to get the controller to grip without covering the inputs or power ports on the side it only connects via HDMI mini which is kind of annoying but you can just use a mini to regular HDMI adapter to feed video into it my final complaint is that this particular model is 1610 not perfect 16:9 widescreen this is just enough to strict your games vertically just slightly which could be annoying depending on what you're trying to play I didn't realize the aspect ratio when I first purchased this thing but it isn't horrible the way max it is my favorite of the two despite it being bigger it still deceptively lied to just two and a half pounds it isn't sleek or pretty or anything but the screen is great the audio is solid and the build quality is good there's also a lot of empty space inside of the monitor itself which is pretty cool for hackers and hobbyists and like we said if you're trying to make one of those closed Frankenstein systems that connects everything together you'll need some kind of portable power to make it all work my favorite power brick in the world is the anchor power core 26800 this thing is amazing it has the USB PD port for the switch but it is just way too big to have this as part of a portable system some lighter model power banks that I tried for today's experiments were the anchor Power Core 1300 and the boulder pack 20000 they both have a bit less charge in power but they're also half the weight in size but I slap it all together get a tiny HDMI and you got some kind of portable screen here this type of system still works best for tables and desks but it's still something that you can take all around your house all in all I think steam streaming is a solid portable PC solution from the comfort of your own home but if you want to take your device on the go or to a hotel or to a friend's house it's gonna get more complicated you to use a VPN to trick your steam link into thinking that it's on the same network as the one you have at home but if you don't want to bother with all that I recommend using our second PC streaming route NVIDIA game stream this is my personal favorite way to stream from the PC this invite that does require that you have an NVIDIA GeForce graphics card on your PC and as of now these specs on your system just like Steam streaming this setup allows you to send your PC feed over your local network for low lag portable gaming over my local area network I found that my game stream performance it was about exactly the same as the Steam streaming that we did earlier both video and audio lag what makes game stream special is that it also natively supports streaming your PC from a different internet network you could theoretically stream your own games from a friend's house a hotel or anywhere in the world if you have strong mobile internet that's said even with streaming over a different network I never found streaming over the Internet to come close to the experience of local streaming with a pretty mobile connection I found that I could handle things like 720p 30 frames per second but your quality frames and lag are gonna be worse if you're playing something turn-based or a game where instant decisions don't matter though you could realistically play your PC games anywhere in the world now originally this form of streaming was made just for NVIDIA shield devices both the old ones and the new shield TV however this god-tier open source program moonlight lets you use in video game stream as if you had a shield device it's free supports honored 20 frames a second it's got a ton of customization options to make sure that you get the best stream possible currently it's on PC Mac Linux Android raspberry pi the fire OS the Chrome OS and even iOS for PC streaming alone I've taken this one box and stream to this this this this all these can use moonlight or game stream in some way so let's look at a couple of these in action I'm not gonna lie I still really enjoy the old Nvidia shield android-based devices the ancient 2013 and video shield portable was one of the first times I saw a device that combined a modern gaming controller with a screen this our five inch display is still 720p and it's also a touchscreen unfortunately this thing's been out of production for a while and it can be pretty tough to get it close to original retail price the more recent Nvidia shield tablet k1 is my favorite game streaming tablet period the 8 inch 1080p screen is the perfect switch upgrade slightly bigger but not massive actually this systems infrastructure is very similar to the switch a lot of people even speculated that this tablet line was discontinued because there was an exclusivity agreement with Nvidia and Nintendo on use of their Tegra chips it's very light and it's very thin and it has the perfect dimension the perfect it's IP good time this is my number one IP good device it just straight up fits perfectly this tablet was also discontinued just a few years ago and at the time of writing I could still find them for around 200 to 250 bucks and thanks to moonlight iPhone and iPad users also have a way to stream your PC portably but I have some bad news this isn't gonna work iOS uses a system called MFI which is short for made for I Apple wants more money by taking attacks on their own exclusive peripherals once upon a time you could use any Bluetooth controller on an Apple device but nowadays you have to use their stop with the MFI stamp as far as I could tell there's only one major wraparound controller with MFI and that's the game vice this is actually older than the switch itself which I've been made very well aware of by news of their constant lawsuits against Nintendo for patent copyright infringement I'm not gonna get into the details of this but it is an interesting connection to today's theme instead of the telescopic design that's flexible for multiple devices the game vice is a ribbon controller that is sized for individual systems I own this one for one of the more recent iPad models you basically squeeze your iOS system into these clamps it is an awkward fit especially on this side that needs to plug into the charger port but once it's in it does the job and you can actually charge your system and the controller at the same time from this port the design is solid the buttons are decent and I can't speak for the iPhone model but my eye version worked well if you've seen my recent Mario 64 mods a video I actually recorded about half of that footage straight from this I use the game vice the iPad running moonlight running an MST SC to record my desktop which let me start recording footage on OBS and also record the gameplay on the project 64 emulator that is how much I like playing a game portably I'm sort of just sitting down at my desk the only thing missing on these is that they don't have l3 or r3 joystick clicks I couldn't believe this at first but I learned that it took Apple until late 2018 to add l3 and r3 support on MFI controllers 2018 what are they doing over there and as far as I could tell there's basically one device that actually does support l3 and r3 right now and that's the rotor riot for iPhones it's another clamp based controller like the ones that we saw earlier it's no secret that iOS users get the short end of the stick when it comes to controller options but of those options this is probably the nicest third-party controller that I used my only downside for this is that it doesn't have a separate start and select button but there you go whether it's laptops or tablets or phones we've talked a lot about PC streaming and introduced a lot of the main portable options that we'll be working with so I'm gonna wrap this chapter up but hopefully it gave you guys a good idea of the many different approaches that you can try and take to make gaming a little bit more portable the game streaming scene is constantly changing and improving every year I see interesting new developments in this category and there's a bunch of other apps that are doing things adjacent to this like parson PC gaming is great because of its massive flexibility and that flexibility has given us a ton of different ways to bring all this into the palm of my hand now it's time for the consoles finding a portable streaming solution for ps4 was one of the main reasons that I even put this video together but I've also tried to figure out the Xbox one as well right off the bat the ps4 has a couple of bonus portability options if you own some of their other hardware the PS Vita comes with three different ways to stream content straight to your ps4 the first two local area connection and Internet the same as the two options that we've seen with PC streaming these are ok the audio and input delay is a little higher than what I saw in the PC streaming numbers but I did this for the turn-based persona 5 a couple years ago and it was fine what I did not realize at the time is that there's a third method ps4 as wireless access point this allows you to almost directly stream your ps4 to your Vita with minimal lag as long as you're close to the ps4 box I haven't measured exactly how far you can go but my guess would be maybe thirty feet away from the box this is almost exactly the same as how the Wii U worked and I used to do this all the time take the physical Wii U box hook it up into the room that you want to hang out in and just play on the gamepad the ps4 isn't quite as light as the old Wii U box but I found that it's still easy enough to move from room to room when needed let the Wii U gamepad the PS Vita isn't quite an HD screen but it's 960 by 540 4 which is a higher resolution than the gamepad's 854 by 480 HD games still look nice scaled down to it but there is a slight loss in graphical detail the biggest issue with using the Vita as a ps4 extension is the buttons unlike phones the Vita does come with buttons but it's still missing that second set of triggers and an l3 r3 joystick click you can emulate these buttons by pressing specific spots on the back of the Vita but for games that use this a lot this is just what's the word terrible if you're like me and want some comfortable buttons you're in luck this baby from Hori allows you to create a set of triggers for L 2 R 2 L 3 and R 3 all in one big comfortable grip all you got to do is pop your Vita into the I just just pop it right in just just open this open this clasp slide the PlayStation Vita and maybe what I need to do is I think you've unhinge it first and then you push the Vita in from the top oh my god there's more than one Vita I'm like the only person I know that actually owns monet's and I had no clue that they made a second one the Hori clip only works for the PS Vita mm but if you're like me and still own an overweight Vita aka the PS Vita 1000 I found a grip buy answer that does half the job giving you an l2 and r2 at an easy press and hey if you're already sold on the idea of moving your ps4 from one room to another in order to play it in a more comfortable position there is one other unconventional way to do something similar the PS VR headset allows you to play even non VR games in a virtual space that feels like you're playing games on a giant movie theater screen I do realize that calling this portable is the same as calling the virtual boy portable but if you all the hardware this is actually a great way to comfortably play games in an epic setting without installing a big screen TV in every single room of your home what if you just want to do what we did with the PC and stream that video feed from your consoles to a different system both the Xbox one and ps4 have a couple of different options for that ps4 has an official Remote Play app for PC Mac and literally as I was writing the script they dropped their official app for iOS there is limited Remote Play support for Android but only on Sony's own experiences which I don't own my experience with this app is mixed at its absolute best I was looking at about 5 frames of video lag and 15 frames of audio lag still doable but nowhere near the almost perfection of in-home PC stream and its worst it's you know what I'm just gonna let the video speak for itself no matter which settings I used or how I set up my internet ps4 remote play streaming was constantly somewhere between decent and literal nightmare Xbox streaming was a bit more consistent for me but it also has less diversity for its platforms officially Xbox one can only stream to a Windows 10 PC there's also an unofficial paid app called one cast from both Mac and iOS that'll also do the job on this setup I found myself seeing an average of four frames video lag and 12 frames audio lag there's also a very good chance that you're gonna see a lot more of this type of stuff from Microsoft in the near future they've been talking about their own service called X cloud for years and theoretically it'll finally support Android devices right now if you are desperate to play your Xbox one on your phone you could technically use your PC streaming app to stream the Xbox app from your PC to phone but why would you do that unfortunately unlike the PC I found the streaming options for both the ps4 and the Xbox to be a little unsatisfying the lag and performance wasn't the greatest even at its best but consoles do have one major strengths over the PC when it comes to making a makeshift portable solution and that is size this is a whole lot smaller and lighter than this sure we're not talking fit into pocket small but we are talking and fit in a backpack small it's really not that hard to pick this thing up and move your console from one room to another so why not take advantage of that and get this bad boy connected directly to a screen my entire goal today was to unlock a convenient way to play my consoles on the go I searched far and wide for solutions but here's my journey to uncovering the biggest brain solution out there my first thought was why not borrow some of the work that we did earlier on the PC and get this thing hooked up to a portable monitor console plus portable monitor plus the laptop desk is a decent solution on its own sure you'll need a longer HDMI cable to run from your monitor to your system sitting on the floor but I found this to be a pretty reasonable way to take my ps4 into the bed they also make those games branded cases that serve as a briefcase and monitor your console systems introducing the mother of all games except this one doesn't get upset when you missed dinner cuz you're mastering level 7 these are actually kind of sleek but I already own some small displays and I was not ready to shell out $300 for one of these bad boys my goal is to make this more like the switch I don't want a bigger display stuck in a briefcase I want a way to get this smaller display into my hands so my next question was how do we get this attached to this remember those controller phone clips that we showed earlier they don't click to the back of a monitor on their own but if they've got something a grip that'll do the job we already talked about slapping a power brick on the back of one of these and the phone clip works perfectly to grip to it plus with the right cables your power brick can power your monitor directly making it so you only need the HDMI running away from your project it's a little top-heavy because you have to support the power grip and the monitor but it does hold no additional desk required it's a little wobbly but if I'm being honest I still like those telescopic controllers or even the joy con feel the best a controller connected directly to the screen how can I get a controller from one of these attached directly to the screen like one of these I did some digging and believe it or not there is a way to use a joi con on a different system but it ain't cheap my answer is this monstrosity the Titan 2 it's basically a controller hacking kit that lets you set up micros programs custom button layouts and even using controllers from a different console and as of a recent update this thing even accepts the joique on inputs only if you buy the completely separate Bluetooth kit for the thing but as spending over a hundred dollars to use any controller you want on any console sounds appealing to you this is probably the best single device to do it as for actually attaching a joi con to a monitor there's actually a couple of different ways that you can grab an extra joy Conrail you can unscrew them from the joy con grips that come with each set of controllers or you can just buy the rails themselves as a cheap replacement part since the joy con itself is gonna be supporting a lot of weight on the screen I used a strong epoxy to make sure that these rails stayed where they were no matter how much force I put on them but this is definitely the closest we've come to the Nintendo switch yet by literally using the switch controllers it took some time getting used to the fact that the yes and no buttons are completely opposite between the two controllers but it's actually pretty great I did an entire God of War playthrough on freakin joy cons and I never felt like I compromised a single thing in terms of reaction times or comfort it's almost perfect the only thing I wish you could do is play it outside of your house no matter what I do to make these nice portable packages you always have to be connected to a wall outlet inside if I want to play my ps4 a long car ride or in nature itself this particular idea comes from the youtuber my mate Vince makes a whole bunch of gaming tech hacks that look a whole lot nicer than the junk I've been stapling together definitely check his stuff out portable AC power banks come in a million different shapes sizes and price ranges and I decided to dip my toes into the waters and try this bad boy the pouchy 200 watt power bank this thing is rated for 210 watt hours at full charge that's good enough for about one to two hours of out of the house gaming with a monitor based on these readings from modern game console power consumption some honestly impressed by how little power the docked Nintendo switch uses you could run this thing for well over 10 hours in here the only downside is that you cannot legally bring a power brick this large on a plane so you'll never get to be this guy with this setup bigger systems like the ps4 Pro draw significantly more power than the lighter ps4 slim and the Xbox one s in fact to mike horror I found that my old-school ps4 units still drew too much power and I couldn't consistently boot it up I don't own the newer and less energy hogging ps4 slim to test but my gut says that that would probably work because my Xbox one the regular one was just fine haha I guess some things just weren't meant to be alright so maybe we flew a little too close to the Sun but it was so much fun messing with all this tech and hammering out a few solutions that truly actually worked for me in the end there's a reason we love the switch so much and why so many people rally to get any game that's ever been released on this thing it doesn't quite pack the punch of Sony Microsoft or the PC but it's one of the best performing and most convenient handheld systems of all time I love it just the way it is you know it's funny after working on all these projects with the bigger monitors it actually feels kind of small now [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music]

Channel: TheJWittz

Views: 362,487

Keywords: Nintendo Switch, Switch, Portable PS4, Portable Xbox One, PC, PS4, Xbox, Portable Gaming, Persona 5, Persona 5 Switch, Halo, Devil May Cry, Game Streaming, PC Streaming, Nvidia Gamestream, Steam Streaming, Steam Link, Tutorial, Build, Guide, PS Vita, Microsoft Surface, Gaming Laptop

Id: F_t-nhUJNaQ

Length: 33min 5sec (1985 seconds)

Published: Sat May 04 2019