Intel's upcoming Panther Lake gaming handhelds that it teased at CES 2026, might be almost as powerful as Sony's rumored portable PlayStation 6 (code named Canis) and a notable step above AMD's Z-series system on chips (SoCs).

At its CES 2026 keynote, Intel confirmed it wants to go big on the growing handheld market, emphasizing that it has plans to reveal more information about upcoming devices from partners like Acer, MSI, Microsoft, GPD, OneXPlayer, and more, at a later date. Adding to this, Nish Neelalojanan, senior director of product management at Intel, even went so far as to describe AMD's handheld chips as "ancient silicon," in a recent interview with PCworld, hinting that the chipmaker is very confident in its rumored Core G3 handheld SoC.

Handhelds featuring Intel's handheld-focused Panther Lake chip are expected to release in mid-2026

Sony's PS6 might not drop until 2027-2028

Intel is expected to strip back its Core G3 chips for the handheld market by ditching the AI-focused NPU entirely while maintaining a reasonable number of CPU cores and offering higher Xe3 core counts, allowing for more gaming headroom. As a result, the upcoming chip will reportedly offer power in the range of Sony's upcoming PS6, according to often reliable leaker Kepler (@kepler_L2) on X.

Kepler goes on to state that Panther Lake's 30W performance will likely be roughly as powerful as Canis' 15W, before mentioning that AMD's current chip options are lackluster, with the ROG Xbox Ally X's Ryzen Z2 Extreme being "too slow," while the Strix Halo is "too fast."

Of course, purpose-built video game consoles are entirely different from a PC-based handheld thanks to their fixed hardware target, firmware tuning, and operating system optimizations, whereas Intel's Core G3 chip is designed to be featured in several handheld devices with varied operating systems.

Sony's PS6 is rumored to feature a semi-custom AMD APU, with some reports indicating it will include a Zen 6-family ZPU paired with an RDNA 5 iGPU, and increasingly expensive LPDDR5X RAM (via Videocardz). The first Panther Lake-powered handheld PCs are scheduled to arrive at some point in mid-2026. It's unclear when Sony's successor to the PS6 will drop, but some reports indicate 2027-2028, though other recent rumors indicate the console's could be pushed back due to pricing concerns surrounding the ongoing rampocalypse.