iQOO's Pad Ultra gaming tablet promises Steam games, but only in China
iQOO has unveiled a gaming tablet that claims to run PC games from Steam, but you probably can't buy one yet. The iQOO Pad Ultra goes on sale in China on October 15, starting at about $894 (5,999 yuan) for the 12GB/256GB model. The company hasn't announced a US, UK or wider international release, so for now it shows where small gaming tablets are heading.
The hardware
The screen is an 8.8-inch OLED at 2304×1440 with a refresh rate of up to 165Hz. In games, touch sampling rises to 500Hz, meaning the screen checks for finger input 500 times a second. The body is all metal, 5.74mm thick and 298 grams.
Inside is Qualcomm's 2nm Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, which the chip maker says adds 44% GPU performance over the previous generation. A separate iQOO chip, the Q4, handles ray tracing and frame interpolation. Cooling is unusual for a tablet: a 30×30×3.5mm fan, two vapor chambers and a copper block over the processor.
The tablet pairs a 2nm Snapdragon chip with an active cooling fan.
The battery is 9,020mAh with a silicon-anode design, charged at 66W over USB-C. The same brand pushed a 165Hz screen on the iQOO 16 phone earlier this month.
The 9,020mAh battery charges at 66W over USB-C.
Steam, with caveats
The software is OriginOS 7HD, with a Game Space hub that gathers mobile, cloud and PC games. The tablet includes an emulator that lets you sign in to Steam and run compatible PC titles locally. It also supports Tencent START, a cloud gaming service aimed at China.
iQOO hasn't published a list of supported games or any benchmarks, so treat the Steam claim as unproven. Android emulation of PC games is still a niche, and cloud services such as Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus are easier options on most tablets.
Price and availability
Other configurations run about $1,073 (16GB/256GB), $1,200 (16GB/512GB) and $1,350 (16GB/1TB), all converted from yuan. The $894 figure is a launch promotion. The regular base price is around $975, per Gizmochina.
MobiDevices confirms there's no international date or pricing. If the tablet does reach the US or UK, import costs and retailer markups would likely erase much of that price advantage. Lenovo's Legion Tab, a rival gaming tablet with similar cooling, sells for roughly $600 to $700. For now, that's the option buyers can actually get.
