I made the mistake of buying a netbook a few years ago. It was one of the early models and could do little more than basic chores (like solitaire). Netbooks eventually improved and eventually faded from existence. Had netbooks remained a popular form factor, they probably would have morphed into something like GPD's new Win Max.

This is an interesting expression and, as far as I can tell, not inaccurate. At its core, it is an 8" laptop. Above the keyboard is a pair of "ultra-durable 3D joysticks," with a D-pad on the left side and XYAB buttons on the right. There's also a shoulder button; if the Nvidia Shield, Nintendo Switch, Xbox controller, and Windows laptop were a foursome, this would be the culmination of the love they've developed in the design lab.

The 8-inch display features an IPS panel with 1280x800 resolution (16:10 aspect ratio), a 10th generation Intel Core i5-1035G7 processor (Ice Lake) with 4 cores and 8 threads clocked at 1.2GHz to 3.7GHz, 16GB DDR4 RAM, and a 512GB NVMe SSD.

The 8-inch form factor likely precludes anything more powerful than integrated graphics, but at least the resolution isn't too high; GDP also touts the ability to connect an external graphics enclosure to the Win Max via a Thunderbolt 3 port appeal. All in all, this is an impressive collection of hardware for such a small system.

As for what kind of gaming performance can actually be expected, GPD provides the following set of benchmarks:

GPD states that all games are set at default graphics settings, and that by lowering them, higher frame rates may be achieved. They state that it may be possible to achieve higher framerates by lowering them. We have not had a hands-on with Win Max, so for now we can only take the company's word for it. Nevertheless, looking at the numbers, we see no inaccuracies. And as expected, the best experience with such a system would be with less-intensive games.

It is certainly an interesting concept and could work well with something like Nvidia's cloud game streaming service, GeForce Now.

That would depend on pricing. Unfortunately, GPD has not yet provided those details. There is an "order button" on the product page, but it is not yet functional. The closest information I could find on when it will be available was a tweet in late February that said it would be available in a couple of months.