How an Old CRT Monitor Turned My Handheld PC Into the Perfect Retro PC Gaming System

It turns out that maybe we were a little too hasty to throw out our CRT computer monitors all those years ago. We didn’t quite appreciate what we had, but I’ve been looking for my own CRT slice of heaven and have finally found a decent screen for my retro games.

However, instead of hooking it up to my main gaming PC, I opted to combine it with my handheld gaming PC, which has resulted in quite possibly my favorite gaming setup of all time.

I Finally Found a CRT PC Monitor

I’ve been trawling local sites and places like Facebook Marketplace for months, looking for a decent CRT monitor for retro PC gaming. While there are plenty to be found in major towns and cities, where I live the pickings are pretty slim. Trying to convince anyone to ship one to me has been futile, but one day I finally got a good hit.

Someone had a old Samsung SyncMaster 793s. A 17-inch 85Hz monitor that, in a weird twist of fate, was the same model of CRT I had before I transitioned to LCDs more than 20 years ago. I brought it home and hooked it up to my iPad to check that all was well. It’s a little banged up, but fully-functional as far a I can tell.

It’s not a super high-end model or anything, but it does have a solid refresh rate, good image tuning controls, and even supports SRGB with a built-in color profile. I bought a USB-C to VGA dongle with power pass-through, and that’s worked pretty much with any devices I’ve tried so far.

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There Are Lots of Classic PC Games That Are Better on CRT

I love classic PC games, and that’s probably because they aren’t “classic” to me, they’re just the games I loved playing when they came out, and I still like playing them. These games generally run and look OK on modern systems. For example, I play lots of the original Diablo via source port on my MacBook, and it’s not like I can complain much about how it looks on that sweet mini-LED screen.

However, the game was created with CRT screens in mind, and running the game on a CRT brings home how much nicer it is to look at when in its native habitat. The list of titles that benefit from running on a CRT is long. DOOM (1993) absolutely must be experienced on a CRT, ditto for Quake, and my beloved Jazz Jackrabbit only looks right when drawn by a rapidly-scanning electron beam.

Just about everything in my GoG collection simply looks superb on this tube screen, and it was totally worth the $30 it cost to buy.!

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My Handheld PC Has the Right Horsepower for Retro PC Gaming

While my recent CRT TV purchase was a massive 34-inch monster that ruined my back, this little monitor doesn’t take up much space at all. Which got me thinking that I don’t actually have to give it a permanent spot on my main PC gaming desk next to my 34-inch ultrawide monitor. I can simply bring it out when I want to play my native PC games, and tuck it away when I’m done.

That led me to thinking about which computer I should actually use with it. I don’t have a desktop, and instead use a large gaming laptop for my modern PC gaming fix. I could drag that over to my CRT and hook it up every time, but that Core i9, RTX 4060 system is extreme overkill for the games I’d actually be playing.

So, why not just hook up my handheld PC along with a mouse and keyboard? I was already using a mouse and keyboard with it to play games like Dragon Age: Origins, so why not all my other classic games?

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It’s a Compact Solution

As you can see, this worked out great, and it all fits on this one small desk. I can pack it all away in a minute if I want to, or keep it out for the whole weekend as I play Deus Ex yet again.

Since I’m using a Lenovo Legion Go, it also comes with those handy detachable controllers, and in games like Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 & 2 Remastered I can use them and get the best of both worlds.

I Can Still Use My Handheld as Normal

Best of all, I give nothing up on the handheld gaming side. I can unplug my handheld from this setup any time and just play my games as usual. It’s no different from docking the handheld with any screen, CRT or not. Though, of course, most of these classic games don’t have controller support, so it means sacrificing some space on my handheld for games that I can only play when docked with the right peripherals.

However, these classic PC games take up so little space, and have no issue running off an SD card, that it has zero impact on my normal handheld PC experience.

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Everything Works Surprisingly Well

One of my biggest worries was that I would be using a USB-C to VGA converter, and it can still be an issue depending on the one you get. I recommend using one that’s at least name brand and costs a reasonable amount of money, instead of a no-name dongle from a site like Temu.

I don’t own any computers that still have direct analogue video output, but I had no issue providing the monitor with the 1024×768 85Hz signal it wanted. Which means i get all the benefits of CRT technology in games except for one. Since there’s a digital-to-analog conversion happening here, it means I’m not getting the same latency benefits as a tradtional analog output straight from the GPU. However, I do get the crisp motion, and proper image reproduction for these games, and latency is still lower than for a digital panel all things considered.

I have had so much fun with this setup that I can’t imagine not having access to it. So, now my main goal is finding a truly nice CRT, but even if I can’t find something better than this cute little Samsung screen, I’ll be preserving the CRT PC gaming experience for myself as long as I can.

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