Pocket size, long battery, no Wi-Fi required.
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A travel handheld has different priorities to a desk one: it has to survive a day without charging, fit a jacket pocket, and work with the headphones you already carry.
Everything here plays offline, which is the whole point on a plane.
Small enough for a coat pocket and light enough to hold one-handed on a train. Best paired with a library of Game Boy, GBA and puzzle games.
A bigger shell means a bigger battery, which is what you want for a long-haul flight. Also more comfortable across a multi-hour session.
Handles everything up through the PSP and Dreamcast era and doubles as a media player in the hotel room. Heavier and needs more setup.
A hard shell keeps the screen intact in a backpack and holds spare cards and a cable in one place.
Yes — they are standard personal electronics with built-in lithium batteries, so they travel in your carry-on like a phone.
Small 8-bit-focused handhelds typically last a long flight; more powerful Android handhelds run down considerably faster when emulating heavier systems.
Most dedicated retro handhelds still do, which is one of their quiet advantages over a phone.
Anything with short loops and a save-anywhere feature: puzzle games, arcade ports, turn-based RPGs and Game Boy classics.