Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming, Nvidia’s GeForce NOW, JioGames Cloud. Now add a new name to the list: The ONMO+, OnMobile Global’s entry to the relatively small, yet competitive, cloud gaming market. It’s a Smart Console, as the company calls it, and is bundled with a cloud gaming platform. What it does is eliminate the need to spend on high-end gaming hardware like a Sony PS5 or Microsoft’s Xbox Series X.
When you think about a “smart console” you’re probably thinking about something like a PS5 and not something minimal. Well, OnMobile Global has flipped the script. Inside the box, you get just a gaming controller, and not much else, because the USP of the ONMO+ is their app. It can be accessed via a web browser or an app, and with it, you can experience games on a plethora of different devices. From an Asus AiO to the Oppo Find X9 Ultra and from a HP OmniPad 12 to Lumio Vision 9, I was able to game no matter where I was.
Priced at just ₹4,999, and with a complimentary three-month ONMO+ subscription, one wonders just how did OnMobile Global arrive at such an affordable price? The answer is a simple one, cloud gaming. How the company seeks to make money on such an aggressively priced product is from their Essential Pass subscription, which comes in at ₹399 per month. It’s 2026 and we’re in the midst of the biggest memory, storage and component crisis we’ve ever been in. Still, the company insists that they’re immune to the rising RAM prices for the time being.
A familiar feeling and no gatekeeping
If you’re ever played on the Xbox before, you’ll feel right at home using the ONMO Pro Wireless Controller. It has a similar layout, and the buttons feel very responsive and there is vibration feedback. The surprise for me, at this price, was the fact that the rear buttons were programmable. It also comes with Bluetooth, a 2.4Ghz dongle and USB-C connectivity. I loaded up the app and played Cricket 26, which was a near seamless experience.
At this price, some obvious corners have been cut. The controller, e.g., comes with a plastic shell, is suspiciously lightweight, and it feels like it’ll break at the first drop. During my testing it did take a knock or two against the table in front of me, but I didn’t have it in me to perform a drop test.
But wait, there’s a kicker. You don’t have to use the bundled ONMO Pro Wireless Controller, because OnMobile Global doesn’t lock you into any particular ecosystem. If you already have a controller lying around, or even want to play with just a mouse and a keyboard, you can easily hook it up.
Seamless gaming
The whole ONMO+ Smart Console just works. To pair the controller to the console takes just a few minutes. At this point in time, gaming is limited to Full HD resolution, but the company does have plans to launch a 4K gaming tier as well in the future. Pricing for those plans are still be evaluated by the company.
The Essential Pass includes access to over 100 games. There are some racing titles, many puzzle games, some indie adventures, and more, but there’s a lack of mainstream racing and sports games. OnMobile Global does have plans to launch more games, and some like Tekken 8 have joined the catalogue post launch.
What I found most interesting is the Steam integration. It’s seamless to connect your account and play all the supported games that I already owned. From God of War to Red Dead Redemption 2, or Grand Theft Auto V and Cyberpunk 2077, they all worked immediately, and the experience was pretty good, though no match for an Xbox or a PlayStation console. The upside is that one doesn’t have to download massive game files and wait a few hours before launching a game.
There are two crucial cogs that power the entire experience. One, is the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX GPU servers. Second, there are server clusters in both North and South India. When the time comes for GTA VI, and the company has to update its backend infrastructure, the RAM crisis might hit them hard.
What’s the proposition?
For this review, I received the Founders Edition. The controller has special red inserts on the RB and LB triggers, and the battery lasts around 20 hours on a single charge. The whole cloud gaming proposition to democratize gaming comes across quite well when using the ONMO+ Smart Console. These are are essentially Windows gaming devices that are portable and don’t tie you to an ecosystem, which can be very liberating.
For now, what really needs to be improved is the games library. There’s no EA, Ubisoft Connect or Microsoft GamePass at the moment. Customers do expect it, and if and when these do arrive, the ONMO+ Smart Console will become that much easier to recommend. At the moment, it’s an extremely inexpensive point of entry to gaming.
Sahil Bhalla is a Delhi-based writer. He posts @IMSahilBhalla.