The Ayaneo Kun practically doubles the Steam Deck’s battery for practically twice the value

The Steam Deck’s greatest weak point is battery life — and but in some way, each challenger has failed to boost that bar. The Ayaneo 2 confirmed us that AMD’s Ryzen 6800U wasn’t able to compete; the Asus ROG Ally revealed that AMD’s Z1 Excessive couldn’t pull forward if Asus insisted on matching the Steam Deck’s 40 watt-hour battery pack.

However Ayaneo might have a solution: it’s stuffing a 75 watt-hour pack into a bigger, heavier handheld known as the Ayaneo Kun that — it now claims — can final practically three and 1 / 4 hours at 15W TDP. That’s practically double the battery and runtime you’d count on from a Steam Deck at that wattage, although it seems it wasn’t captured whereas taking part in a recreation, precisely.

We’ve talked about the Ayaneo Kun on The Verge a pair of occasions earlier than, however immediately the corporate revealed its full array of options, value, anticipated ship window, and that you simply’ll be capable of crowdfund it on September fifth when you’re keen to pay with no ensures.

Personally, I’d wait. However there’s no query that this handheld has the strongest spec sheet but — beginning with a relatively giant 8.4-inch, 2560 x 1600, 500-nit, 90 p.c DCI-P3 coloration IPS display.

Ayaneo appears to have heard how some individuals choose the Steam Deck’s ergonomics and a great deal of buttons to its personal earlier handhelds, too — so the Kun provides greater grips, twin touchpads (every with 4 distinct buttons beneath), quad again buttons, beefier triggers, and even just a little kickstand harking back to the unique Nintendo Swap.

There’s additionally just a little Home windows Good day front-facing digicam beneath the again/choose button for face login and streaming, one thing most handhelds have fully omitted — in addition to Corridor Impact joysticks and triggers to keep away from drift, HD linear motors for rumble (just like the Swap and DualSense), and an non-obligatory 4G module for mobile connectivity. There’s a nano-SIM slot hidden beneath the kickstand.

And whereas homes the identical AMD Ryzen 7840U chip you’ll discover in lots of boutique PC gaming handhelds this yr (the ROG Ally’s Z1 Excessive is an in depth cousin, too), the corporate claims its huge cooling system can crank that APU all the way in which as much as 54 watts in its turbo mode — far greater than the 30-watt turbo on the Asus ROG Ally.

Is that sensible? Maybe not, because it appears like largely a 7 p.c to 10 p.c enhance in framerates over the 30-watt mode within the firm’s personal assessments. (Do, nonetheless, test the bounce from 34fps to 43fps in The Witcher 3.) Ayaneo straight up says “54W isn’t really useful for each day use as the primary TDP.”

However the Kun additionally homes a full-length M.2 2280 SSD slot for as much as 8TB of inner storage, whereas the Deck and lots of opponents high out at 2TB as a result of you possibly can solely match one chip on their single-sided M.2 2230 SSDs.

Ayaneo is pricing the Kun beginning at $1,209 retail for 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, stretching all the way in which to $1,949 for 64GB of RAM and a 4TB SSD. Early chook costs begin round $200 much less. The Steam Deck begins at $400, however with solely 64GB of eMMC storage; whereas I took that route and swapped out my drive myself, I believe it’s truthful to say the Kun is roughly twice the value if we examine 512GB vs. 512GB fashions.

In the event you’re within the Ayaneo Kun, I’d recommend three issues:

First, perceive that other than battery, the most important subject with Steam Deck opponents is that they run Home windows. It’s just a little counterintuitive (isn’t Home windows the place the video games are?) however Home windows is severely unoptimized for a handheld gaming PC, trackpads or no, and I run into all types of annoyances that the Steam Deck has already solved.

Second, watch Taki Udon’s video embedded beneath. He’s a really skilled handheld reviewer who goes over the ergonomic tradeoffs in nice element.

Third, know that whereas Ayaneo has a reasonably good observe report of delivery slick {hardware}, the corporate tends to be fire-and-forget. It has a behavior of very shortly shifting onto its subsequent handheld gaming PC earlier than the earlier clients are glad. Its software program usually wants a lot of labor, isn’t nicely localized for English audio system, and I’ve run into all types of bizarre bugs throughout the three Ayaneo handhelds I’ve tried.

Every Ayaneo handheld I’ve tried has been higher than the final, although, and their new Ayaspace 2.0 isn’t dangerous. I guess they nail it someday.