Just a few days ago, GPD announced it would need to strip the battery out of its upcoming device to fit AMD's beefy Strix Halo chip, and now Ayaneo says it can do so while keeping a "built-in high-capacity battery". That's a big claim, and one I'm quite excited for.
As announced on the Ayaneo blog, there's a whole host of new tech coming from the gaming company over the next year, but the tech that drew my eye was the Ayaneo Next 2. Coming with an AMD Ryzen AI Max 395 chip, Ayaneo says it is "a truly next-generation flagship handheld".
After clarifying that the Next 2 "explores the future", the blog says, "it has a built-in super large battery, achieving a new breakthrough in battery life and heat dissipation. It is a top flagship handheld device that truly explores the future. More innovative features will also be revealed to players."
Accompanying this announcement was a live stream from Ayaneo, going over future tech and showing some internals. Notably, the Next 2 has two big fans on the back of the board and four M.2 SSD slots. Four M.2 SSD slots won't do any favours for that battery life, and it's a bit much for a handheld. Well, a lot much.
The Next II section starts at 56 minutes.
The chip itself is very power hungry, and being able to power those slots, plus the screen, and everything else, means the Next 2 will need to have a very big battery and smart cooling for it to be in any way portable.
The cooler looks pretty bulky in these early shots, but how big it will feel will be dependent on optimisations made over the next year and how big the handheld itself will be. The Next II reportedly comes with a large screen, but we don't know much about the device other than that.
We're fans of Ayaneo's previous work here at PC Gamer. The Ayaneo 3 packs a punch with its Ryzen AI HX 370, the Flip DS offer a good processor in a genuinely compact frame, and the Kun looks great and has some solid software. This is all to say, despite some funny marketing terms thrown into the blog post, Ayaneo knows its way around a handheld.
The AI Max chips offer a unique challenge, and one that will require a lot of thought to figure out. Even after all of that, whether or not the 8060S integrated GPU will offer enough processing power to justify the price will be down to potential buyers to figure out. We don't yet have information on price or release date for this device, or the GPD Win 5 with the same chip.
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