One of our favourite last-gen handheld PCs is getting a Ryzen AI HX 370 upgrade and a native landscape display

A promotional image for the Aokzoe A1 X handheld gaming PC — (Image credit: Aokzoe)

Portable PC gaming has to be one of the coolest innovations in the space in recent years. Valve's own Steam Deck and other similar Switch form factor gaming PCs are becoming huge business, and there's plenty of competition keeping the space fresh. One such competitor was the AOKZOE A1 Pro, which impressed us with its great battery life, performance, and quiet and cool processing. Well AOKZOE is back, and its new A1X handheld PC is quickly reaching its launch date on Kickstarter.

We first got a sneaky look at the A1 successor at the beginning of the year when AOKZOE teased us with a look at the specs. It doesn't look to have changed much since this early look. The new A1X still looks a lot like the A1 Pro with the biggest change being that sweet AMD Ryzen 9 AI HX 370 chip. We'll have to wait to see how real world testing goes, but this boosted chip could give us upwards of 30% in performance over the A1.

The other features spruked are the 8-inch 120 Hz VRR native landscape display (many handheld screens are currently natively portrait) and a 72.7 Wh battery. That screen should provide a much smoother experience than the 60 Hz we saw on the A1, and it being natively landscape should mean that the touch experience is better calibrated in normal use, but will probably require more power to run it. This means we might not see the benefit of that larger battery, as the boost over the A1's 65 Wh may go entirely to powering the screen and new chip. Even if that's the case it should make for a nice upgrade, especially as our reviewer was pretty happy with the life on the A1.

Pricing is another thing we're going to have to wait and see about for this new handheld. The AOKZOE A1 Pro is currently sold out at its sale price of $899 USD, and has a MSRP at $1,099. It's fair to expect the A1X to sit slightly higher than that thanks to its extra specs, but that also unfortunately positions it at a prime price point to suffer Trump's tech tariffs. Still, with the Kickstarter set to launch soon, hopefully that wait won't be much longer.

Hope’s been writing about games for about a decade, starting out way back when on the Australian Nintendo fan site Vooks.net. Since then, she’s talked far too much about games and tech for publications such as Techlife, Byteside, IGN, and GameSpot. Of course there’s also here at PC Gamer, where she gets to indulge her inner hardware nerd with news and reviews. You can usually find Hope fawning over some art, tech, or likely a wonderful combination of them both and where relevant she’ll share them with you here. When she’s not writing about the amazing creations of others, she’s working on what she hopes will one day be her own. You can find her fictional chill out ambient far future sci-fi radio show/album/listening experience podcast right here.

No, she’s not kidding.

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