Valve said it wasn't going to make a new Steam Deck until there was a "significant" technical evolution, a step forward in terms of what capabilities the device would have. Other handheld vendors, particularly Ayaneo, aren't so shy. The company is well known for its tendency to introduce new handheld models as often as the rest of us change underwear, but it's actually only on the third iteration of its mainline handheld.
We already wrote about the Ayaneo 3 when it was initially teased by the company last month, but now we have some fresh details on the machine thanks to a post on the company's Xwitter account revealing the face of the system as well as a couple of key specifications. It turns out that the Ayaneo 3 is considered an 'Annual Flagship' for the company, and that it will be considerably configurable, with a wide range of options.
We say that because there will apparently be at least two options each for screen and SoC. The screen will have the option of LCD or OLED display panels, and while we love the instant response times and saturated colors of OLEDs, the LCD might be the smarter choice given that this machine is meant for gaming. Not only do you avoid potential screen damage from static HUD elements, but you might also enjoy better battery life.
The other big choice will be your selection of SoC. Ayaneo names two types of chips as being available options, both from AMD: the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and the Ryzen 7 8840U. The latter is familiar; a Hawk Point processor fundamentally based on the same Phoenix silicon as in basically every handheld now, including the ASUS ROG Ally and Ally X, the Lenovo Legion Go, Ayaneo's own Kun, and many more.
The former is a "Strix Point" part, AMD's latest Zen 5-based mobile SoC that brings a full twelve CPU cores and eight RDNA 3.5 WGPs (versus six RDNA 3 on Hawk Point) to bear against gaming content. In theory, it should be a considerable step up in performance over the 8840U, but in practice, it may depend quite a bit on how much power Ayaneo can feed the thing in a handheld form factor -- and how much heat the Ayaneo 3's chassis can dissipate.
It's not really a surprise to see that the machine can take either of those SoCs; it was known even before the Strix Point chips hit the market that they would use the same FP8 package as Hawk Point. It's likely that memory configuration options will be the same between the SoCs, too.
The handheld maker still hasn't revealed other critical details about the Ayaneo 3, like the screen size, the battery capacity, the memory type or capacity, the storage capacity, and so on, but we expect those details will come in time. The real critical number for the Ayaneo 3 will probably be the price.
Competitor OneXPlayer launched its own Strix Point-powered handheld just yesterday, and the price on those units is downright eye-watering, starting at four figures for early bird pricing. Rumors said that Strix Point is more expensive for laptop vendors to buy from AMD, and it looks like these smaller handheld companies are having to pass along that difference to end-users. Will gamers continue to buy handhelds if they're priced like gaming laptops? We suppose we'll see.