The AYANEO Next II is finally official, in all its voluminous glory. The gaming handheld console comes after years of teasing and what can only be assumed to be development hell, considering that the first time the console was announced was all the way back in 2022.
Firstly, the Next II sounds and looks like a chonker: It’s got a massive 9.06-inch OLED display, with a maximum resolution of 2,400 x 1,504, along with a variable refresh rate between 60Hz and 165Hz. The last time we heard of a gaming handheld with a similar resolution, it was with the first Lenovo Legion Go.
Beneath the hood, the Next II is powered by the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395, which is powerful in and of itself. For context, we first reviewed the APU earlier this year, when ASUS passed us its latest iteration of the ROG Flow Z13. Based on the red chipmaker’s Zen5 architecture, the processor features 16 Zen5 CPU cores, plus 40 Radeon 8060S GPU cores.
On that note, it doesn’t look like AYANEO is tweaking the APU inside the Next II. On paper, the CPU core are still running at 5.1GHz, while the Radeon 8060S runs at 2.9GHz. And yes, it’s also got the XDNA2 NPU that runs at 50 TOPS.
Sadly, AYANEO’s CEO, Arthur Zhang, isn’t sharing much else regarding the internal specifications, but does share that the system can support up to 128GB LPDDR5X RAM, running at 8,000MT/s. For another matter, the Next II pulls a whopping 85W of power when in use. That’s way more than the average 35W that consoles such as the ROG Xbox Ally X pulls, and actually beggars the question of how long the 115W on the brand’s console will last if left to run at full whack.
The latter point also raises another question: At 115Wh, the size of the battery far exceeds the aviation-allowed 100Wh, which raises questions on whether you’d be allowed to bring the device onboard a plane. Assuming, of course, that the staff are none the wiser to the device’s battery capacity.
Moving on, AYANEO has also given the controllers and buttons on the Next II an overhaul. The console now featurs Hall Effect joysticks, Hall Linear Triggers, dual-mode trigger locks, and a floating 8-way D-Pad, four rear buttons, and a new magnetic levitation haptic motor with improved vibration feedback.
At the time of the announcement, the video presentation doesn’t outline pricing or availability for the Next II.
(Source: YouTube, Videocardz, Engadget)