Best Buy Is Selling Ayaneo's Ryzen-Powered Gaming Handhelds Starting At $399
Ayaneo has been one of the more active participants in the handheld PC gaming console market, though up until now the bulk of its systems have been crowdfunded affairs with Indiegogo. That just changed—the Chinese manufacturer is apparently making a bigger push to infiltrate the US market, with two of its handheld consoles now available to purchase at Best Buy.
The cheaper of the two is Ayaneo's Next Lite, which is listed for $399 at Best Buy. That makes it one of the most affordable PC gaming handhelds on the market, in line with the Valve's 256GB Steam Deck touting a 7-inch LCD screen.
Like that version of the Steam Deck, the Next Lite wields a 7-inch IPS display with a 1280x800 resolution. It's powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 4800U APU (8C/16T, up to 4.2GHz, 8MB L3 cache) featuring integrated Radeon RX Vega 8 graphics. Other specs include 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD, hall sensing triggers and joysticks, Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 wireless connectivity, three USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C ports, and a 47Whr battery.
Whether that's enough to entice budget gamers to pivot away from a Steam Deck remains to be seen, but it's nice to see more competition in the space. It will also be interesting to see if Best Buy makes the Ryzen 5 4500U variant available.
Best Buy is also selling Ayaneo's Kun handheld, which is listed on sale for $999 (save $200). This is a bigger and more powerful handheld with an 8.4-inch display (2560x1600), Ryzen 7 7840U processor (8C/16T, 3.3GHz to 5.1GHz, 16MB L3 cache) based on Zen 4, integrated Radeon 780M graphics, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD.
This one also features hall sensing joysticks and triggers, along with a 75Whr battery and various other odds and ends. Ayaneo sees this as a competitor to high-end handhelds. Pricing may hold it back, however, even with the discount in play, when you can score an ASUS ROG Ally X for $799 or a Lenovo Legion Go for $749.99.
