AYANEO NEXT 2 gaming handheld with Ryzen AI Max+ 'Strix Halo' will cost up to $4,299

The AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395, also known as Strix Halo, is a beast of an APU. It combines a 16-core, 32-thread Zen 5 CPU with a max boost clock speed of 5.1 GHz, Radeon 8060S Graphics, a powerful NPU, and up to 128GB of unified memory. The upcoming AYANEO NEXT 2, which is the company's impressive next-gen PC gaming handheld, is set to include a flagship Strix Halo model with an MSRP of $4299.

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The company is expecting to launch its Indiegogo campaign for the AYANEO NEXT 2 next week, and with pricing and specs for the various models confirmed, the AYANEO NEXT 2 flagship model sports the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395, 128GB of LPDDR5X-8533 memory, and 2TB of PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD storage. Although the retail price is listed at $4299, the 'Early Bird Price' for this model will be $3499.

For those wanting an AYANEO NEXT 2 with an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395, the more sensible option appears to be the version with 64GB of memory and 1TB of storage, which has an 'Early Bird Price' of $2299 and an MSRP of $2699. Either way, you're looking at a lot of money for a PC gaming handheld with RTX 4060-level performance, with the inflated pricing most likely due to the current DRAM crisis.

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The good news is that there will also be an AMD Ryzen AI Max 385 option, which pairs an 8-core, 16-thread Zen 5 CPU with Radeon 8050S Graphics. With an 'Early Bird Price' of $1799, the hardware here should still deliver a notable performance improvement when compared to current AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme handhelds like the ROG Xbox Ally X and the Lenovo Legion Go 2.

Outside of the APU, the AYANEO NEXT 2 features impressive specs. It's got a 9.06-inch OLED display with a QHD-like resolution of 2400x1504 pixels, a 165 Hz refresh rate, and a peak brightness of 1155 nits. It also has premium TMR joysticks, Hall-effect triggers, touchpads, a gyroscope, built-in speakers, dual microphones, biometrics, custom cooling, and a large-capacity 116Wh battery. It also weighs in at a hefty 1426 grams (more than double the Steam Deck OLED), so it's really pushing PC gaming handheld technology to its absolute limit.