How powerful can a gaming handheld get? Pretty powerful. At least, it’s been that way ever since AMD announced its Radeon 8060S integrated GPU, which benchmarks have shown to deliver performance on par with laptops running a 4070 mobile GPU. Those integrated graphics will be at the heart of the new Ayaneo Next 2, which is probably the most powerful gaming handheld you can get today.
Billed as a “generational leap in performance” compared to the original Next, the device sounds like a veritable desktop machine that can fit in your hands. While it won’t do 4K, it should be able to handle 1080p gaming with the settings turned up on most AAA titles, allowing you to enjoy veritable desktop gaming on-the-go.
The Ayaneo Next 2 is equipped with a 9.1-inch OLED panel with a 2400 x 1500 resolution, which means you can do 1440p gaming on this thing, if you prefer that. Even better, the screen has an adjustable refresh rate with four switchable presets (60Hz, 120Hz, 144Hz, and 165Hz) to accommodate different use-cases, along with a peak brightness of 1,155 nits for clear viewing even when outdoors. For reference, that makes it over twice as bright as the screen on the Switch 2, Nintendo’s current-gen handheld. Other screen details include 5280Hz PWM dimming and 100 percent DCPI-P3 color space coverage.
Like we said, it’s fitted with the AMD Radeon 8060S integrated graphics, which is based on RDNA 3.5 architecture, boasting 40 compute units and clock speeds of up to 2.9GHz. It also gets an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 CPU based on the Zen 5 Strix Halo architecture. Both of those are equipped with an XDNA 2 NPU, giving the device 126 TOPS of total AI performance to go along with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage. To keep all that hardware from overheating is a dual-fan cooling system connected to heatsink fins and dual exhausts, ensuring your handheld can continually cool, no matter how hard you push the performance.
The Ayaneo Next 2 is equipped with two TMR joysticks (the first Windows handheld to have them), so you can freely customize the resistance to your liking, as well as Hall effect linear triggers with dual-mode locks (so you can switch between digital and analog modes), a floating eight-way D-pad, standard action buttons, dual shoulder buttons, and four rear buttons. It also gets dual intelligent round touchpads (one on each side), which are programmable, allowing you to further expand the control options for any game.
To keep you gaming for longer, it’s fitted with a 116Wh battery, which is easily the biggest module we’ve ever heard placed inside a gaming handheld. No word on how much gaming you can do before it requires plugging in, but we don’t image it lasting all that long, considering how much processing muscle this thing packs. Other features include front-facing stereo speakers, linear and rotary vibration motors, a magnetic levitation motor, dual USB 4.0 ports (with support for DP1.4 video output), a high-speed microSD card slot, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.4m and a 3.5mm audio jack.
All that above, of course, are the high-end specs for the Ayaneo Next 2, which will cost a whopping $4,299. There are less-powerful configurations, too (less RAM, smaller storage, slightly less powerful CPU), with prices starting at $1,799. It’s now available for preorder, with deliveries slated for June.
