Monday, July 28th 2025
Ayaneo Reveals Next 2: AMD Strix Halo Gaming Handheld Slated for 2025 Launch
Just a few days ago, we got our first taste of what's to come with AMD's Strix Halo Ryzen AI Max+ 395 APU coming to the GPD Win 5, but now Ayaneo has confirmed on YouTube that it will be joining the Strix Halo-powered handheld battle, with the Ayaneo Next 2—only the second confirmed gaming handheld to feature the powerful AMD APU. The new Windows gaming handheld will be the company's next true flagship system, and is technically the successor to the Ayaneo Next, powered by the AMD Ryzen 7 5820U—although Ayaneo does have more powerful handhelds that feature the AMD Ryzen 7 8840U. No official launch date has been announced, but Ayaneo claims that the Next 2 will launch sometime in 2025. Unlike the aforementioned GPD Win 5, the Ayaneo Next 2 will have a built-in battery, which might be slightly more limiting than GPD's backpack design, and it will also feature a dual-fan cooling system—both of which make the prototype assembly shown off in the stream look exceptionally chunky.
The specs for the Ayaneo Next 2 are few and far between, but what Ayaneo has shown off looks like at least an 8-inch display, a "high-capacity battery," and back-mounted paddles similar to those found on the Steam Deck and the Lenovo Legion Go. It's unclear just what the Ayaneo Next 2 will look like, since most of the images shared by the company are labelled as renders of an early design, but the likelihood is strong that it will need a sizeable battery pack for the 16-core APU and Radoen 8060S iGPU. There's also no word on whether there will be a version of the Next 2 with the Ryzen AI Max 385. Ayaneo also teased the potential for a mini PC based on the same motherboard as the upcoming Next 2, which would compete with the likes of Aoostar and the recently announced Mini-ITX motherboards that we covered.
Watch the full announcement video on YouTube. The Ayaneo 2 reveal starts around 51 minutes.
Source:
Ayaneo on YouTube
The specs for the Ayaneo Next 2 are few and far between, but what Ayaneo has shown off looks like at least an 8-inch display, a "high-capacity battery," and back-mounted paddles similar to those found on the Steam Deck and the Lenovo Legion Go. It's unclear just what the Ayaneo Next 2 will look like, since most of the images shared by the company are labelled as renders of an early design, but the likelihood is strong that it will need a sizeable battery pack for the 16-core APU and Radoen 8060S iGPU. There's also no word on whether there will be a version of the Next 2 with the Ryzen AI Max 385. Ayaneo also teased the potential for a mini PC based on the same motherboard as the upcoming Next 2, which would compete with the likes of Aoostar and the recently announced Mini-ITX motherboards that we covered.
8 Comments on Ayaneo Reveals Next 2: AMD Strix Halo Gaming Handheld Slated for 2025 Launch
Such a shame for us jack-of-all-trades laptop enthusiasts.
The Medusa Halo looked very interesting to me since it would be based on an architecture new though to use FSR 4, but the recent rumours of that cancellation along with Intel's similar APU, due to the N1X APU being delayed, aren't promising.
Being forced to a significant upcharge to get the 64/128 GB shared memory models isn't fun, too, since 32 GB is arguably too small for RAM + VRAM on such a high end and expensive machine.
The Flow Z13 in especially seem like the ideal choice for people who do video/photo editing on the road, play a lot of games which are not necessarily the newest AAA drivel. It can almost replace my PC for gaming, I can easily move it over to my projector, and I'll appreciate the tablet features when I'm travelling for work.
I do agree that it really sucks that it has RDNA 3.5 though. Someone suggested that this is because APUs take much longer to develop or something.
As for Medusa Halo, last I heard it was going to use RDNA 3.5 as well. A bit ridiculous.
radeon/comments/1lbbdaa/fsr4_on_rdna3_7900xtx_tests
The Lunar Lake MSI Claw 8 is actually quite compelling, it's got similar perf to the 980m in the Z2 Extreme, and about 20% faster than the 780m in the Z1 extreme. What's notable though is that the LNL chip has access to AI-ML based XeSS upscaling, and not the compatibility kernel either, which is significantly better than FSR3.1, and very close to FSR4.It's barely faster than native due to the shaders having to take up so much of the slack compared to RDNA 4's dedicated AI hardware. Still a good option to have, since "native" AA sucks, and slightly better perf in region of 5%, plus "fixed" AI ML AA effect makes the issues of the low res handheld screens less immersion breaking.