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Ayaneo Kun: He promises a lot, can he deliver?
The Steam Deck's biggest weakness is battery life, but so far no competitor has been able to exploit this shortcoming. The Ayaneo 2 with the Ryzen 6800U processor was not up to the challenge. Even the Asus ROG Ally with the AMD Z1 Extreme processor failed to overtake its rival if it wanted to have a battery of the same capacity.
However, now Ayaneo may have found the answer – in a larger, heavier handheld called the Ayaneo Kun, which they've packed a 75-Wh battery that they claim can last up to 3.5 hours at 15W TDP. That's almost twice the battery and twice the runtime of what you'd expect from a Steam Deck at this power, though that result doesn't seem to have been recorded during gaming.
The new portable console is already available and there is no doubt that it is a device with the most powerful configuration to date: an 8.4-inch IPS screen with a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels, a brightness of 500 nits, 90 % covered DCI-P3 color gamut ... Ayaneo is apparently also listened to comments from users who are more inclined towards the button placement on the Steam Deck console. That's why the new device has added larger handles, two trackpads, four rear buttons, stronger triggers and even a small stand reminiscent of the Nintendo Switch.
There is also a small camera under the “Back” function button with support for face login (for Windows Hello). This is a feature not found on every portable device. They also added sticks and triggers with this "Hall Effect" that prevents slipping, and HD linear motors for better shaking, and an optional 4G module for mobile connectivity. A slot for a nanoSIM card is hidden under the stand.
The device is equipped with an AMD Ryzen 7840U chip with a cooling system that the company claims can handle loads of up to 54W in turbo mode. For comparison, the ASUS ROG Ally can reach 30 W. The only question is how this will be known in terms of performance or whether this is even practical for the average user.
Ayaneo Kun has another advantage. Supports full-length M.2 2280 SSDs up to 8 TB. For example, competitors only support capacities up to 2 TB. Only the price is not the biggest advantage of the acclaimed console. For all this capacity, it is necessary to pay around 1200 euros, it can be even more if you choose the version with more RAM and space. That's almost three times what you have to shell out for the Steam Deck. Long-term support is also a problem. Ayaneo has a reputation for quickly forgetting about its products, which have quite a few software bugs and are not well optimized for foreign languages.
Regardless of the shortcomings, we can admit that it is an excellent device.
