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.

But now Ayaneo may have found the answer – in a larger, heavier handheld called the Ayaneo Kun, which packs a 75-Wh battery that they claim can last up to 3.5 hours at a TDP of 15W. That’s almost twice the battery life and twice the runtime you’d expect from a Steam Deck at that power, though they didn’t seem to record that result while gaming.

The new portable console is already available and there is no doubt that it is the device with the most powerful configuration so far: an 8.4-inch IPS screen with a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels, a brightness of 500 nits, 90 % DCI-P3 color gamut coverage... Ayaneo has clearly also listened to the comments of users who are more inclined to the placement of the buttons on the Steam Deck console. That is 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's also a small camera under the back button with support for face login (for Windows Hello). This is a feature that isn't found on every portable device. They've also added thumbsticks and triggers with the so-called "Hall Effect" to prevent slipping, and HD linear motors for better shake, as well as an optional 4G module for mobile connectivity. A nanoSIM card slot 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.