Ayaneo Handhelds now available in Best Buy stores! Edit: Acer joins the PC handheld trend with the Nitro Blaze 7

One of the original PC handheld makers is now competing in the US market place officially by being in stock in Best Buy. The Ayaneo Kun and Next Lite are now available in stores in Best Buy. Best Buy and Ayaneo have said that more of their products will be available for purchase at Best Buy later.

The Ayaneo Kun model currently available is $999.

The Next Lite model is $399

Hopefully these devices being available in Best Buy means Ayaneo is ready to get price competitive because the current models and prices they have aren't very enticing compared to the Steam Deck, Legion Go and ROG Ally/Ally X.

I would totally buy an Ayaneo Kun for $999 if it was the model that has 32GB RAM and 1TB storage. All the Ally X really has going for it over the other major brand handhelds is its bigger battery, 24GB RAM and VRR. Ayaneo Kun eliminates most of its advantages and has some of its own such hall effect joy sticks and triggers, 4G LTE Module expansion and an 8.4in screen. The Legion Go is the only only PC handheld in major retail stores that has a screen that is in the 8 inches range. I think 7 inches is too small and 7.4 inches is the bare minimum to be able to play PC games portable without having to squint to read text all the time

With GPD already making a handheld with a Strix Point chipset to be released in October I hope Ayaneo releases an updated version of the Kun with Strix Point not too far after. I don't think I could wait for a Legion Go 2 with Strix point.

EDIT: Acer has joined the PC handheld craze with the Nitro Blaze 7. It seems to be a direct competitor to the ROG Ally as it has a VRR screen as well. I think it's a bit late to be releasing a PC handheld on Hawkpoint but if its price is comparable to the ROG Ally's currently I don't see much of a problem. Nitro is Acer's budget gaming brand so the price should be good at launch or at the very least drop quickly. Especially with no touchpads and back buttons.

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Moving on to the specifications, the Acer Nitro Blaze 7 features AMD's Ryzen 7 8840HS "Hawk Point" APU, which is indeed the next mainstream platform for handheld manufacturers to refer to. The APU comes with 8 Zen 4 cores, 16 threads, a core clock of up to 5.1 GHz, and a TDP that can be configured between 20-30W and 16 MB of L3 cache. To drive gaming, the chip features the RDNA 3-based AMD Radeon 780M iGPU, which offers 12 compute units and is a decent iGPU for entry-level gaming.

In terms of memory and storage, the Acer Nitro Blaze 7 comes with LPDDR5x-7500 memory with a 16 GB capacity, and apparently, this is the only configuration being offered. The device features support for up to 2 TB of PCIe Gen 4 SSD, which is on par with counterparts such as the ROG Ally X offer. The handheld also includes a dedicated SD card reader as well in case the storage runs low, so overall, the Nitro Blaze 7 is pretty equipped in the memory and storage department.

Acer Nitro Blaze 7 features a 7-inch 1080p IPS display, with a refresh rate of 144 Hz along with a 500-nits peak brightness and support for AMD's FreeSync Premium. The handheld certainly has an edge over ASUS's ROG Ally in terms of the refresh rate. Hence, it can be said that the device is more "gaming-oriented" rather than conventional use. However, with a 50.04 Whr battery onboard, the on-device timings might not impress consumers as compared to alternatives in the market, but it still does the job.

For the onboard network and connectivity options, the Nitro Blaze 7 features 2x USB4 Type-C ports rated at 40 Gbps, which is quite impressive, and it comes with support for WiFi-6E and Bluetooth 5.3. Acer has nailed elements of the design of the handheld since it features red and black accents all over the device, portraying the "gaming-focused" look, but interestingly, Acer decided not to introduce back buttons or even a touch pad, which might hinder navigation for users.

I would get excited but Windows suck for handhelds. Luckily Steam Big Screen exists but MS/Xbox needs to get crackerlacking on a gaming interface for handhelds.

@Pedro: For sure Microsoft needs to hurry up and get on this but I do like seeing the handheld gaming sector going in this stuff fast and furious. Definitely has me eagerly watching on.

With the deck existing, I just rather pay more and get a better system.

Good for Ayaneo, but until Microsoft gets its act together and makes Windows usable as a competitor to Steam Deck, then this will always feel outdated.

I've never heard of them, so no thank you.

Also, a thousand bucks = lol

I wouldn't say outdated but more inaccessible in navigation since Windows still has the advantage of being able to play every major PC game and able to play gamepass games natively without having to dual boot operating systems.

Acer is joining the handheld sector now the Nitro Blaze 7. I love that so many PC/hardware manufacturers are joining in on the handheld craze because it means more innovation and competitive pricing. All that's really left is HP and Dell/Alienware being the only major PC gaming brands left to release PC handhelds.

I like my handhelds nice and small, gameboy or gameboy advance style. At most Vita or PSP style.

I'm looking forward to the Retroid Pocket 5. Also they allow me to bring out my inner PC gamer by tweaking what I like or don't like.

@R4gn4r0k: How is it viewing PC games on the Retroid Pocket 4? A Vita style handheld is pretty small compared to the major PC handhelds. I can't imagine playing anything other than fighting games and not struggle with reading UIs.

I remember when could buy a Gameboy for £60.

Good times.

These are great retro devices too cup!

So what I do is this:

Modern games look really good, have fantastic textures and assets = so those get played on my high resolution 4K screen or ultrawide

Older games I usually play on steam deck and run and look fantastic on there

Older games + 4K texture packs or remasters: those go on the big screen again

And then you have say, SNES games or PS2 games, those have some very low resolutions and very low res textures.

Those games, I swear look tremendous on the Retroid Pocket 4.

And is my prefered way of playing them.

I always throw my handheld in a bag when I'm traveling, and I usually carry my Gameboy Advance SP shaped Anbernic RG35xx sp with me when I know there will be lines or waiting somewhere.

Yeah but it could also means the death of it due to oversaturation.

And it played it own exclusive games.

@NoodleFighter: It is not just the number of players in the market that will determine its future but whether they actually compete with each other through innovations and pricing. As a previous poster said, oversaturation is not a good thing as it means the death of the market, which was one of the factors that caused the video game crash of 1983.

@onesiphorus: Well these are handheld PCs not consoles. Video game market crash mainly happened due to over saturation of consoles and console games and PC gaming was not affected. It's not like each one of these PC handhelds requires unique optimization and support from game developers. These PC handhelds use the same chipsets or near similar ones to each other. They're not even exclusive to them with the exception of the Steam Deck.

I have yet to see over saturation harm the laptop and prebuilt desktop in anyway.