Ayaneo’s Next Lite is a $299 Steam Deck competitor with unofficial SteamOS

Ayaneo’s try and launch a bargain-price competitor to the Steam Deck has been complicated, to say the least, however the firm has now printed a product web page that clears most issues up. The Ayaneo Subsequent Lite will price $299, won’t ship with an official construct of SteamOS however reasonably an unofficial fork, and include a four-year-old AMD processor that’s arguably much less potent than the one within the unique Steam Deck LCD.

Whereas the corporate initially marketed that “subscriptions” for the hand-held will open on Thursday night time, which will have been a case of Chinese language to English translation getting too literal — the ultimate product web page solely has a “Subscribe” button so you may get emailed with extra details about the hand-held. A brand new weblog publish has no point out of subscriptions.

Additionally, whereas the corporate’s preliminary weblog publish asserting its subsequent handheld gaming PCsaid the gadget has SteamOS preinstalled, the corporate has since confirmed it received’t have official assist for Valve’s Linux-based working system. After this text was initially printed, CEO Arthur Zhang advised followers in Ayaneo’s official Discord that “it must be famous that we’re utilizing third-party SteamOS, not official SteamOS.”

As reported by GamingOnLinux and Handheld HQ, it would as a substitute have a model of the HoloISO venture, which its creator describes on GitHub as one thing that “makes an attempt to convey the Steam Deck’s SteamOS Holo redistribution right into a generic, installable format, and supply a close-to-official SteamOS expertise.” With out official assist from Valve, the prospects for this gadget operating the software program properly appear a lot farther from actuality than the unique weblog publish on Ayaneo’s web site prompt.

A lot of Ayaneo’s element decisions do appear designed to rival the Steam Deck and hit a cheaper price level. The hand-held equally has a seven-inch 800p display screen and a 15W AMD processor with 7nm Zen 2 cores — your selection of the AMD Ryzen 5 4500U or Ryzen 7 4800U. However each of these four-year-old processors include Vega 8 graphics reasonably than the Steam Deck’s superior RDNA2 graphics.

It’s price noting that we’ve already examined an Ayaneo Subsequent handheld with a more recent processor inside, the AMD Ryzen 7 5825U, and located it misplaced to the Steam Deck, typically by an honest margin, greater than it received. Now, a system with a weaker chip will likely be going up in opposition to Valve’s remaining inventory of $349 Steam Decks.

The Subsequent Lite does include a 47Wh battery, although — nearer to that within the $549 Steam Deck OLED, although Ayaneo doesn’t point out battery life. It additionally has Corridor impact joysticks, a twin copper warmth pipe cooling system, and 16GB of RAM.

The corporate can also be promoting “vibrant colours” that embody a handsome seafoam inexperienced and “high-end craftsmanship.” It additionally has a port benefit with three USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 ports, together with ones on high and backside of the system, and might match full-length M.2 2280 NVMe stable state drives, that are typically extra broadly obtainable in far bigger capacities than the Steam Deck’s smaller ones.

The corporate stated on Discord that purchases will open on the finish of this month, with delivery earlier than Chinese language New 12 months, which falls on February tenth.

If you wish to know the way we’ve appreciated different Ayaneo handhelds, take a look at our critiques of the Ayaneo Subsequent and Ayaneo 2.

Correction January eleventh, 9:03PM ET: Ayaneo’s announcement weblog publish states the Subsequent Lite would ship with “SteamOS” preinstalled, nevertheless, this was incorrect. After publication, the corporate has since clarified by way of different channels that it’ll ship with HoloISO, a distribution primarily based on SteamOS, and now we have up to date this text to replicate that.

Replace January eleventh, 10:52PM ET: Added specs and spec dialogue primarily based on the ultimate product web page.