Ayaeneo's Next Lite is 'the cost-effective choice' but only because it cloned SteamOS off Github and jammed a 4 year-old APU into it

Just a few days ago, purveyor of handheld and pocket PCs, Ayaneo announced it's first SteamOS handheld, called the Next Lite. Two aspects of the launch made it stand out: Firstly, the price would be aimed firmly at the budget sector and secondly, it would be the first non-Steam Deck handheld to retail with Valve's open-source operating system installed instead of Windows. We contacted Ayaneo for further details and it's kindly spilled the beans.

Some aspects we already knew about, such as the 7-inch 800p IPS screen and the 47Wh battery, but now we know what's powering the handheld device and it's not quite what we were hoping for. There will be a choice of two AMD APUs inside: Ryzen 5 4500U and Ryzen 7 4800U.

These chips are four years old, in terms of when they were first launched. The 4500U has six cores, six threads, with a boost clock of up to 4.0 GHz, and is based on AMD's Zen 2 architecture. The graphics side of the APU is handled by a Vega-based GPU, with 384 shaders. Despite its clock speed of 1,500MHz, it's not suitable for the very latest games, even at 800p and low settings.

The other option, the Ryzen 7 4800U, is an eight core, 16 thread affair, with a boost clock of 4.2GHz. There are 512 shaders in this one and they run at up to 1,750MHz so it's by far the best choice if you want to stand a chance of having the best possible gaming experience.

Fortunately, there's still a lot to like about the Next Lite. How about Hall effect thumbsticks and shoulder triggers, for a start? As no contact traces are grinding away, they're far more resistant to joystick drift than traditional ones, to the point where you're more likely to wear something else away before you start to experience drifting.

And there's the fact