Ayaneo Kun review

The Ayaneo Kun is almost the king of handheld gaming PCs. I mean, that's what the company has been aiming for with a name like that, and it gets so damned close, but there are the little things that get in the way of me giving it an unreserved recommendation as the absolute best.

Having to almost completely strip it down to replace a tiny rubber grommet being just one of the things that have given me pause in my time testing the mighty minty-highlighted device. Then I pick it up again, its big bright screen beaming up at me, its pleasing curves nuzzling into my grip, and I get back to playing my PC games on a setup that feels more truly mobile than any gaming laptop I've used.

One of the things I've enjoyed watching going on in the handheld market over the past 12 months has been the level of tinkering companies have done to create a host of different devices essentially based upon the exact same silicon. The AMD Ryzen 7 7840U (and occasionally the Ryzen Z1 Extreme) chip has been the SoC de jour for almost all the handhelds you can buy right now. We are starting to see some Intel Meteor Lake based offerings, but largely AMD has the monopoly on your handheld hardware.

So, manufacturers have done other things. Ayaneo itself has a host of different devices, from the tiny Air 1S, to its Flip in two different designs, and the Slide. Perhaps the Kun is the most traditional of the lot, but it has its own claims to innovation, the unique 54W mode on its 30W APU being but one of them. It's also chonking big, with a large 8.4-inch screen, though in a Steam Deck-y way it still feels good in the hand and I've spent many an hour lying in bed playing Baldur's Gate 3 on this gorgeous machine without my hands dropping off.

APU: AMD Ryzen 7 7840U
iGPU: Radeon 780M
Memory: 16|32|64GB LPDDR5-7500
Storage: 512GB|1TB|2TB|4TB SSD
Screen: 8-inch IPS
Resolution: 2560 x 1600
Battery: 75Wh
Price: $1329 (32GB/2TB unit)

It's also the only handheld I've seen so far to pick up Valve's use of twin