The Ayaneo Kun is nearly the king of handheld gaming PCs. I mean, that's what the company was aiming for with a name like that, and it comes pretty darn close, but there are little things that stop me from unreservedly recommending it as the absolute best.
Having to almost completely disassemble it to replace a tiny rubber grommet was just one of the things that gave me pause while testing the mighty, mint-flavored device. Then I pick it up again, its big, bright screen beaming up at me, its pleasant curves hugging my grip, and I'm back to playing my PC games on a setup that truly feels more portable than any gaming laptop which I used.
One of the things I've enjoyed watching in the handheld market over the last 12 months has been the amount of tinkering that companies have gone through to create a variety of different devices based on essentially the exact same silicon. The AMD Ryzen 7 7840U chip (and occasionally the Ryzen Z1 Extreme chip) is the SoC standard for almost every handheld you can buy right now. We're starting to see some Intel Meteor Lake-based offerings, but for the most part AMD has a monopoly on your handheld hardware.
So the manufacturers did other things. Ayaneo itself has a variety of different devices, from the tiny Air 1S to the Flip in two different designs and the Slide. The Kun may be the most traditional of all, but it has its own claim to innovation, the unique 54W mode of its 30W APU being just one of them. With a large 8.4-inch screen it's also quite large, but still feels good in the hand in a Steam Deck style and I spent many hours lying in bed playing Baldur's Gate 3 on this beautiful device without putting my hands down .
Kun specifications
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: 2560×1600
Battery: 75Wh
Price: $1329 (32GB/2TB unit)
It's also the only handheld I've seen so far that adopts Valve's use of dual trackpads and runs with it. Due to the size of the Kun, it is sufficient to attach two pads, one under the left D-pad and the other under the right thumbstick. At first they were all kind of useless, but a recent update has made the trackpads much more responsive and more like the type of pad you'd find on a laptop. Just, you know, Really small.
If you're using a Windows-based handheld, they come in very handy, making it easier to navigate those awkward launchers that stick firmly to the idea that when you play a PC game, you use a mouse as your primary input, no matter what happened. I get it, I love a good gaming mouse too, but it makes the handheld gig a more difficult endeavor.
The core specification itself is impressive; In addition to the ubiquitous Ryzen 7 7840U and its 780M iGPU, I have 32GB of LPDDR5-7500 and a 2TB Lexar SSD, and that gives me an eight-core, 16-thread machine with the heart of a truly powerful PC. That's not exactly what you'd expect from a handheld gaming PC that prioritizes portability and battery life rather than pure performance – just ask the Steam Deck OLED – but Ayaneo also packs a beefy battery in the Kun installed.
This means that in the PCMark 10 gaming battery life test, even when running at 30W, we get within two hours of silicon.
However, when it comes to gaming performance, I might have hoped for a little more. Ayaneo has made a lot of its cooling and its mega 54W TDP limits, but no matter what I do, I never get industry-leading gaming performance from the device. Even compared to handhelds with the same essential core features, such as the OneXPlayer 2 Pro, it is generally at the top.
It's definitely up there, and tweaking the game settings will give you impressive 1080p gaming performance – and occasionally passable 1440p frame rates – but never the absolute best.
Picture 1 from 4
However, it is best in the configuration software. Ayaneo also has the absolute best software for controlling handheld PCs, even compared to the deep integration Valve has between SteamOS and Deck. This allows you to tailor your experience depending on what you're playing to get as much battery life as possible out of the Kun while still enjoying a healthy frame rate.
If I want to use the full power of the AMD APU, I can leave it at 30W and push the Radeon 780M graphics chip to its maximum, or if I'm on the Sword Coast via GeForce Now, I can reduce the TDP to a measly 5W and the battery lasts forever.
However, if you want to use the FULL power of the AMD APU, Ayaneo offers you the 54W mode, which I cannot in good conscience recommend. Not because it will make your battery worse or get warm in the process, but because it doesn't do anything. Well, nothing good. If there were cases where performance would drop by another 10%, plugging it into the wall would have been a great docked mode to handle, but that's not the case. Occasionally I saw a handful of frames per second more because I was cornering the Ryzen silicon in terms of performance, but in most gaming benchmarks it dropped when I pushed it into what I consider “extreme.” Stage brought 'mode in the AyaSpace app.
Picture 1 from 3
My first impression when I took it out of the beautiful packaging was, “Wow.” My second was, “The D-Pad is sticky and gross.”
I also found that this left the device in a pretty fragile state in terms of functionality. I seemed to experience more instability and flickering when switching between the 54W mode and more sensible presets. I ended up renaming it from “Extreme” to “Unwise” and probably won’t use it again.
That's a shame, because overall the device itself is fun to use and I was hoping for some serious performance improvements. It feels great in the hand – although playing around with my Steam Deck OLED recently reminded me just how well balanced Valve's machine is – and its standard performance is excellent. It's a handheld that has almost the perfect premium aesthetic. I love the way it looks… but there are definitely things that disappoint it.
The most obvious one is the damn D-pad. My first impression when I took it out of the beautiful packaging was, “Wow.” My second was, “The D-Pad is sticky and gross.”
Buy if…
✅ You want a handheld with a large screen: The Kun is large, but actually quite nicely shaped. The 2560 x 1600 resolution is a bit much for the 780M iGPU, but the 8-inch scale isn't and it's fun to game on.
✅ You are looking for a good looking device: I mean, come on, it's a real looker. Especially in this white with blue reflections that fade into green. Yummy.
Don't buy if…
❌ They expect perfection: At this price it should be, and there are annoying quicks that still cause problems down the line.
❌ You expected 54W mode to annihilate: It doesn't offer the extra performance that I was hoping would put it head and shoulders above the competition in the gaming space.
In fact, the D-pad is so sticky that Ayaneo had to make a repair due to a “manufacturing defect in the seal.” And that requires you to almost completely disassemble your device to get to the back of the D-Pad and replace the little rubber washers that sit under the actual rocker itself. Ayaneo will send the repair to everyone affected, which is great, but it requires a lot of disassembly and I can imagine people being uncomfortable dealing with their $1,300+ machine.
However, there is a good view of the interior and it looks just as premium from this angle too. I just wish the D-pad wasn't still so damn sticky, even after all that fiddling.
And while the 2560 x 1600 screen is very bright, it's somewhat lacking in color, so I had to dig into the Radeon settings to increase the saturation a bit to compensate. It's also only a 60Hz panel, which certainly helps with battery life, but not with the premium aesthetic.
It's these little frustrations and the flakiness that seems to be inherent in the 54W mode that means I can't quite give it the glowing recommendation as today's ultimate premium handheld that I expected when I started, to play with it. It's still a great device with the absolute best Windows software of any handheld available and I'll continue to use it. But Ayaneo requires you to put up with a few very stubborn weaknesses in addition to the high price, and I want it to be perfect for this money.
