AYANEO NEXT 2 goes global in late July
During the latest AYANEO Product Sharing Session, the company’s CEO showcased the Windows handheld on camera and confirmed that overseas shipments are planned to start by the end of July. The livestream also showed packaged units and close-up shots of the device.
Memory pricing hit the project hard
The livestream made it clear that AYANEO is not happy with the situation. The CEO described the system as “really beautiful” and repeatedly referred to the amount of work and R&D investment behind the design.
AYANEO also showed a slide stating that due to the ongoing memory cost increase, NEXT 2 is temporarily unavailable for restock. The company says it will provide updates and arrange future availability when conditions improve.
This follows AYANEO’s earlier decision to stop selling NEXT 2 . In March, the company said storage prices had increased after Chinese New Year, pushing the total product cost close to twice the original selling price. Existing backers were told that production would continue, but new sales were suspended. Currently the company has reopened orders for one of the variants:
- Ryzen AI Max 385 with 32GB of memory and 1TB of storage: $2999
- Ryzen AI Max+ 395 with 64GB and 1TB: $3699 (the only model available for preorder)
- Ryzen AI Max+ 395 with 128GB and 2TB: $5299
SKU choices do not help, where is MAX+ 388 and 24GB option?
During the livestream, it was clear that the CEO was gutted about the project. AYANEO spent so much time on the NEXT 2, but the handheld is launching at the worst possible time. But AYANEO is not without blame here. Its configuration choices simply do not make much sense right now, and the company has other options. It offers 32GB, 64GB and 128GB memory configurations, but there is no 16GB model and no barebone version.
A barebone option may be difficult because AYANEO ships its own software stack and likely wants full validation for each system. Still, it would have offered a lower-cost route for users who only want the hardware. Since this is LPDDR5X memory, AYANEO could also add a 24GB model, which would be enough for many gamers. It makes less sense if the company is also trying to sell this as an AI device, which, let’s be honest, is not how most buyers would use it.
Source: AYANEO
In my opinion, the company should drop the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 entirely, along with the 64GB and 128GB memory options, and shift focus toward the Ryzen AI Max+ 388. This is an 8-core variant that still ships with the full Radeon 8060S graphics configuration with 40 GPU cores. The Ryzen AI Max 385 listed by AYANEO uses Radeon 8050S graphics instead.
It is also worth noting that AMD has almost completely abandoned promoting Strix Halo as a gaming product. The chip is now marketed as a Ryzen AI Max platform for home AI PCs, with large unified memory pools as one of its main selling points. AMD probably has little interest in pushing it as a gaming platform at this stage, which does not help AYANEO.
This kinda reminds me of Threadripper. That platform also started closer to good old HEDT, but it has since become an ultra-premium workstation product.
Source: AYANEO , RetroHandhelds
