Ryzen 7 6800U to 8840U handheld upgrade for $499

AYANEO has announced it will offer a mainboards upgrade for older handhelds.

The Chinese company has an interesting idea for its customers. Those who purchased AYANEO 2 or AYANEO Geek systems back in 2022 may now consider upgrading the system to the newer Ryzen APU. This, of course, comes at a price, which sadly does not look very encouraging.

The 8-core Ryzen 7 6800U is based on the Zen3+ architecture and comes equipped with 8 RDNA 2 Compute Units. AMD has upgraded its APU offering to a Zen4 and 12CU RDNA3 combo with the release of Phoenix (7840U) and Hawk Point (8840), both offering nearly identical specs. Users will now have the option to purchase 8840U mainboards for these systems at the following prices:

Ryzen 7 8840U Upgrade, Source: AYANEO

That’s a really high price that doesn’t look very attractive. In fact, those in the US may end up finding a brand new ASUS ROG Ally or Legion Go for just $100 more. This upgrade does come with a 1-year warranty, but only for the mainboards and does not cover any problems caused by the user during the internals replacement.

While the intentions are good and the idea is definitely something to explore in the future, one might wonder who AYANEO is trying to convince given these high prices. Sure, the $699 price includes 64GB of RAM, so it may also be treated as a memory upgrade, but nothing else is being upgraded. Users are left with the same screen and used controllers on their already 2-year-old devices.

Ryzen 7 8840U Upgrade, Source: AYANEO

Those interested in the upgrade will only have a one-month period to make a decision. AYANEO will collect orders until June 25, which is a firm deadline that will not be extended.

Source: AYANEO via Liliputing