After a cryptic tease during CES 2024, Ayaneo has unveiled its Next Lite gaming handheld, and it’s a confusing product, to say the least. It’s designed to compete with the Steam Deck, but it doesn’t run Valve’s official SteamOS, instead using a forked version called HoloISO. It costs $299, and while the controls and screen look good, it has a less powerful processor.
The Next Lite has a 7-inch 800p screen, 16GB of RAM, and a 47Wh battery, which is close to the battery size of the $549 Steam Deck OLED. However, it runs a Ryzen 7 4500U or 4800U processor with Vega 8 graphics instead of the Ryzen 7 5825U found on the Ayaneo Next. The previous chip is a few years old, so the Next Lite is probably far behind the original Steam Deck, which currently sells for $349.
It also uses a Hall effect joystick to eliminate drift and has a copper heat pipe cooling system. It comes with three USB-C 2.3 Gen 2 ports on the top and bottom, as well as a slot for a full-length M.2 2280 NVMe SSD. If you want to run Windows like most other handheld devices, it supports that option and Ayaneo will provide the required drivers on its official website.
The earlier press release was confusing because Ayaneo talked about “subscribing,” but it turned out to be just subscribing to get more news. The company also initially said it would ship with SteamOS, which got everyone excited, but it turns out it won’t officially support Valve’s operating system. Since then, the original post has been modified to say it will use HoloISO, a third-party community-developed fork of SteamOS, rather than something created by Ayaneo.
So what does this mean for Steam Deck games? Ayaneo says that HoloISO “attempts to turn Steam Deck’s SteamOS Holo re-release into a universal, installable format and provide a close to official SteamOS experience.” In other words, due to the lack of official support from Valve, there may not be a guarantee that the game will be available working normally.
As mentioned, the Ayaneo Next Lite is priced at $299 and comes in “vivid colors,” including seafoam green. It is scheduled to begin shipping before the Lunar New Year on February 10, 2024.
We will provide live coverage of CES 2024, which will be held in Las Vegas from January 6th to 12th.Get all the latest news from the show here.
This article originally appeared on Engadget: https://www.engadget.com/ayaneos-299-next-lite-is-a-steam-deck-rival-that-runs-an-unofficial-copy-of-steamos-093107900. html?src=rss
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