Ayaneo Kun almost The king of portable gaming computers. I mean, that’s what the company is aiming for with a name like this, and it comes very close to that, but there are little things that prevent me from recommending it unreservedly as the absolute best.
Having to strip it almost completely to replace a small rubber grommet is just one of the things that gave me pause in my time testing this strong mint-hued highlighted device. Then I pick it up again, its big glossy screen shining at me, its pleasing curves nudging into my hand, and I’m back to playing my PC games on a setup that feels more truly mobile than any gaming laptop I’ve ever used.
One of the things I’ve enjoyed watching going on in the handset market over the past 12 months is the level of tinkering companies are doing to create a range of different devices based on essentially the same silicon. The AMD Ryzen 7 7840U (and sometimes Ryzen Z1 Extreme) chip has been the current SoC of nearly 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 manufacturers did other things. Ayaneo has many different devices, from the small Air 1S to the Flip and Slide in two different designs. Perhaps Kun is the most traditional, but it has its own claims to innovation; The unique 54W mode on its 30W APU is just one of them. It’s also quite large, with a large 8.4-inch screen, but it still feels good in the hand in a Steam Deck-style way, and I spent many hours lying in bed playing Baldur’s Gate 3 hands-free on this gorgeous machine. I’m falling.
Kun features
APU: AMD Ryzen 7 7840U
iGPU: Radeon 780M
Memory: 16|32|64GB LPDDR5-7500
Storing: 512GB|1TB|2TB|4TB SSD
Screen: 8 inch IPS
Resolution: 2560×1600
Battery: 75Wh
Price: $1,329 (32GB/2TB unit)
It’s also the only handheld device I’ve seen so far that takes Valve’s dual trackpad usage and runs with it. Kun’s size means he can get away with gluing two pads, one under the left D-pad and the other under the right thumbstick. It was all kinds of unusable at first, but a recent update has made the trackpads much more responsive and much more like the kind of pad you’d find on a laptop. Just, you know, Really Small.
They come in handy when you’re using a Windows-based handheld for ease of navigating strange launchers that steadfastly adhere to the idea that if you’re playing a PC game then you’ll be using a mouse. your primary login no matter what. I get it, I love a good gaming mouse too, but handheld makes work more difficult.
The base specification itself is impressive; I have the ubiquitous Ryzen 7 7840U and 780M iGPU, along with a 32GB LPDDR5-7500 and a 2TB Lexar SSD, giving me an eight-core, 16-thread machine with the heart of a seriously powerful PC. It might not be what you’d expect from a handheld gaming PC where priorities are around portability and battery life rather than straight-line performance – just ask the Steam Deck OLED – but Ayaneo has also fitted the Kun with a big battery.
This means that in the PCMark 10 gaming battery life test, we could get into the two-hour silicon slice even if we ran the machine at 30W.
But maybe I was hoping for a little more in terms of gaming performance. It benefited greatly from its Ayaneo cooling and mega 54W TDP limits, but I can never get industry-leading gaming performance out of the device no matter what. It often holds the lead, even against handhelds with the same core core specs like the OneXPlayer 2 Pro.
It’s definitely there, and optimizing the game settings will get you impressive 1080p gaming performance and occasionally passable 1440p frame rates, but it’s never quite the best.
Where it totally excels, however, is in the configuration software. Ayaneo also has hands-down the best software for portable PC control, even compared to Valve’s deep integration between SteamOS and Deck. This allows you to tailor your experience based on what you’re playing to get as much battery life out of Kun as possible while enjoying a healthy frame rate.
If I want the full power of the AMD APU I can leave it at 30W and max out the Radeon 780M graphics chip, or if I’m riding around the Sword Coast via GeForce Now I can drop it to 5W TDP. and make the battery last for one year.
However, if you want the FULL power of the AMD APU, Ayaneo gives you the 54W mode… which I cannot recommend with a grain of salt. Not because it drains your battery or fries it while doing so, but because it doesn’t do anything. There is nothing good. If there were situations where you got another 10% performance, it would be a great docking mode that you could deal with when plugged into the wall, but it isn’t. At times, I found that a handful of frames per second was extra in terms of squeezing the power out of the Ryzen silicon, but for the most part, gaming benchmarks were going backwards when I pushed it into what I call “Extreme.” ‘ mode in the AyaSpace app.
My first impression upon taking it out of the gorgeous packaging was: “Wow.” The second was: “This D-pad is sticky and disgusting.”
I also found that it left the device in a rather fragile state in terms of functionality. I seemed to experience more instability and unevenness when switching between the 54W mode and the more sensible presets. I eventually renamed it ‘Dumb’ instead of ‘Extreme’ and probably won’t use it again.
It’s a shame, because overall the device was a pleasure to use and I was hoping for serious performance gains. It feels great in the hand – although fiddling with my Steam Deck OLED recently reminded me of just how well-balanced Valve’s machine is – and its standard performance is excellent, too. It is a handheld device with almost perfect premium aesthetics. I love the way it looks… but there are certain things that let it down.
The most obvious is the damn D-pad. My first impression upon taking it out of the gorgeous packaging was: “Wow.” The second was: “This D-pad is sticky and disgusting.”
If you buy…
✅ You want a handset with a large screen: Kun is large but actually quite nicely formed. The 2560 x 1600 resolution is a bit much for the 780M iGPU, but the 8-inch scale is not, and gaming is a pleasure.
✅ You’re after a good looking device: I mean, come on, it’s really beautiful. Especially in white with blue to green accents. Yummy.
Do not buy if…
❌ You expect perfection: At this price, it should be, and there are still those annoying sudden accelerations that upset the line.
❌ You expected the 54W mod to kill: It doesn’t offer the extra performance that I hope will put it above its rivals in terms of gaming.
In fact, the D-pad is so sticky that Ayaneo had to make a fix due to a “manufacturing defect in the seal.” This requires almost completely disassembling your device to get to the back of the D-pad to replace the small rubber discs located under the actual rocker. Ayaneo is sending the fix to everyone affected, which is great, but I can see people being uncomfortable doing it with their $1,300+ machines, it requires a lot of disassembly.
It does provide a good look at the interior though and looks just as high quality from that angle. I just wish the D-pad wasn’t still so sticky after all that work.
And although the 2560 x 1600 screen is very bright, there’s a certain lack of color, which had me digging into the Radeon settings to crank up the saturation a bit to compensate. It’s also only a 60Hz panel, which certainly helps battery life, but doesn’t add to premium aesthetics.
These minor disappointments, and the seemingly inherent flakiness of the 54W mod, mean I can’t give it a glowing recommendation as today’s top-end premium handset, which I expected when I first started playing with it. It’s still a great device, definitely has the best Windows software among handhelds, and I’ll continue to use it. But Ayaneo wants you to accept its hefty price tag as well as a few persistent weaknesses, and I want it to be excellent for that kind of money.