Aya Neo Next handheld has AMD Ryzen 5800U with Vega GPU and costs $1315

The Aya Neo Next gaming handheld gets an AMD Ryzen 7 5800U CPU with an integrated Vega GPU. The handheld therefore does not have the recently announced Ryzen 6000 series with newer RDNA2 GPU. The handheld will start at a suggested retail price of $1,315.

The Aya Neo Next will be available in different variants, which differ in terms of storage capacity and amount of memory. All models get an AMD Ryzen 7 5800U CPU with eight cores and 16 threads. For some models, the company talks about an ‘Advance Version’ of that processor, but what that means is not explained.

The handheld also uses the integrated Vega 8 GPU, which runs at 2GHz. The Aya Neo Next variant will be available with a 1TB or 2TB SSD and 16GB Lpddr4x memory. The Aya Neo Next Advance comes with 2TB of storage as standard. The Aya Neo Pro model also gets a 2TB SSD and 32GB memory. The handheld also has an integrated fingerprint scanner and the tops of the analog sticks are interchangeable. The Aya Neo Next also supports Wi-Fi 6E.

Yesterday, AMD announced its Ryzen 6000 laptop processors, which succeed the Ryzen 5000U series. Those chips have Zen 3+ cores and the integrated GPU is upgraded to the RDNA2 architecture. This means that the Ryzen 5800U in the Aya Neo Next is now a generation outdated. According to Liliputing, the manufacturer indicates that it will develop a successor as soon as the Ryzen 6000 CPUs become available to them.

The manufacturer reported a few weeks ago that the Aya Neo Next would get “a new generation of AMD cores”, with which it was initially expected that the handheld would have a Ryzen 6000 chip. That does not appear to be the case. The previous Aya Neo handheld had a Ryzen 4000U CPU, which had Zen 2 cores. The handheld does indeed have a new generation of Zen cores compared to the previous Aya Neo.

The Aya Neo Next will be available in February through a crowdfunding campaign. Users who purchase the handheld through that route will receive a suggested retail price starting at $1265. The final retail price will be $1315. Converted and including VAT, this amounts to slightly more than 1400 euros. Those prices are significantly higher than the upcoming Steam Deck. That gaming handheld from Valve has an RDNA 2 GPU and faster memory, but also uses older Zen 2 cores. Valve also indicates that the Steam Deck is being sold below cost.