Company behind Smach Z handheld with Ryzen soc will start pre-orders soon

The company behind the Smach Z has announced that pre-orders for the handheld will start on March 15th. The device has a Ryzen soc on board, in addition to a Vega 8 GPU. The price starts at 699 dollars, converted about 565 euros.

The team writes that the first 10,000 orderers will receive the handheld ‘before release’, although the announcement does not say exactly when that should take place. Its crowdfunding page states that the delivery is estimated to be in May this year, but it’s unclear how current that information is. Recently, the final specifications of the handheld were announced, which should be able to run both Windows 10 and Linux. Last week an alpha version of the Smach Z was on display at the Embedded World fair in Nuremberg. That copy could not be used for playing.

The Smach Z runs on a V1605B soc from AMD, which the company released in February in the Ryzen Embedded V1000 series. It is equipped with a Vega 8 GPU, has a TDP of 12 to 25W and runs at 2GHz with a boost to 3.6GHz. The handheld will be available in two versions, the cheapest of which has 4GB DDR4 RAM at 2133MHz and 64GB storage in the form of an SSD. The more expensive Pro version, which costs $899, has twice as much RAM and onboard storage. This variant is also equipped with a five-megapixel camera, while the cheaper version does not have a camera. Both variants have a 6″ full HD touchscreen.

In addition to WiFi and Bluetooth, there is a USB-c port, as well as a USB and micro-USB port, display port, 3.5 mm jack and space for an SD card. The now proposed design of the Smach Z did not always have these specifications.

Originally, the project started in 2014 under the name Steamboy. The team had already tried to set up a Kickstarter campaign in 2015, but it failed. In 2016, the device reappeared on Kickstarter. That campaign raised nearly $475,000. The current Indiegogo campaign is an extension, the team previously explained. It also did not always go smoothly with partners of the company in the past, for example, it broke ties with hardware supplier Rhomb.io in 2017. It remains to be seen whether the team can now deliver on its promises.