This is the first experience of AYANEO handheld written by digital tail editorial board, and before we begin this article, let's talk about the past.
Almost 20 years ago, a first-year student with a pen named "Cloud of No Return Outside the Window" co-founded the magazine "Handheld Fan", as a columnist hosted two popular columns of "Q&A Matchless" and "Fengshen List", in that era when handheld game information was extremely scarce, the existence of "Handheld Fan" was like an enlightening star, leading game lovers to explore the handheld world.
Subsequently, the college student founded the handheld website YYjoy.com, which gave domestic handheld players a window to understand Nintendo NDS and NDSL in depth, and cultivated a large number of Nintendo die-hard players.
In 2010, "The Cloud Of No Return Outside the Window" created Digital Tail, renamed "Uncle Tail", and plunged into the digital circle for ten years. Over the past decade, Digital Tail has also been committed to sharing a beautiful digital life, so that everyone who loves digital can get the fun of exploring the digital world.
Sometimes life is like a game, and pressing the back button is a new journey. In 2021, Uncle Tail acquired the handheld team AYANEO and began to appear as a handheld practitioner again, which is both a return and an exploration.
From media people to product managers, from tasting hardware to making hardware, AYANEO NEXT Exploration Edition can be said to be an attempt by Uncle Tail to return to his original intention, and it is also the first product he personally wrote.
As a digital media, we have not had any evaluation and experience of AYANEO's products due to our special identity, but this time, Uncle Tail is very confident in handing over this product to us, and also wants to see what we think about it.
We have experienced the birth of this product and know the determination of the team behind it to polish a better handheld product, so this is an experience article that is biased towards writing from a first-person perspective, we try to find the AYANEO NEXT Exploration Edition in the design, performance, gaming experience of the exploration, the article may not be objective, but we will be absolutely sincere.
AYANEO NEXT's Design Exploration: A Sense of Ceremony and Order
AYANEO NEXT Discovery Edition can first be defined as a ritualistic gift.
What we got in hand is the "first special" version of the AYANEO NEXT Exploration Edition, limited to 300 units worldwide, the design of the product packaging box is extremely elaborate, not so much a packaging box, but rather a customized gift box dedicated to the player, the pure black box body plus the transparent packaging cover is full of grid, and even AYANEO also provides unpacking gloves, which gives the whole unpacking process a more grand exploration significance.
The first thing that catches the eye when you open the box is the exclusive commemorative nameplate of the AYANEO NEXT Exploration Edition, which is engraved with a chip on the back of the nameplate to show some of the core pioneering features of the Exploration Edition: a dual X-axis linear motor, fingerprint unlocking, and a Hall rocker.
Lift the commemorative nameplate layer to see the AYANEO NEXT Discovery Handheld body.
AYANEO NEXT Exploration Edition handheld compared to the previous generation of products is still equipped with a 7-inch wide color gamut large screen, the resolution of 1280 * 800; is still an integrated fuselage design, but in the body feel and texture has been greatly improved, closer to the natural transition curve design of the console gamepad, so that the handheld as a whole has obtained a more ergonomic grip experience, which also condenses the tail uncle for many years to play with all kinds of consoles and handheld muscle memory, Real players understand what a comfortable handheld is.
In our experience these days, the superior grip and ergonomic design allow the 720g body to be held with one hand.
In terms of shell design, AYANEO NEXT Exploration Edition adopts a metal-like appearance, which is a good way to raise the texture of the front, and BabySkin's surface spraying process makes the overall feel very delicate and there is no trouble with fingerprints.
It is worth mentioning that the "Premiere Bonus" version has a world-unique number and a unique signature customized back.
In the design of the key, the AYANEO NEXT Exploration Edition has greatly reduced the number of buttons, only retaining the necessary function buttons, which not only makes the front of the fuselage more refreshing and atmospheric, closer to the key design language of the mainstream gamepad, but also more orderly and balanced, the advantage of reducing the keys is that the player's learning cost is greatly reduced, and it can focus more on the game itself.
Joystick and trigger is an important point of this exploration version, the design of the handheld integrated fuselage has always had a very fatal flaw: that is, the service life of the joystick, this time AYANEO combined grain and silver control pioneered the Application of hall joystick to the Windows handheld, not only greatly increasing the service life of the joystick to 5 million times, in addition to the design without physical contact, but also solved the problem of rocker drift, greatly improving the accuracy of touch.
In addition to the joystick, the trigger has also been upgraded to the Hall trigger using electromagnetic induction, which feels more smooth and comfortable, and the accuracy, accuracy and minimum control stroke of the operation are qualitatively improved compared with ordinary linear triggers, which is a great blessing for racing, sports, and shooting players.
In addition, AYANEO NEXT Discovery Edition provides 2 Type-C interfaces that support PD 3.0 and is configured with a 3.5mm audio interface, which is particularly praiseworthy.
In terms of accessories, a Type-C to C data cable, two Type-C to A adapters, a PD fast charger that supports up to 60w and three standard power adapters are included, which can meet a variety of power supply conditions.
AYANEO NEXT's Performance Exploration: "Too Hard" Desperate Stacking
AYANEO NEXT Discovery Edition is also a "too hard" product.
This kind of "too much force" can be understood as the kind of guy who is in love for the first time who is eager to empty the whole person to you, so we got one of the most powerful AMD handhelds so far.
In fact, the biggest bottleneck of the Windows handheld is still the processor performance, which can be simply reduced to the limitation of GPU power. Different from the underlying layer of the host platform integration, the PC game platform where the Windows handheld is located is a existence where the upper and lower limits can be infinitely pulled apart, how to maximize the performance of the game in the limited space, the best solution at present is only to pile up.
AYANEO NEXT Discovery Edition is the industry's first Windows handheld equipped with amD Ryzen 7 5800U processor, and it is also the debut of the highly acclaimed Zen3 architecture APU on the desktop side, although AMD released the latest generation of AMD Ryzen 7 6000U on January 4, fully upgrading Zen 3+ and RDNA 2, graphics performance ushered in a doubling of the improvement, but from the production level, AMD Ryzen 7 5800U This is the optimal solution for amd handhelds in the current situation.
AMD Ryzen 7 5800U itself is still very good quality, based on TSMC's 7nm process manufacturing, equipped with 8 cores and 16 threads, the basic frequency is 1.9GHz, the maximum frequency is 4.4GHz. With 16MB of L3 cache and 4MB of L2 cache, as well as 8 Vega compute units up to 2.0GHz, the default TDP is 15W.
We also ran the following commonly used performance testing software:
In the CPU-Z test, the AMD Ryzen 7 5800U has a single-core score of 589 and a multi-core score of 3966.
In the tests of the CineBench R20, the AMD Ryzen 7 5800U scored 554 pts per core and 3254 pts in multicore.
In the test of the CineBench R23, the AMD Ryzen 7 5800U scored 1430 pts single-core and 8352 pts multicore.
As a mainstream processor positioned in the mid-range thin and light cost, AMD Ryzen 7 5800U performance compared to the previous generation of products or a lot of progress, and AYANEO NEXT Exploration Edition handheld also preset multiple working gears, in the game mode, to provide 20W performance release, through the built-in "AYA SPACE" software can also achieve custom power consumption, up to 25w and 25w above, can be a good squeeze out of VEGA8's performance potential.
In addition to stacking in the APU, AYANEO NEXT Discovery Edition also carries 16GB of LPDDR4x 4266MHz dual-channel memory, 2TB NVMe SSD makes people almost no storage anxiety, which also means that you can carry dozens of 3A masterpieces with you. In addition, AYANEO NEXT Exploration Edition is also equipped with Wifi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2, providing strong wireless transmission capabilities and better scalability, coupled with the cloud archiving services of the current major game platforms, which can basically achieve AAA game freedom anytime, anywhere.
Based on a better processor, AYANEO NEXT Exploration Edition also optimizes its thermal architecture, with air cooling as the core of heat dissipation, with pure copper cooling fins and high-performance silent fans, bringing powerful heat dissipation performance, in our actual experience process, the temperature control is still satisfactory, but the fan noise control in the high-performance mode There is still some room for improvement.
Of course, this is only the first step in AYANEO's performance exploration, AYANEO NEXT official version and AYANEO NEXT Pro will use the latest release of higher performance AMD Ryzen 7 5825U processor, the maximum frequency increased by 100MHz. AYANEO NEXT Pro also features 32G RAM + 2TB SSD, the first configuration combination of handhelds. In fact, it is obvious that we will also see the emergence of amD Ryzen 7 6000U processors in the AYANEO handheld family, which takes only time.
AYANEO NEXT's Gameplay Exploration: Another way to open the AAA masterpiece
Graphics is only a dimension that determines the game experience, just like Nintendo has never won by performance, for windows handhelds, the performance ceiling is a known shackle, want to break through this layer of shackles in the experience, you can do a lot of kung fu, AYANEO NEXT Exploration Edition In addition to the tactile layer to achieve intergenerational improvement, there has been full progress in interaction.
Compared with other host/handheld devices, the Windows system is actually relatively poor with the portability of the fuselage keys, without the intervention of the keyboard and mouse, and it is very inconvenient to operate. It can be seen that the AYANEO team has ingenious ideas on how to improve the connectivity, such as the introduction of fingerprint wake-up function: Compared with other Windows handheld operation steps: Press the power button The handheld screen is awakened The fingerprint is activated The way the handheld is unlocked, AYANEO NEXT Exploration Edition can be completed in just one step: Lightly put the fingerprint to identify The handheld is awakened and completes the unlock.
The deeper interaction improvement is through the "AYA Space" game platform developed by the AYANEO team, in the "AYA Space", not only can game management, bind steam account, but also provide game assistant functions, you can view hardware information and set a variety of shortcut operations, very effective to solve the interactive problems, AYANEO NEXT Exploration Edition also limited time to enjoy the "quick open" function of "AYA Space", Multiple Windows features can be quickly turned on with preset key combinations.
Of course, the above is only an experience improvement outside the game itself, and how the AYANEO NEXT Exploration Edition performs in the game is our biggest concern, and we also tested it.
In order to simulate the player's daily use scenario, we set the product to game mode (20W) + wild heat dissipation throughout the process, and tested the actual gaming experience without plugging in.
We selected four more representative games as experience projects to see how the specific game experience looks:
1. Forza Horizon 5
As the hottest racing game series at the moment, the Horizon series has always been known for its optimization, which can be stabilized at 60 frames when we turn on the middle quality, and can be stabilized at about 40 frames in the case of high quality, which is a satisfactory achievement, and it is possible to drive at any time.
2. Cyberpunk 2077
We also found the AAA masterpiece "Cyberpunk 2077" (which is the only refund game on the author's PS 4), 2077 also defaults to low effects, full-screen mode urban frame rate compared to the 4800U AYANEO 2021 Pro 24 frames have been significantly improved, can be improved to about 35 frames, but not very stable, into the warring state caton is more obvious, the experience is not ideal, of course, this is mainly "Polish stupid donkey" optimization pot to see if there will be any improvements in the next optimized version.
3、《FIFA 22》
The FIFA series has always been a game that the author has to play in depth every year, because "FIFA 22" is not optimized enough for the PC platform, and it can smoothly play single-player games in the state of locking 30 frames, but if you are a player who mainly plays UT mode, it is not recommended to abuse online battles under the requirements of a network battle environment with higher stability and fluency requirements.
Thanks to the existence of the Hall joystick, during the game, the author obviously felt that the control of the player was more accurate than himself on the PS4 platform. The dual X-axis linear motor also makes the collision feedback between players very delicate, and the difference between collisions of different intensities can be felt.
4. "Give Him Love 5"
Finally, the eternal nail household "Give him love 5", it can be said that in the case of low special effects, there is no running pressure, in addition to the battle scene, the frame rate is basically stable at more than 100 frames, but it is still recommended that you do not buy this game again, every "Give him love 5" is the sale of R star "Give him love 6" difficult to help and abett.
Although AYANEO NEXT Exploration Edition is equipped with a 47Wh/4100mAh battery, it is still not able to meet the needs of long-term continuous play of 3A masterpieces, giving him love 5 low-quality cases about playing time within 2h, but for most of the independent games and ordinary games are very friendly, can play to about 5 hours, in addition, due to the existence of 60W PD fast charge, the battery life level will not become a problem that plagues players.
Indie games
Independent games need to be specially taken out to say, as a very important part of the PC platform, independent games are naturally very suitable for the use of handheld scenarios, both enjoy the discount on the price of the PC platform, will not be configured card neck, low-power mode battery life can also reach the ideal level, in the absence of configuration and endurance anxiety, players can enjoy the fun provided by independent games in gameplay anytime and anywhere, but also very suitable for playing in bed a bedtime project.
Overall, AYANEO NEXT Discovery Edition is a handheld that can play most AAA games smoothly, and some optimized games can even run smoothly in high-quality situations, which is enough for a game lover who wants to play AAA masterpieces anytime, anywhere. In addition, AYANEO NEXT Discovery Edition can eat both a big meal and a dessert, and for light casual players, it is also a good choice to use AYANEO NEXT Exploration Edition to explore the various independent games on the PC platform.
Write at the end
After experiencing the AYANEO NEXT Exploration Edition, from the product level, it has actually been excellent enough, but due to various realistic conditions it is not perfect, it is a product that is trying to get close to the perfect, which may be the value of the Exploration Edition.
At this point, I have a new understanding of why Uncle Tail will return to the handheld industry: this is an inevitable choice that a game lover will make when he has more choices.
Just after the 2022 New Year bell, our Digital Tail Editorial Department sent the first Weibo of the year, wishing all Digital Tail fans a happy new year, and then the uncle also forwarded our Weibo, and said a rather emotional sentence: "Share a beautiful digital life, the original intention remains the same."
This sentence also reminds me of an interview article about Uncle Tail in Digital Family magazine that I saw many years ago, and at the end of the interview, in the face of the question "Do you think NDS L has changed your life", Uncle Tail's answer was: "If there is no NDSL, there will be no me today, without NDSL, my life may develop in another direction - after college, find a stable job, and become a white-collar worker." But this was an idea a long time ago, and now that I've embarked on the path of starting my own business, I'm determined to go in the direction I'm going in now, because that's my real life."
The original intention remains unchanged, AYANEO NEXT Exploration Edition is actually a game lover written to the same kind of poetry, it carries the enthusiasm of the teenagers, the best can provide everything about the game to share with the same love of the game partners, I hope that all the players who love the game can always love the game, but also hope that AYANEO can always accompany the player to explore the beauty of the game world.