GPD's Strix Halo handheld has finally seen some testing, and $2,200 still seems like a tough sell even if it blows today's handhelds out of the water
It seems like the first gaming handheld with the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 to hit the market will be GPD's Win 5, which works around the thermal and battery constraints of that beefy chip by popping an optional external battery on it. Early tests are all rather positive, despite that quirk.
According to YouTuber The Phawx, the device feels "comically light" without the external battery, and he likes it a lot with the battery slapped on the back. He says, "I just ultimately prefer the battery pack on at all times." Effectively, with the Win 5, you can either keep it plugged in all the time, or connect a battery to the back of the device via a port and locking mechanism. Think of how the Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons work, with a clip letting them slide up and out. It is not, however, hot swappable, so plugging out the battery entirely shuts it down.
The Phawx points out that the battery strapped onto the back covers some of the device's intake fans, though he hasn't had the chance to fully test the thermals yet. He did, however, notice the fans felt a little louder with the pack on.
In exchange for this strange battery system, you get the full-fat Ryzen AI Max+ 395 chip, complete with 40 RDNA 3.5 CUs and 16 Zen 5 cores. In early tests, The Phawx shows off an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 handheld beside the Win 5 (with AI Max+ 395), both at 42 W total, with the former getting around 32 fps on average in Doom: The Dark Ages, and the latter getting around 55 fps (without frame generation).
Notably, zooming into the stats in The Phawx's video, Doom running on the HX 370 has FSR set to Balanced, where the Max+ 395 is set to Quality, which gives a slight advantage to the HX 370. Below 20 W, the performance of both handhelds starts to level out.
SKU 1 | SKU 2 | SKU 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
CPU | Ryzen AI Max+ 395 | Ryzen AI Max+ 395 | Ryzen AI Max 385 |
GPU | AMD Radeon 8060S | AMD Radeon 8060S | AMD Radeon 8050S |
RAM | 64 GB | 32 GB | 32 GB |
Storage | 4 TB | 2 TB | 1 TB |
Price | $2,268 ($2,120 Indiegogo early bird) | $1,850 ($1,650 Indiegogo early bird) | $1,599 ($1,448 Indiegogo early bird) |
Droix, running the device at 80 W on full brightness, gets 42 minutes of battery life. Idle on the desktop at 55 W, it gets "around 10 hours", and the average battery life clocks in at around 2-3 hours. The Phawx noted in their tests that the Win 5 dynamically adjusts its power consumption based on the wattage of the cable charging it. If you've got a 30 W lead, it will adjust power draw to accommodate that.
In Droix's Cinebench scores, it saw a single-core score five points lower than the HX 370 in the GPD Win 4 but almost 500 points more in multicore tests. This trend continues in Geekbench, with the HX 370 getting a marginally better single-core score and the AI Max+ 395 getting significantly higher multicore test results.
In gaming benchmarks, the Win 5 achieves a 112 fps average in Forza Horizon 5 on the HX 370 at 28 W, and the Win 5 Max gets 152 fps average at the same wattage. However, cranked all the way up to 80 W, it shows scores of 216 average fps. At the same wattage, Droix measures an average fps just below 50 in Cyberpunk 2077 on the HX 370 GPD Win 4 and just over 70 fps average on the GPD Win 5.
The HX 370 is the same chip we tested in the OneXPlayer F1 Pro, which clocks in at a still rather pricey $1,339. To compare early figures directly, and taking the AI Max+ 395 SKU from GPD (at $2,268) that Droix tested, you are getting a 35% to 50% uplift in games at 28 W for an almost 70% bump in price. The F1 Pro comes with an OLED screen (where the Win 5 is IPS), and the F1 Pro runs lovely at 15 W.
You will be able to get the Win 5 cheaper than MSRP via Indiegogo preorder, but I'd advise against preordering any hardware until we've seen a greater volume of reviews and impressions first. It's a lot of money, and it's still early days.
When running the Win 5 at 55 W or 80 W, the performance increase does start to balance out with the price, but $2,268 is a lot to put down on a handheld device, especially one with a niche like its battery. Alongside these new tests, GPD has also updated the Win 5 site to say it is now launching on November 25. That will make it the first Strix Halo handheld device on the market.
Ayaneo is set to launch its own AI Max+ 395 gaming handheld in the future, named the Ayaneo Next 2, but handhelds will struggle to get around the prohibitive cost of Strix Halo. This is before mentioning the thermal and battery compromises that need to be made for its mobile RTX 4060-like performance.