The Steam Deck has been one of the most popular new products to talk about in PC gaming for 2022, but not the easiest one to get your hands on. Stock shortages have left many out of the zeitgeist for the new portable PC gaming sensation. While Valve is set to ramp up production to help deal with this, there's also plenty of Steam Deck competitors vying for your portable purchase.
One that's about to enter the market is the AOKZOE AI which packs an AMD Ryzen 7 6800U into the popular Switch-like form factor. This is working with the integrated Radeon 680M graphics and some of that sweet next generation LPDDR5X RAM. It's an interesting package and makes for a strong AMD powered mobile contender to the market. Looks like the Aya AMD machine from last year might be in for some competition.
Another boost to this kind of machine is the AOKZOE AI can run Windows 11 or Steam OS. This gives users the choice between which platform they want to game on, or potentially do other tasks. Given tonnes of games are now working on Steam Deck, Windows isn't necessarily the obvious choice anymore.
Some things just run better on one platform vs the other so having the option on something portable makes a lot of sense. Depending on how it functions it could be a useful device for on the go projects, but we'd need to see some more specs and the device in action first.
Steam Deck review: Our verdict on Valve's handheld PC.
Steam Deck availability: How to get one.
Steam Deck battery life: What's the real battery life of the new device?
How loud is the Steam Deck? And will it pass the Significant Other test?
Steam Deck - The emulation dream machine: Using Valve's handheld hardware as the ultimate emulator.
There are a few videos available of the unit running games, but these are all put out by AOKZOE so should be taken with a grain of salt. They are impressive with titles like Elden Ring looking to run really well on the machine. Hopefully we'll get our hands on one of these units later to do our own tests and let you know what we think.
The biggest question with all these machines after confirming that they work is always the price, and right now, AOKZOE isn't telling. The official Steam Deck is a surprisingly reasonably priced machine given its niche status and power. However, most of the alternatives we've seen are anything but cheap.
Judging by these specs we're not expecting this one to be a particularly affordable unit, and the price will likely decide the larger interest. Hopefully the AOKZOE AI will hit a nice price point to its power when it releases later this year.
