Portable consoles have resurfaced again Hand in hand with the Nintendo Switch, the Steam Deck and the variants that have reached the market from different integrators and also from large manufacturers such as ASUS, which has one of the most interesting in the Ally. It is rumored that Sony will return to this market with the PlayStation Vita 2 and surely that launch will be the final shock for these devices.
Orange Pi, the war brand of the Chinese Shenzhen Xunlong group, well known for alternative developments to Raspberry, wants to diversify its catalog and is preparing a handheld gaming machine that could be very interesting in terms of features/price.
The highest performance variant would use an x86 processor Ryzen 7 7840U with Radeon graphics, accompanied by 16 GB of RAM, 512 GB SSD for storage and Windows 11 as the operating system. There is talk of a sale price of 3,499 yuan, about 500 dollars to changea quite attractive price for the current market, but it is also possible that this is the price only for China and costs more in the international market.
There is also talk of an intermediate model with an AMD processor Ryzen 7 6800U which could cost about 360 dollars. The third and most economical model would change its architecture to ARN, with a model Rockchip RK3588S used in various single-board computers and could cost as little as $250.
The Orange Pi handheld console is expected to feature dual analog sticks, a D-Pad, action buttons, triggers, as well as two more buttons on the back of the device. In the images that have leaked so far, we see the Home and Select buttons, as well as what appears to be a menu, recent apps, or app switch buttons.
It will have a fan for active cooling, an ambient light sensor, a microphone and even a rear camera, unusual in this type of device. As for ports, we see a 3.5mm headphone jack, a microSD card reader, and three USB ports, at least one in Type-C format. Its price, not definitive, is quite good for its configuration. We will wait.
