A new family of powerful handheld gaming consoles have been announced. And this time it is from a company we haven’t heard a lot about in this scene: Orange Pi.
Orange Pi primarily deals in open-source microcomputer boards ready for use in a wide variety of devices. And one device type that would make great use of their boards are handheld gaming consoles.
According to news coming out of Chinese language sites, they intend to create their own handheld console. And it will come in a few distinct configurations.
Original Source: Neon Rabbit Article
Orange Pi Handhelds
The first and most powerful of the Orange Pi handheld family is a Windows based unit with an AMD 7840U CPU 16+512GB.
Update May 5, 2023: OrangePi replied to our article on Twitter indicating that our information is correct, except pricing has yet to be confirmed. Some in the handheld community felt the pricing reported by Neon Rabbit was quite low for the hardware. Which was both a source of excitement for some and also contention for others. So we would like to emphasize that until Orange Pi makes their official announcement, we just do not know for sure. We reached out for details, but they have not replied. Some details of early "leak" articles may not be fact until confirmed.
This premium model will sell for 3000 yuan, which is about $430usd.
A more affordable AMD 6800U based unit will also be available at 2000 yuan ($290usd).
Orange Pi also wants to make a Rockchip RK3588S CPU iteration for 1500 yuan ($215usd).
This RK3588S chip is capable of supporting a dual-boot environment, which means that this version of the handheld will be able to run both Linux and Android.
All three configurations are quite powerful for a gaming handheld and should outperform a lot of the competition.
And with those affordable prices, these new devices are looking quite appealing.
Handheld Design
All three variations of this new handheld would make use of the same design that was presented by Orange Pi today on Chinese social media sites.
The Orange Pi handhelds will feature a giant 7 inch display, alternating analogue stick positions, and two macro buttons on the back.
Thankfully, the Orange Pi handhelds also feature a full dpad, which already makes it a step ahead of some recent handhelds released. And they also use the YXBA button configuration, further suggesting an appreciation of retro.
The handheld has active cooling, it’ll need it with all that power. And it also has a camera on the back. Interesting indeed.
The design shares a lot in common with the AYANEO 2 and appears in a black and orange colorway, as well as an all black design.
Early Thoughts
The details about the Orange Pi handhelds remain a little convoluted, since they are mainly being shared on Chinese language websites. And a lot of the details are coming from Chinese language DMs.
So it’s tough to say what’s what.
We do like to have more information when dropping our early impressions articles for new handhelds. But the info just isn’t there yet.
The design images do appear to be quite real, so it’s safe to bet that more details will be coming soon.
The word is that Orange Pi intends to have these devices ready by China’s National Day, which is October 1st.
We may be a bit early on this one, but we wanted to let you know that you’ll need to set aside a bit of cash around October.
Surely we will have more details released between now and then, and we will absolutely let you know anything we hear.
