AYANEO NEXT 2 Is Back and Now Costs Up to $5,299

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The AYANEO NEXT 2 is back on sale, and its flagship configuration now costs $5,299. That’s roughly $1,000 more than the top model carried earlier this year, and it pushes a device you hold in two hands squarely into gaming desktop territory. If you were waiting for AYANEO’s most ambitious handheld to get cheaper, the opposite happened.

Price: $5,299
Where to Buy: Ayaneo

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What the new prices look like

AYANEO’s store now lists three NEXT 2 builds, and every one of them climbed. The entry model with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage sits at $2,999. The 64GB and 1TB version runs $3,699.

The range-topping 128GB and 2TB model is the headline number at $5,299, up from $4,299.

Rewind to the NEXT 2’s February 2026 debut and the jump is stark. Early orders opened from $1,799 for the base build, with the flagship at $3,499 for early backers and $4,299 at full retail. Right now the store shows the 64GB variant in stock while the other two read as sold out.

Why the price jumped

AYANEO isn’t hiding the reason. The company paused NEXT 2 sales earlier this year and told backers the handheld had become “unsustainable” as RAM costs climbed, and the broader memory shortage keeps squeezing the entire PC market. A machine you can spec with up to 128GB of LPDDR5X memory feels that pressure harder than most.

Nothing new arrived to earn the increase. The hardware matches what launched in February, it simply costs more to build today, and that cost lands on the buyer.

The hardware behind the price

On paper the NEXT 2 is a monster. AMD’s Ryzen AI Max+ 395 “Strix Halo” chip anchors the lineup, while the cheapest build steps down to the Ryzen AI Max 385. The flagship silicon pairs 16 Zen 5 cores and 32 threads with boost clocks up to 5.1GHz, built on a 4nm process.

Graphics come from an integrated Radeon 8060S with 40 RDNA 3.5 compute units running up to 2.9GHz, and AYANEO targets a sustained power draw as high as 85W, desktop-class appetite for a portable. The company says that setup pushes graphics close to a discrete GPU, while a built-in XDNA 2 NPU rated at up to 126 TOPS handles AI workloads.

The screen is a 9.06 inch OLED at 2400 by 1504 with a 165Hz refresh rate and brightness that climbs to around 1,155 nits, so it keeps pace with the chip and stays readable in a bright room. A battery rated near 116 Wh feeds the package, which helps explain why the NEXT 2 tips the scales close to 1.4kg and stretches to roughly 342mm wide.

Inputs get the same maximalist treatment: two touchpads, Hall Effect thumbsticks, an 8-way D-pad, and a set of four rear buttons you can remap to taste. Dual fans handle cooling, WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 cover connectivity, front stereo speakers handle sound, and AYANEO’s own AYASpace software ties it together. This is the company building the most complete handheld it can and letting the price follow.

How it stacks up

The NEXT 2 lands in a small club of Strix Halo handhelds that includes the GPD Win 5 and the OneXPlayer X1 Pro, alongside larger rivals like the ROG Xbox Ally X. What sets it apart is scale: a 9 inch class OLED and a battery this big make it one of the biggest portables in the category, closer to a compact laptop than a pocket console.

That ambition comes with trade-offs. At close to 1.4kg it’s heavy for long handheld sessions, and the sticker price now rivals a full gaming rig. AYANEO has already moved the NEXT 2 into mass production and begun global shipping, so these prices are what buyers pay today, not a future promise.

Why it matters

The NEXT 2 has turned into a barometer for how far enthusiast hardware pricing has drifted. At $5,299 the top build costs more than a strong gaming desktop and a monitor combined, for something that slips into a backpack.

For most players the read is straightforward. Premium handheld pricing is climbing fast, memory costs are the main culprit, and if those costs hold at current levels, other makers could follow AYANEO up the ladder.

Price: $5,299
Where to Buy: Ayaneo

So if you’ve had your eye on a high-end handheld, the sharper move is buying sooner rather than later, or dropping to a saner tier that won’t rearrange your budget.