There’s a surprising new entrant into the world of the handheld gaming PC, with none other than one of the oldest names in PC cases and components joining the party. Yes, Antec has decided to try its hand at taking on Valve with a new Steam Deck rival called the Antec Core HS.
Less surprising is the fact that this new competitor in the best handheld gaming PC space isn’t actually being manufactured by Antec, but is in fact just a rebranded version of the Ayaneo Slide.
That means that what you get here is a handheld device that’s similar in size and form factor to most existing Steam Deck rivals but with two main differences. The first is that the screen slides up to reveal a keyboard, just like you used to get on old Windows Mobile phones. This means you don’t have to rely on a touchscreen keyboard for text input, and you can use full keyboard commands for those games that benefit from them.
The other big difference is that the Antec Core HS / Ayaneo Slide doesn’t use the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme chip used in the Asus ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go, but instead uses a Ryzen 7 7840U chip. It sports many of the same specs, with an eight-core/16-thread CPU and a GPU with 12 compute units, but it isn’t quite the same exact chip.
Perhaps the biggest indication of its potential difference/drawback compared to the Z1 Extreme is demonstrated in the TDP rating of the Slide, which is given at 15-28W. This compares to 9-30W for the ROG Ally and 4-15W for the Steam Deck, suggesting this chip isn’t as well optimized for low power consumption.
The Antec Core HS will differentiate itself from the Ayaneo Slide with a slightly different color scheme, but will otherwise be an identical device. Meanwhile, its price is set to sit between $600 and $900, depending on configuration, according to a report on Taiwanese site LTN.
There isn’t any mention of quite when the Antec Core HS will be available, but given it’s based on an existing product that has been out since September 2023, we’d expect it to arrive quite soond. Meanwhile, if you simply can’t wait to get playing your games on the best handheld around, check out the Steam Deck OLED, which is our favorite right now.