AOKZOE A1 Professional

The AOKZOE A1 Professional is a handheld gaming PC within the mould of the Asus ROG Ally, sporting primarily the identical wonderful AMD processor and an even bigger display screen, however with out among the restrictive Asus-ness the Ally suffered with. Does that make this the last word gaming handheld, properly… I would like to say sure, however y’know, it is nonetheless Home windows.

Earlier than the Steam Deck launched, manner earlier than Asus’ Ally discovered its manner into our arms, there have been the Onexplayer and Aya handheld gaming PCs. And so they had been okay. Let’s be sincere, built-in graphics has lengthy been too poor to get any actually acceptable gaming body charges from an onboard chip, and when most of those techniques have traditionally been utilizing Intel processors you had been at all times going to be on a hiding to slideshow-level gaming efficiency.

So, thanks AMD, for placing some real efforts into your iGPUs. The final era of Ryzen 6000U-series processors had been respectable, and delivered an okay expertise, however with the discharge of each the Ryzen Z1 Excessive and Ryzen 7 7840U chips issues have taken a dramatic flip for the higher.

That was highlighted first by the ROG Ally, and now the AOKZOE A1 Professional, delivering real 1080p gaming efficiency. Or on this case, real 1200p gaming efficiency. Yeah, I am really loving that we’re getting extra 16:10 panels.

However, who the hell is AOKZOE? Truthfully, I am not fully certain. It appears to be an offshoot of the One-netbook firm that additionally runs the Onexplayer handhelds. Which appears a little bit odd as these are primarily competing merchandise. Nonetheless, they share the identical software program, as a result of this A1 Professional ships with the OneXConsole app to offer you entry to system settings through an overlay.

The AMD Ryzen 7 7840U chip on the coronary heart of the A1 Professional is successfully the identical because the Z1 Excessive—it sports activities eight Zen 4 processor cores, with 16 threads, and may reliably hit 5.1GHz below single core load. Most significantly, it comes with the RDNA 3-based Radeon 780M built-in GPU inside it. With 12 compute models it is not like some monster desktop card, however it’s a really succesful graphics chip for 1080p-level gaming as long as you are wise with the in-game settings. 

It additionally comes with as much as 64GB of LPDDR5 and 2TB of SSD storage. Admittedly that is overkill in a handheld, and the 16GB / 1TB spec I have been testing completely works for me. Although, it must be mentioned, AOKZOE is now solely transport 32GB of RAM at least, with the bottom spec, $999 model being a 32GB machine with a 512GB SSD. The 16GB model in my arms is an early prototype system forward of the complete transport product going into the wild. Nevertheless it’s the identical chassis because the older AOKZOE A1, and due to this fact just about a identified amount.

That pricing is without doubt one of the drawbacks of the A1 Professional, nevertheless, now the discounted pre-purchase value has gone up from the preliminary $799 base worth. It is considerably greater than the ROG Ally, and you should buy that at the moment for simply $699. At that worth the Asus system is a shoo in for the win up towards the top-end Steam Deck, however the AOKZOE at $999 is harder to justify.

However its design does have some important high quality of life advantages over each the Ally and the Steam Deck. Although it does nonetheless ship with Home windows 11 and that’s by no means a handheld OS. Within the Ally, Armoury Crate does a surprisingly good job at mitigating quite a lot of Home windows’ handheld/touchscreen foibles, however the OneXConsole software program is actually a bit extra clunky.

The overlay is fairly efficient, and it offers you easy shortcuts for enabling Radeon Tremendous Decision, altering the ability limits of the APU, and many others. However the game library which is about to open as default would not have the fashion or utility of both Armoury Crate or Steam’s Large Image mode. Valve and the OneXConsole really conflict when you set the machine in addition into Large Image mode for that Steam Deck expertise.

However the {hardware} is superb, and for me that is crucial factor as a result of the software program will be tweaked and tailor-made to your particular wants. 

As a result of One-netbook/AOKZOE has been making handhelds for some time now, and the Steam Deck has helped spotlight the ergonomic wants of such a tool, the design of the A1 Professional is basically efficient. And that is largely all the way down to the bodily controls and connections on the system itself. 

The solitary USB Sort-C ports on each the Ally and Deck are literally fairly restrictive, both if you’re working in handheld mode and wish to cost and use a tough drive, or simply wish to stick some recordsdata on there. The A1 Professional is way extra properly catered for when it comes to ports. Hell, there’s even a trad Sort-A port on high in addition to two Sort-C USB connections.

I suppose if you’ve acquired a fatter chassis that is okay, and the A1 Professional actually has that. It is chonkier than each the Deck and Ally, however truthfully would not really feel restrictively weightier, or extra awkward in-hand due to it. That chonkiness additionally permits it to cope with the thermals of the AMD APU impressively properly, higher than the Ally actually. Although, in equity, the Asus machine is working its Z1 Excessive chip at increased multi-core clock speeds than the 7840U chip within the A1 Professional, with 3.85GHz vs. 3.5GHz when all cores are taxed.

That efficient cooling would not come at the price of noise, both. The A1 Professional is impressively quiet and handed the sitting-on-the-couch-next-to-my-partner check, and will definitely go the Ridley prepare embarrassment check, too.

The A1 Professional has a choice of helpful buttons arrayed across the 8-inch 1920 x 1200 show. There are the usual begin and choose buttons up high, across the offset Xbox structure controls, in addition to one that can instantly take you to the Home windows desktop, and one that may carry up the onscreen keyboard with one press and allow the left thumbstick to behave because the mouse enter with a protracted press.

Beneath that’s the ‘Turbo’ button, which is definitely simply the important thing that can carry up the OneXConsole overlay.

The game controls themselves are superb, and I had no subject with the sleek thumbsticks, the usual game buttons, or the shoulder buttons. The triggers are a little bit oddly positioned, and imply you do not really press them together with your fingertips, however that did not actually influence my gaming. The d-pad is not nice although; there is a noticeable and annoying clicking sound when it resets after you press in a given course.

As you’d anticipate from seeing the ROG Ally in motion, the game efficiency could be very related. There’s possibly a pair frames per second in it at most, however for all intents and functions you are getting nice gaming efficiency when you keep on with 1080p medium settings in even essentially the most demanding of recent video games.

1080p medium settings

System efficiency

I’ve had a blast getting again into Elden Ring with each the Ally and now the A1 Professional. It runs nice at excessive settings even on the decrease 15W stage, and though I want the intense display screen of the ROG handheld, the additional peak of the 16:10 panel, and its general additional dimension (8-inch vs. 7-inch) make a giant distinction for me. Utilizing it in brilliant daylight was the one time I used to be craving for the brighter Asus display screen.

As it is a Home windows-based machine, and one with an eight-core CPU and 16GB (or 32GB) of reminiscence, it is a actually efficient desktop PC if you select to dock it. Meaning you possibly can run at 28W mode with impunity, with the responsive AMD cores making utilizing the A1 Professional as a standard pc a genuinely pleasant expertise.

And, as a result of it is not restricted to utilizing a proprietary exterior GPU dock, you possibly can plumb it into any good graphics field. That offers you the choice to run it as a full desktop machine—with the potential for upgradeable graphics playing cards down the road—when at residence, after which untether it for some sofa-based handheld enjoyable, or gaming whilst you journey.

That is the utility of those newest handheld gaming PCs; their core elements are robust sufficient that they’ll arise as full techniques, and Home windows then comes into its personal as a well-known, well-supported, (principally) straightforward to us OS.

However, just like the ROG Ally, you’ll come up towards Home windows-based bugs, where the bundled handheld software program would not fairly marry up with Microsoft’s OS. Typically the overlay wont sit excessive of a game, and can dump you again to the desktop, and even in 2023 that sort of pseudo Alt-tabbing can nonetheless crash a game in a trice. Typically you will simply get bounced round between totally different workspaces if you open an app to the purpose where you will really feel whiplash.

It is a ache, however all that typically disappears as soon as you’ve got stopped messing round together with your settings and your setup and are simply gaming. Once you’re absorbed in video games in your 8-inch 1200p display screen, every little thing else melts away. And that is where a gaming handheld like this shines.

The opposite factor that pleases me concerning the A1 Professional is the battery. You may’t even get a full hour out of the Ally’s 40Wh battery, whereas the 65Wh within the AOKZOE will internet you a simple 90 minutes. That is good gaming laptop computer ranges, and in addition when you’re working completely at 28W mode. Clock all the way down to 15W and you continue to get respectable efficiency and also you’re now taking a look at almost two hours forty minutes of game time.

That may solely get you to this point right into a flight, however it is going to a minimum of get you off the tarmac. So yeah, on a protracted journey you are still going to want some battery packs to see you thru.

However would I pay the A1 Professional premium? Coming again to that worth is a sticking level for me when you’ve got each the Steam Deck and ROG Ally in play. If you’d like an inexpensive handheld gaming PC the Deck’s 64GB and 256GB choices are nonetheless tempting, and the ROG Ally has the additional AMD efficiency for simply $699. 

At $999 that is much more cash to pay for an even bigger (although duller) display screen, double the RAM, and a few additional USB ports. I actually just like the system, and I am impressed with the {hardware} and the general design of the A1 Professional, however the ROG Ally remains to be the one I would really wish to spend my cash on.