The new high-end PC handhelds are imminent— the presale window of OneXPlayer's OneXFly F1 Pro handheld, the world's first AMD Ryzen AI 300-based handheld gaming PC, is here and open through the end of November per the official OneXPlayer store listing.
The OneXFly F1 Pro should give the Asus ROG Ally X and its ilk of Ryzen Z1 Extreme/Ryzen 7 8840U, particularly its Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 model. However, even the Ryzen AI 9 365 model can outperform the last generation while sparring Watt-to-Watt, which we'll explain in more detail soon.
For now, prospective buyers should know that of the six OneXFly F1 Pro configurations available from OneXPlayer in presale, there are only two models—one with Ryzen AI 9 365 and one with Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. The two Ryzen AI 9 365 models differ only in storage capacity (1 TB or 2 TB) and start at $1,099, while the four Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 models scale from 1 TB to 4 TB storage and 32 GB to 64 GB RAM and start at $1,339.
*Note: Ryzen AI 9 365's Zen 5 configuration has 4 Zen 5 cores and 6 Zen 5C cores. Ryzen AI 9 HX 370's Zen 5 configuration is 4 Zen 5 cores and 8 Zen 5C cores.
Beyond raw specifications pointing toward the capacity to provide a significant amp for the coming year of new AMD handhelds, the OneXFly F1 Pro also offers a 7-inch OLED display capable of 800 nits brightness, which should be suitable for HDR and high-contrast scenes in general.
The Steam Deck OLED's screen reaches 1000 nits but is only 90 Hz and operates at a much lower 1280 x 800 resolution. Still, the trade-offs OneXPlayer made here for resolution and refresh rate would be helpful in some titles. At this screen size, resolution scaling can more than compensate for the high-resolution display in more intensive games, particularly with improved FSR support across Windows and Linux alike.
While it is worth noting that the most thorough benchmarking of the OneXFly F1 Pro is currently only available from OneXPlayer themselves, the results provided are perfectly in line with what we expect from the specifications of the handheld. The most impressive gains really might be in the Ryzen AI 9 365 model— not only is it able to outperform its predecessors watt-for-watt, but its Radeon 880M iGPU has the same number of compute units as the last-gen Radeon 780M, highlighting the improvements from RDNA 3 to RDNA 3.5.
Display and performance characteristics considered, the OneXFly F1 Pro quickly becomes a contender for the top dog of the handheld PC market until competitive options with similar internals start popping up. This handheld is only lacking compared to high-end models, such as OCuLink or similar eGPU support. While USB4 ports are nice, they won't quite reach the throughput and latency required for a great external GPU gaming experience. So, using OneXFly F1 Pro as a dockable handheld gaming PC for more power will work, but maybe not to the extent you'd hope at this price point.
Finally, that presale pricing starts at $1,099 or $1,399 depending on CPU— are these performance gains worth all the extra money you'll spend over the Asus ROG Ally X, which starts at $799? Is the Asus ROG Ally X even worth all the extra money you must pay over Steam Deck OLED, which starts at $549 when you have to plug it in to get extra frames? We can't make those value conclusions for you, but we can give you the information you need to decide for yourself. If you want the best handheld PC performance currently available and don't mind the diminishing returns in frames per dollar, we recommend securing a presale OneXFly F1 Pro while you can.
Everyone else should likely wait for further reviews or more competition, though it's worth noting that each model's price will increase once the presale period has ended.
