Per several updates released across Ayaneo's portfolio of Indiegogo pages, a wide range of Ayaneo's old and current offerings are slated to receive an upgrade to the AMD 'Hawk Point' Ryzen 7 8840U. However, the nature of this "upgrade" is quite interesting, because Ayaneo isn't just refreshing existing models with slightly newer CPUs — Ayaneo is also offering a path to fully replacing an old handheld's motherboard with a new one, at a much lower cost than buying a new unit entirely. This is a pretty environmentally friendly and consumer-friendly move on Ayaneo's part, but is already pretty confusing, so we crafted an upgrade / refresh availability table.
Ayaneo Handhelds and Ryzen 7 8840U Upgrade Options
*Ayaneo is currently running a lower-price promo on the 2S' Indiegogo. Indiegogo pricing for Ayaneo units will generally be lower than the retail pricing used in this table.
So, before we proceed any further, it's important to clarify one thing. If you already own an Ayaneo handheld with a Ryzen 7840U, you really have no major reason to spend this much money on an upgrade even if it's a lot cheaper than buying a whole new refresh. The Ryzen 7 7840U and Ryzen 7 8840U are near-identical besides the addition of a stronger AI NPU in the latter, which will likely support a future version of FSR, but for now doesn't really do much. Unless you really like Copilot, I guess.
That said, this upgrade path — especially the motherboard replacement path for Geek 1S and Geek 6800U that otherwise aren't getting refreshed models — still draws our interest. The 6800U is most of the way to an 8840U, but its lacking power efficiency hurts it a lot when you wish to preserve handheld battery life.
Hopefully, this move from Ayaneo isn't just a one-time thing. Ayaneo's chaotic pipeline of constant handheld crowdfunding and releases could use more thoughtful initiatives like this to help ensure that early investors aren't left behind, or left with unwanted e-waste. For example, if some of these models can still get motherboard upgrades with AMD's proper next-generation APUs, then we might really be cooking— but this is still quite nice.
