This liquid-cooled gaming handheld is all set to blow away the competition

While traditional Windows gaming handhelds, such as the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally, appear to be struggling with their releases, a new category of ultra-powerful handhelds has been surprisingly popular. The first was the GPD Win 5, which took the battery outside of the handheld and paired it with an unprecedented level of power in the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395. Now, another handheld is following suit, and it truly ups the ante.

The OneXFly Apex is an upcoming handheld with a massive 8-inch 120Hz VRR display, even larger than the 7-inch display on the GPD Win 5. This could be the same IPS display used on the MSI Claw 8 AI+ and Legion Go S. We loved the display in our review of the Legion Go S, although it’s not as premium as the 8.8-inch OLED panel in the upcoming Legion Go 2.

While this will make the device larger, it cleverly reduces extra weight by utilizing an external 85Wh battery. Presumably, this can clip onto the back of the device for handheld use, similar to the GPD Win 5, and it promises “external liquid cooling” to prevent heat throttling. This should make it much quieter than traditional fan cooling. However, the chipset draws a lot of power, and it will likely need to be plugged in most of the time.

The Apex will be powered by the same Ryzen AI Max+ 395, providing incredible power for a gaming handheld. One Netbook claims it offers “RTX 4070-class performance,” as well as local compatibility with DeepSeek 70B LLMs.

In any case, it offers up to 120W TDP, which is even higher than the 85W maximum on the GPD Win 5. Granted, you’ll never want to push that device that hard, and low TDP performance is a much better benchmark.

The OneXFly Apex will also support up to 128GB RAM (96GB VRAM) and dual PCIe 4.0 SSDs. One of the SSDs will be an internal m.2 2280, while the other will be an external Mini SSD. This new technology is very similar to a micro SD Express card, but with a slightly larger footprint and significantly faster speeds.

Some of these specs were revealed last month in the video at the top of the page, but the device appears to be closer to launch than ever. One Netbook will host a livestream tomorrow at 7 AM ET with the full device reveal. The company’s CEO will provide “a deep dive into the development, design, and groundbreaking features” of the upcoming product. The Indiegogo preview page is also live.

One detail that fans are eagerly awaiting is the price. The GPD Win 5 with an AI Max 395+ starts at nearly $1700 on Indiegogo. Despite this, it’s managed to raise nearly $1 million, with just over two days left in the campaign.

Aside from the livestream tomorrow, One Netbook also previewed its upcoming Windows gaming tablet, the Sugar X, in a new YouTube video. It will also feature the AI Max+ 395, but in a 2-in-1 form factor. The pre-launch page is now live on Kickstarter, although we still don’t know when it will go up for sale.