In a nutshell: Antec is stepping into the mobile gaming arena. The company best known for PC cases has introduced the Core HS, a handheld gaming PC sporting a familiar design. The system packs a 6-inch, 1080p (368 PPI, 400 nits of brightness) IPS display that covers 100 percent of the sRGB color space and 85 percent of the DCI-P3 gamut. Under the hood is a Ryzen 7 7840U mated to your choice of 16GB or 32GB of LPDDR5X and up to a 2TB SSD (M.2 2280, can be swapped out for up to a 4TB drive).
AMD's Ryzen 7 7840U features 8 cores / 16 threads with a base clock of 3.3 GHz that can boost up to 5.1 GHz. It's built on TSMC's 4nm FinFET technology, and utilizes Radeon 780M graphics with 12 cores running at 2,700 MHz.
Under the sliding display is a full QWERTY keyboard with RGB lighting. You also get Hall-sensing joysticks, linear Hall effect triggers, a six-axis gyroscope, force feedback, a pair of USB4 Type-C ports, a power button with integrated fingerprint reader, and a 12,000mAh battery. Wireless connectivity includes Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2, and there's also an SD card reader for expanded storage.
The sliding display and physical keyboard design looks a lot like the old T-Mobile Sidekick from yesteryear. And if you're thinking you've seen this setup on another handheld PC, you'd be exactly right.
The Antec Core HS appears to be little more than a rebranded Ayaneo Slide, but the big difference here is in pricing. Antec's 16GB variant – in your choice of black or white – currently commands $499. That's a full $200 less than the white Ayaneo option, and $300 cheaper than the black model with the same RAM and storage capacities.
What are your thoughts on the Antec Core HS? I'm struggling a bit with the need for a full physical keyboard on a handheld gaming PC, but perhaps I'm missing the point?
Antec Core HS handheld gaming PC rocks sliding display and full keyboard, starts at $499
