Tuesday, March 26th 2024
Orange Pi Neo Launched in China - $599 & $499 Price Points Unveiled
The Orange Pi Neo handheld gaming PC was first exhibited in Europe earlier in the year—where the Manjaro Linux team handed out demo units to attendees of FOSDEM. The initial batch of Orange Pi Neo handhelds were specced with AMD's ubiquitous Ryzen 7 7840U "Phoenix" mobile APU, but a recent official launch event—in China—revealed a new-gen alternative. The Manjaro Linux social media account summarized this weekend presentation: "we launched Orange Pi Neo in Shenzhen. The Ryzen 7 7840U model (16 GB/512 GB) will be 4099 CNY / 499 USD and Ryzen 7 8840U (16 GB/512 GB) model starts at 4499 CNY / 599 USD."
The newly unveiled price points have been deemed quite reasonable and competitive—when lined up against the nearest competition. The Manjaro Linux distribution could be a sticking point for more discerning OS-heads, but alternative operating routes could be outlined by online communities in the near future. The $599 AMD "Hawk Point" Ryzen 7 8840U-based option seems to be slightly overpriced, when you consider the marginal performance improvements it levies when compared to the very similarly appointed Ryzen 7 7840U APU. The "modernized" processor nets you a more potent XDNA NPU, but both product generations house Team Red's Radeon 780M iGPU. Orange Pi and Manjaro are likely testing the waters with an initial Chinese market launch—we hope to see a wider global rollout in the coming months.
Sources:
ManjaroLinux Tweet, Neo Official Site, VideoCardz, Liliputing, NoteBookCheck, TakiUdon Tweet
The newly unveiled price points have been deemed quite reasonable and competitive—when lined up against the nearest competition. The Manjaro Linux distribution could be a sticking point for more discerning OS-heads, but alternative operating routes could be outlined by online communities in the near future. The $599 AMD "Hawk Point" Ryzen 7 8840U-based option seems to be slightly overpriced, when you consider the marginal performance improvements it levies when compared to the very similarly appointed Ryzen 7 7840U APU. The "modernized" processor nets you a more potent XDNA NPU, but both product generations house Team Red's Radeon 780M iGPU. Orange Pi and Manjaro are likely testing the waters with an initial Chinese market launch—we hope to see a wider global rollout in the coming months.
5 Comments on Orange Pi Neo Launched in China - $599 & $499 Price Points Unveiled
Otherwise, it comes back to the same story about AMD being convinced that 12CU is worth its weight in gold and must only be found in deserving premium build laptop designs.
it's not a big deal honestly, just frustrating.
As for handhelds either a higher sales volume and/or lower material cost has to exist for what they're doing to make sense.
imo competition wouldn't change AMD's strategy much either. It's not like 6800U/6900HS/7840U/7940HS was ever flying off the shelves and into new designs, or making a real dent in Intel's mobile market.
Case in point, Lenovo has the X series that as far as I know is Intel exclusive and performance generally sucks. AMD gets the Z-series and feature availability suck.