OneXPlayer OneXFly F1 Pro review

I'm a smitten kitten. And it's nothing to do with the fetching red clothing of the version of the new OneXFly F1 Pro I've been testing, either. Which is a good job, because this Evangelion EVA-02 version isn't available outside of China, so if that was the real kicker you guys would be out of luck.

No, the real kicker is that this is the first gaming handheld PC I've used, held, or tested that sports AMD's latest APU, the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370—the chip whose name I can rarely get right on the first try. Seriously, it's a curse, and I only ever remember the first bit because I know it's AMD desperately trying to make 'Ryzen AI' happen. Stop trying to make Ryzen AI happen.

The Strix Point silicon is a bit of a game-changer for handhelds, especially when you start to factor in all the other extras AMD has crafted that really play into the literal hands of PC gamers. Radeon Anti-Lag and Fluid Motion Frames 2 really are the key ones for handheld gaming, but also any game which sports FSR3 and its own per-game frame generation implementations, too.

Those are what sets the OneXFly F1 Pro apart from any other gaming handheld you could care to mention, because of how the HX 370 extends performance over the competition. Mind you, the $1,339 price tag will also set it apart. That's the sort of money that will get you a full RTX 4070 Super gaming PC and still leave you change enough to buy yourself a decent 1080p gaming monitor, too. So yeah, you've got to really want the form factor and performance to consider dropping that sort of cash on a handheld.

But mobile gaming is expensive; high-end handheld PCs doubly so. That's where Valve came in and played a blinder with the Steam Deck; it took Nintendo's Switch smarts, picked a lower spec chip, and stuck to a price point. Asus and Lenovo, with their own manufacturing might, have managed to bring prices down for their own performance devices, but smaller scale manufacturers, such as OneXPlayer and Ayaneo, seemingly cannot compete on that front and so you get pricing that feels way beyond acceptable.

What you are getting in the OneXFly F1 Pro, however, is a stellar little gaming device with performance to match its aesthetics. Though it is worth saying these are the same aesthetics with which the original OneXFly F1 was adorned.

That is no bad thing, because the slightly rubberised texture and smooth curves of the chassis feel great in the hands. And, while it is relatively weighty—coming in around the 600 g mark—its ergonomics and balance make it feel like one of the best designed handhelds I've used. It's created for the gaming long-haul and I've not had any of the hand cramping I get with the Steam Deck or other larger devices.

Okay, I say it's created for the long-haul, but that sadly does not extend to the OneXFly's battery. I want to get it out of the way up front, this is the biggest issue with an otherwise beautiful little gaming handheld: the battery life. Outside of the upgraded APU, the 48.5 Wh battery was the only thing that I really wanted to change from the original design. It's far too small to deliver a convincing long-term gaming experience with the OneXFly.

Basically, you are absolutely going to need to get yourself an external power pack to be able to enjoy this thing for more than an hour and forty reliably. I wish there had been a way to fit a higher capacity battery in that chassis, but it's so tightly packed in there that ain't going to happen.

The good news is that the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (oof, nailed it first time) absolutely slaps inside a handheld gaming PC. From our time testing it in laptop form, that's come as no surprise, but I will say the level of gaming performance you can get out of it running at just 15 W is pretty jaw-dropping. Sure, that's only made real by the twin pillars of upscaling and frame generation, but being able to hit between 43 and 52 fps in Star Wars: Outlaws at an upscaled 1080p resolution feels great.

Especially when, running at the same 15 W level with the same settings, the original OneXFly F1—with its Ryzen 7 7840U APU—is only capable of knocking around the low 20s in the fps stakes.

That sort of performance delta looked unlikely, however, when I was first doing my comparative testing against the older Ryzen APU. Looking at most of our gaming performance numbers and you'll see that in general you're only getting a handful of fps between them, the same is true even when you start throwing in upscaling, too.

There's the odd outlier, such as F1 24 and Hitman, where you're looking at around a 10 fps margin in favour of the Strix Point handheld, which is definitely more significant. But otherwise the 16 compute units of the Radeon 890M inside the HX 370 APU, compared with the 12 compute units of the Radeon 780M GPU of the Ryzen 7 7840U (and 8840U), don't seem to amount to a hill of beans/frames in most games.

Where that changes is when you enable frame generation in any form. Instantly there's a bigger performance delta, and especially so when you start to pull back on the power you let the APU draw in the first place. I feel that's largely because the CPU cores in the F1 Pro are running pretty slowly in the grand scheme of things; where it's capable of 5.3 GHz boost clocks, when pushed the F1 Pro is mostly just running around the 3.3 GHz mark and below.

It's not like the games are going to be CPU-limited on the new OneXFly, but the use of frame generation helps take the load off the CPU a little and lets those extra compute units make more of a difference when it comes to gaming performance.

The main takeaway, though, is that you can be running most games at 15 W, with either per-game frame generation or Fluid Motion Frame 2, and see great gaming performance that is both smooth and responsive.

However, even at 15 W in Star Wars: Outlaws I was seeing the battery drain at almost exactly 1% per minute. That's going to get me more game time than the PCMark gaming benchmark delivers at 30 W—in testing that's just 68 mins—but crucially not twice as much.

It's worth saying that not every game is going to be as intensive as Star Wars: Outlaws or a modern 3D title, such as Elden Ring. Throw something more lightweight, such as OlliOlli World or Lonely Mountains Downhill, into the mix and you're going to see that battery life stretch much farther.

The new AMD APU is one of the main reasons I'm so smitten with the OneXPlayer F1 Pro, but not the only one. That 7-inch 144 Hz OLED panel has also got my attention. Running at 50 % brightness it's still got plenty about it, and throwing it all the way up makes it look just stunning because of that 800 cd/m² peak luminance. The contrast is obviously exquisite, but the colours also sing, and both the refresh and OLED response time make gaming feel great, too.

I've also got the 32 GB RAM / 1 TB SSD version of the F1 Pro in for testing, which makes it a very good PC, too. Combined with the fact that the Acer SSD in question is pretty rapid (7,300 MB/s and 6,600 MB/s for sequential read/write performance) and that you get two USB4 Type-C connections and a full-size USB 3.0 Type-A port on top, you could happily dock this bad boi to a monitor and have a fully functional PC without much messing around at all.

People will keep saying what a mess Windows 11 is on a handheld, and while yeah, it's not a touchscreen OS—especially not on a small-screen—set the thing up to boot directly into Steam's Big Picture mode and you're not a million miles off SteamOS functionally.

The F1 Pro has all the extra configurable physical buttons you could want, the OneXConsole application has matured a lot and, while it's still not as user-friendly as the excellent Ayaneo software, it's got all the functionality, especially now there are performance profiles you can make and switch to on the fly.

It's also a size that delights, too. I liked the Ayaneo Kun for its big screen and extra touchpads, but it's a lump to lug about. With the OneXFly it's just the size of that 7-inch OLED screen and the pads either side. The bezels are slim and the device relatively diminutive, if a little chunky. But, y'know, reassuringly chunky.

So yes, you can colour me a big fan of the new OneXFly F1 Pro. For me it's one of the best handheld gaming PCs I've used, combining functionality with form and performance. I love the fact I can scale back the APU to such an extent and still get great gaming performance out of the device, and it is absolutely my favourite aesthetic of all the handhelds I've used. Though, to be fair, the gorgeous Ayaneo Flip DS has a lot of appeal, too.

But there are still two big things letting the OneXFly F1 Pro down: the sky-high price and the weak, weak battery. With an external power pack you can combat one of those, but there's nothing anyone but OneXPlayer can do about the other.