This is the OneXPlayer OneXFly Apex, the
fastest [snorts] gaming handheld in the world. But, we're
not going to look at that just yet because I want to look AT THIS, THE
FROST BAY, a water cooling unit that
takes it from 80 watts TDP all the way
up to a whopping 120
What is handheld about this?
This is a whole freaking water cooling setup. You got your radiator. You've got
your Seriously, you ripped off the Cooler
Master logo and called it Cooler Doctor?
Fill port.
Wait. Wait.
No. Ain't no way. I mean, that's all that's
in here other than of course this quick connect water cooling tube thing.
Rotates counterclockwise to lock, that is counter [music]
intuitive. Now, [laughter] let's have a look at the Apex. I'm
legitimately so excited to check this thing out. It's a direct competitor to
the GPD Win 5, which I've been really enjoying. I played through just about
all of Expedition 33 on it and I had an amazing experience thanks to the up to
Ryzen AI Max 395 Plus processor. That
thing is an absolute monster. I'm talking 16 Zen 5 CPU cores, 32 threads,
8,000 mega transfer per second LPDDR5X
memory, which matters a lot because of the Radeon 860S GPU. You can run AAA
games on this handheld on its 8-in 1200p
display at like [music] high settings.
And I got to say
I think they actually kind of nailed the ergonomics for it. To be clear this is a
heavy handheld and I don't even have a
battery attached to it yet. But, it's quite holdable for an 8-in.
All right, let's have a look at the inputs and outputs, shall we? We've got
capacitive joysticks, pretty satisfying feeling clicky D-pad.
Ooh, I really like the face buttons, too.
Nice clicky micro switch style but with a little bit of travel before you get to
the click. I ooh, I really like that. It's almost like a like a hybrid
approach. Hall effect triggers that have a
hair trigger switch. That's not the most responsive hair
trigger switch I've ever seen but it's not bad. Very reachable shoulders.
Actually love the ergonomics of that. Along the top, we've got a headphone
jack, fingerprint sensing power button, volume rocker, USB-A, barrel jack. Okay,
we're going to have to talk about power profiles and charging quite a bit and a
USB 4 port that does 40 gigabit per second and can charge but
Okay, I guess we're going to get into it a little bit now.
>> [clears throat] >> The device is limited to 55 watts TDP
while we're plugged into that. What's this?
>> [gasps] >> All right. So, the water cooling's actually
optional. You can get it with or without
and then if you get the water cooling add-on, you can buy the Frost Bay for
another $200, which I mean
it's not a little bit but it's also not a lot for an external water cooling bay.
It doesn't seem outlandish. Also on the back here
got a couple paddle buttons and
Oh, interesting. Did OneXPlayer use the
same battery interface as GPD? It looks
extremely similar but apparently is not quite the
same. That's actually a bit of a disappointment. I'd prefer they were the
same. Along the bottom, we've got another type C port, a micro SD slot and
then speaking of copying homework, a mini SSD slot. There aren't a lot of
options for occupying this but Biwin makes one and it can be found in up to 2
terabyte capacities and is much faster than a micro SD card. What else is in
the box? Now, let's talk about that battery.
Woo! She was already a little on the heavier
side. Now, she's even heavier. This is an 85
watt hour battery that um unfortunately,
at the highest wattage that this thing can run at
is not actually going to last you that long. To their credit though, OneXPlayer
did what I would have liked GPD to do and they put a kickstand on the battery
so you can actually use a kickstand with this thing.
Wow, more copied homework. This is pretty much the same like interface.
I suspect that OneXPlayer knows that not
many people are going to buy this water cooled option unless they're planning to
use this like functionally as a desktop,
which you could. I mean, it's a Ryzen AI Max 395 Plus.
Uh This is new. It's a hex driver.
That ooh ooh ooh, Phillips head? Ooh,
flathead? Yeah, I think we've got better screwdrivers at lttstore.com. Dude,
trick seven is so cool. I just wish so expensive. And I also wish that
OneXPlayer was using the newly announced skews that have lesser CPUs but still
have the full fat GPU. But, unfortunately, I have to assume that
development was done on this unit before those were announced.
There we go.
Here we go.
Not going to lie. I'm into it.
Okay, this is pretty clever. So, this is the
air cooled version, which costs a little bit less cuz it doesn't include the
water block. Right? There's your Ryzen AI Max down there. Pretty standard, you
know, handheld layout at this point. Then, you just take the top
of that cold plate for the CPU
and you just hack this copper plate on it. This will allow you to assist the
integrated air cooler by pulling heat directly off of over top of the chip
here. You know what this handheld needed? More weight.
Apparently, this thing's about 70 g. So, if you're not going to use the external
water cooler, I wouldn't opt for that uh version of it.
Okay. You know what? That's not that bad.
One fan, one piece of tape and I can get
at a full 80 mm M.2.
I I'm okay [music] with it. I'm okay with it. That's not bad. I think you
could get a double-sided SSD in here but you'd be putting more pressure on this
ribbon cable than I would be comfortable with. It's not the sort of thing that I
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linked down below. Oh, now seems like a good time to address that like the Win
5, there is an umbilical cord option. You have to pay extra for it in this
case but it allows you to run the battery separately with just like a lead
to it. I kind of thought that was silly back
when I did my unboxing of the Win 5 but when I was using it for a period of a
couple months actually, I found myself almost exclusively using it that way cuz
it turns out that having all this weight hanging off your hands
it's just it's not great.
This kickstand helps a fair bit. It would make me more likely to care about
having the battery attached but
Wow, is this over a kilo with the battery on it cuz it feels like it's
over a kilo. And also there's a little bit of play
in this attachment.
Doesn't feel reassuring, you know? Think what I would probably do is put
like a a higher I see they've already done it but I would put a bigger foam
sticker here so you like really compress that so it doesn't move around. Oh, I
haven't shown you guys the power brick yet.
Dude, this is the unboxing that never ends, man.
Is that an XT60?
Yep. Everyone knows I was kidding when I talked about using XT60s for PC power,
right? You have got
to be kidding me here.
One X >> [laughter]
>> One X Player advertises up to 240
watts of charging off of this GAN brick
and XT60 connector.
And is this is this only a 3-ft cable? I mean, I
guess being an XT60, you can kind of mod any cable you want, but this is This is
not a very good handheld experience,
ladies and gentlemen. Like, look at this. I have to get that all the way to the
top of the device. What the Sam heck were they thinking
putting this short cable on it? They were thinking you put it into the Frost
Bay first. Does it matter which one's which?
They're not labeled. Okay, okay, so it's just >> It's just literally a power
pass-through. Okay. >> pass-through then. This is also not great. This is an extremely short cable.
Okay, we'll get to the We'll get to the Frost Bay later. First, I want to see
this thing in its maximum performance
glory. By the way, it's worth noting that while it supports 240-watt
charging, like basically any device, it
only does that for a little while, and it especially only does that for a
little while before really settling down.
You know, in theory, a capacitive joystick is a
really high-quality way to
build a joystick. [music] Unfortunately, this is about the
cheapest-feeling implementation that I've ever felt. The responsiveness of it
is great. The feel is not. I feel like
something's wrong here. Okay, let's press the One X button. Ah,
yes, we're at 20 watts. Let's go to 80, shall we?
WOAH, THAT'S MORE LIKE IT. WOAH, listen to those fans go, buddy.
This is 50% fan?
Oh, you can control the vibration motors?
Mhm, wow. This is a really nice little
resolution tool. One X Player's overlay has improved a
lot since the last time I looked at it.
This is insane. Like, sure, I'm only getting
30 FPS, but guys, this is Cyberpunk 2077.
And sure, I Okay, I'm using some
FidelityFX upscaling, but I'm running at freaking like high.
Like here, if we actually went to the Steam Deck preset, okay? Steam Deck
preset, 720p like a Steam Deck. Jeepers
creepers, 150 160 FPS.
This thing is an absolute monster. It's so loud,
but so is the Win 5. Give me a second.
I almost exclusively game on it using my AirPods so that I can
tune out the fan noise. Quite blockable.
Quite blockable indeed. Okay, what about the speakers?
Those are shockingly rich speakers.
It's kind of a shame that I'll never get to use them because the fans are so
loud. Okay, let's go to a power profile that I'd be more likely to actually use.
Now we're talking. Reasonable fan noise
to the point where I can actually use the speakers.
Still incredible performance at very
usable image quality. And if you're running at 45 watts,
you'll actually get like a couple hours of battery life out of it.
Or at least I I don't know, it's complicated.
Because unlike the Win 5, One X Player has made the odd decision to limit the
power to 20 watts for the last 20% of
your battery, and there's no obvious way to override that that we've been able to
find. Either way, up until that time, it'll be pretty solid. Let's try the
water cooler. So, I'm going to assume this needs to be
full of water first. There's no real power switch on it. The Frost Bay
doesn't have a conventional on-off switch.
So, so we need to go into the full One X
Player utility, and then we have to pair it via
Bluetooth. In summary,
getting the water cooling system connected is not super intuitive. Okay,
connect. Hey, I think we're there. We are connected.
Now, what did it Oh, there it is.
It just kicked in. 120 watts, let's go.
Okay, so the cooling system is in smart fan curve mode. We're
getting 50 ml per minute.
Is anyone else seeing that number and going, "Yo, what?" That's like nothing. I'm
pretty psyched right now, though. I can't wait to try this.
You can't have the battery kickstand on at the same time as this, but they do
have like a cardboard eco stand that you can put it on with the uh
dock. With that said, the way this dock is configured with like no tether
distance or anything, it's pretty clear that it's a it's a desktop dock. Like,
this is not meant for handheld use at all.
This thing is so insane.
We're closing in on 200 FPS. Like, okay, yeah, it's turned down pretty low, but
watch this. Okay, forget this Steam Deck nonsense. Now we're going to go ultra.
Yeah, sure, we'll use upscaling, but we're going to use the native resolution of the panel this time. So, we'll
upscale to [music] that. And we're getting a casual 80+ FPS. Holy crap.
Freaking smooth. Man, could I even run native?
Dude, you could run native 1200p ultra on this
thing. That is so sharp. We're still getting
like 70+ FPS, and the temps are fine.
Not amazing, all things considered. I
would kind of think that the water cooling unit would be doing more. Man, I
mean, it's definitely carrying heat away. This tube is warm.
And this one is cool. It It needs more water flow. And I'd be
down to like put a better pump in this thing, get some real water flow going.
Like, this is This is so cool.
Pump is running at 50%. Like, we can turn it up. And the water cooler is
disconnected again, and I can't get it to 120 watts. But, you know what? As I
already said, realistically, the water cooler is not something that I
expect pretty much anyone to actually use with this thing. And the
good news is that it already has
I was going to say class-leading performance without the water cooler,
but it just has leading performance without the water
cooler. It manages a slightly higher maximum TDP compared to the GPD Win 5.
And even at 75 watts, because of One X Player's emphasis on GPU power versus
CPU power in graphically intensive games, you should expect a little bit
more performance. With that said, the GPD Win 5 did outperform the Apex in,
for example, Rocket League at 1080p, which is a little bit more of a
CPU-bound scenario. Bottom line, you're getting otherworldly performance in a
handheld form factor with this thing. Like, it's just mind-blowing. I mean, Black Myth at 720p was what, like over
100 FPS? Well over 100 FPS at reasonable
settings. With all of that said, as someone who
has daily District's Halo device in a handheld form factor,
I'd say unless you're plugged into the wall, it's very unlikely that you're actually
going to be running it at maximum wattage, and that's where One X Player's
solution for their barrel charger really
falls short for me. I'm not a big fan of that. I need a longer cable. With that
said, I feel like they make up a lot of that ground in the superior ergonomics
of the device compared to the GPD Win 5, not to mention the larger display. It
has about the same peak brightness, around 500 nits, and does 120 Hz
variable refresh rate. So, there's no real compromises there. It's just a big,
pretty bright, beautiful display. We're going to throw up some battery results
here, but there's a very important caveat, and that is that, as I mentioned
before, the Apex drops to 20 watts when
it has 20% battery left. So, realistically, I'd expect real-world
results that are a lot closer to what's listed in the GPD Win 5 column, because
they are very similar devices. Now, the
only question is, if all of this looked appealing, what could it cost, Michael?
$10 for the base model with a Ryzen AI
Max 385, it's ooh.
Then for the upgraded one with more RAM and a 395, it's ooh.
Then if you want the water cooler, IT'S AH. I I'M JUST MAKING NOISES BECAUSE they
keep changing the pricing. It's actually gone up since we started shooting this
video, so. It's really cool, though. Water cool.
Subscribe to ShortCircuit. If you guys are looking for another video to watch,
why not check out the unboxing of the GPD Win 5?