The scrappy team made up of former Ayaneo staff is set to prove it’s not just a flash in the pan with the semi-surprising announcement of a new handheld, the Pocket Max. There’s no date for the Pocket Max release, or any details really, but there are a few nuggets floating about out there, so let’s dive into them.
What we know about the Pocket Max
Most of everything we know so far has actually been floating around in dark corners of the internet since July, when the first benchmarks for the Pocket Max started popping up. Based on what those benchmarks reveal, we know the Pocket Max (or whatever hardware Mangmi has been testing) will offer a Snapdragon 865 processor, 8 GB of RAM, and run on Android 13.
While having just three data points doesn’t seem like much information at first, it actually reveals a lot of detail. For one, the Snapdragon 865 is very much a known variable. The 2.84 GHz chip is a favorite of Retroid, used in the Pocket Mini, Pocket 5, and Pocket Flip 2, and it’s even found in the AYN Thor Lite. Coupled with 8 GB of RAM, we can be pretty sure it will be able to handle all 6th-gen consoles (minus the Xbox, of course), and maybe a bit of PlayStation 3 and Switch.
Now that Mangmi has given us a teaser image of the Pocket Max, we also know it will have a very similar layout to the Air X, just with asymmetric analog sticks. This tracks with the Pocket Max targeting 6th-gen systems, which made greater use of the analog joystick.
What we don’t know about the Pocket Max
The two most important things we don’t know about Mangmi’s new handheld are the price and the release date. We’ll probably have a better idea of the release date once review units start shipping out, since the Air X landed in mailboxes about three months after the first reviews dropped. I’ll go out on a limb and say summer 2026, but there’s no way to know for sure at this point.
Price is equally hard to pin down, but Mangmi’s entire reputation at this point is offering more for less, so I fully expect the Pocket Max to be less than $200. If I were a betting man, I would say the early adopter price will be between $150 and $160, but given the current global RAM situation, I wouldn’t be surprised if Mangmi is forced to charge more than it wants to for this one.
I honestly don’t expect Mangmi to cut too many corners on this machine. The only concession I think it will make is opting for an IPS screen instead of OLED. But, given the current trend of offering multiple SKUs of the same model, Mangmi could very likely offer both at slightly different price points.
Check back for more deets
We’ve reached out to Mangmi for more details and will share them here if we hear anything. In the meantime, we’re all in the same boat, waiting on Mangmi to drop more info.
