The PlayStation 6 handheld specifications have leaked online, suggesting the yet-to-be-announced handheld should comfortably outperform the Xbox ROG Ally X and even the base PlayStation 5 in certain scenarios.
In a new video shared earlier today on YouTube, Moore’s Law is Dead, who has recently proved to be quite reliable regarding PlayStation leaks, revealed some new information on the portable system, which has been obtained via up-to-date documentation. The handheld will be powered by the Canis APU, a monolithic 135mm square die manufactured on a TSMC 3nm node featuring 4 Zen 6c CPU cores and 2 Zen 6 Low Power cores that will run the operating system and all non-gaming tasks with 4MB of L3 for the Zen 6c CCX, a 16 CUs RDNA5 GPU clocked at around 1.20 GHz in handheld mode and around 1.65GHz in docked mode and a 192-bit LPDDR5X-8533 memory controller with support to up to 48GB of RAM. Rounding up the features of the handheld are backwards compatibility with PS5 and PS4 games, a MicroSD slot, M.2 slot, haptic feedback support, dual mics and a touchscreen.
There is no solid information regarding how much RAM the PlayStation 6 handheld will feature, but it is expected to feature more than 16 or even 24 GB. Asked to comment on the matter, some unspecified developers unanimously agreed that the amounts above wouldn’t be enough to run next-generation games with AI features, as even features like UE5’s Nanite require a lot of RAM to work properly. As such, these developers believe that anything between 24 and 36 GB of RAM is required for next-gen games.
With these leaked specs seemingly revealed, MLiD also made some performance estimation for the unrevealed PlayStation 6 handheld. Rasterization performance is expected to be between 0.55 and 0.75 times that of the PlayStation 5 in docked mode, while ray tracing performance is between 1.3 and 2.6, which would bring the handheld close to the ray tracing performance of the PlayStation 5 Pro at peak. Factoring in AMD FSR 4 support, the handheld should be able to run patched games at around the PlayStation 5 level of performance, and at Power Saver mode level with unpatched games. With the faster RDNA5 CUs, which are between 40% and 50% faster than RDNA 3.5 CUs and 60% more bandwidth, the system should also comfortably outperform the Xbox ROG Ally X.
With the specs on hand, MLiD also made some estimations on how much the PlayStation 6 handheld should cost to produce and its final price, which is estimated to be between $399-499, based on the better yields of the TSMC 3nm node, the cost of RAM, compared to previous generation, and the fact that Sony seems to always launch hardware at a loss, although if the estimated costs are correct, Sony would be able to take a small profit even at $399.
As production and release of the PlayStation 6 handheld are expected in 2027, it may be a while until we hear more about the system. Still, we will keep you updated on it as soon as anything comes in, so stay tuned for all the latest news.