The AYA Neo Air is a handheld gaming PC with an OLED display, an AMD Ryzen 5000U series processor featuring Radeon Vega graphics, and a compact design – it’s just about the size of a Nintendo Switch Lite. At 400 grams, the AYA Neo Air is also lighter than most other current-gen handheld gaming computers, and it’s also more affordable than most.
While global pricing and availability haven’t been announced yet, AYA has begun taking pre-orders in China with early bird pricing of just 4,399 CNY (about $650). 5/29/2022 Update: The AYA Neo Air will be available globally starting in early August with price starting at $549 (or $499 for early backers). Check out our article on the global AYA Neo launch for more details. The original article continues below.
While that makes the AYA Neo Air about the same price as a top-of-the-line Steam Deck, the Steam Deck has an LCD display and ships with the Linux-based Steam OS, while the AYA Neo Air has an OLED screen and ships with Windows.
Folks in China can pre-order during a special “surprise” pre-order event that runs through May 18th, but AYA hasn’t announced when the Neo Air will actually begin shipping to customers yet.
Despite the fact that the company is already taking pre-orders, AYA still hasn’t revealed detailed specs for the handheld yet. But we know that it has an M.2 2230 PCIe NVMe SSD plus a microSD card slot for removable storage, RGB lighting effects beneath the analog sticks, a USB-C port and headphone jack, and a display with support for 109% NTSC color gamut.
Rumor has it that the processor will be an AMD Ryzen 5 5560U chip, which is a 6-core, 12-thread processor with AMD Zen CPU cores with 2.3 GHz base and 4 GHz boost frequencies. The processor features a 1.6 GHz AMD Radeon Vega 7 integrated GPU. And the chip has a default TDP of 15 watts, but it can be configured to run as low as 10 watts or as high as 25 watts.
AYA also plans to launch a bigger, higher-power handheld called the AYA Neo 2 later this year. That model will have an AMD Ryzen 7 6800U processor with RDNA graphics. And the company has begun to tease its first device with a keyboard, the upcoming AYA Neo Slide which also has a Ryzen 7 6800U processor, but which has a display that slides upward to reveal a backlit QWERTY keyboard.
via iGeekPhone and NotebookCheck
still using vega for that price
$429 seems more appropriate. Although, in the market environment we’re heading into…I think that seems generous.
Best,
Steven B.(Liquid Cool)
I already have the Steam Deck, but I might pull the trigger for something smaller to travel with. Especially if by the point it ships Steam OS 3.0 is fully working. I am really happy with the platform so far and the much the community has embraced it.
Please fact check. It is a 5560U lol. It’s not a 2230, it’s hinted to be bigger by the marketing. And “early bird” in China is just based off of a voucher, not exact numbers. Thank you 🙂
I think you’re mixing up the processor and the storage. The processor is an AMD Ryzen 5 5560U chip. The SSD is an M.2 2230 module according to this graphic: https://cdn.ayaneo.com.cn/ayaneo/goods/2022/05/14/d6991202205141343168902.jpg
Seems like it will be a decent handheld if AYA can keep the price this low when it hits US shores. I do think that they could have gone with a 5800U at this price but at least the new 6c12t APU has the Vega 7 instead of Vega 6 which performed pretty poorly against Intel Xe. Being an AMD fan, I would have rather seen AYA wait a bit and put a lower end Ryzen 6000 APU in here.