The AYA Neo Air is a handheld gaming PC with a 5.5 inch, 1080p OLED display, built-in game controllers, and an AMD Ryzen 5000U series processor. It went up for pre-order in June through an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign (which runs through August 23), and comes with a bunch of different configuration options.
Now AYA has announced that it’s bringing some modest upgradest to the entry-level AYA Neo Air Lite, which has a retail price of $549 but sells for around $500 during crowdfunding.
The AYA Neo Air Lite features an AMD Ryzen 5 5560U hexa-corre processor with Radeon Vega 6 graphics, 8GB of LPDDR4X-3200 memory, a 128GB SSD, and a 28Wh battery. It’s designed to be thin and light, measuring as little as 18mm (or 26.7mm by the grips), and weighing just 398 grams, making it lighter than a Nintendo Switch OLED.
The Lite was also originally supposed to ship without a fingerprint sensor, but now AYA is throwing one in. And the company has included the same cooling modules and fans as the standard version of the AYA Neo Air. Pricing hasn’t changed, and if I had to guess, I’d say that these upgrades are just as likely to be saving AYA money as costing the company money. After all, the AYA Neo Air Lite is now a bit more like the standard AYA Neo Air, which means there are fewer configurations to manufacture and support.
The AYA Neo Air Lite still has less memory and storage than higher-priced models though.
Another change is that while AYA had originally planned to limit the processor to a maximum TDP of 12 watts in order to extend battery life, the company now says that the TDP will be set to 8 watts by default, but that users will be able to raise it as high as 15 watts for better performance or drop it as low as 5 watts to squeeze some extra battery life when using the computer for casual games
Just keep in mind that the entire AYA Neo Air series of handhelds prioritize thin and light design over long battery life. The AYA Neo Air Lite only gets around 2 hours of battery life when playing indie games at 8 watts or half that when playing AAA games at 15 watts. You get about a half hour of additional run time if you opt for the AYA Neo Air Pro with a bigger battery.
Here’s a comparison of how the AYA Neo Air Lite stacks up against other members of the Neo Air lineup.
| AYA Neo Air Lite 5560U | AYA Neo Air 5560U | AYA Neo Air Pro 5560U | AYA Neo Air Pro 5560 | AYA Neo Air Pro 5825U | |
| Processor | AMD Ryzen 5 5560U 6-cores / 12-threads 2.3 GHz base / 4 GHz boost | AMD Ryzen 7 5825U 8-cores / 16 threads 2 GHz base / 4.5 GHz boost | |||
| Graphics | Radeon Vega 6 | Radeon Vega 8 | |||
| TDP | 5-15W | 5-15W | 5-18W | 5-18W | 5-18W |
| Memory | 8GB LPDDR4x-3200 | 16GB LPDDR4x-4266 | 32GB LPDDR4x-4266 | ||
| SSD | 128GB | 256GB / 512GB | 512GB /1TB | 512GB / 1TB | 512TB / 1TB / 2TB |
| Display | 5.5″ 1920 x 1080 pixels OLED | ||||
| Wireless | WiFi 6 Bluetooth 5.2 | ||||
| Battery | 28 Wh 7,350 mAh | 38 Wh 10,050 mAh | |||
| Fingerprint reader? | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Colors | White | Black | Black, White, Pink | Black, White | White, Black, Silver (32GB / 2TB only) |
| Dimensions | 224 x 89.5 x 18-26.7mm | 224 x 89.5 x 18-26.7mm | 224 x 89.5 x 21.6-26.7mm | ||
| Weight | 398 grams | 398 grams | 450 grams | ||
| Price | $549 (retail) $499 (early bird) | $629 (retail) $569 (early bird) | $649 (retail) $599 (early bird) | 16GB / 1TB – $799 (retail) / $749 (early bird) 16GB / 512GB – $699 / $649 | 32GB / 2TB – $1399 (retail) / $1299 (early bird) 16GB / 1TB – $1099 / $999 16GGB / 512GB – $999 / $899 |
| Shipping (estimated) | Early August 2022 | Early September 2022 | |||
AYA has also announced that some backers of the AYA Neo Air crowdfunding campaign will begin receiving their devices a little earlier than anticipated. The company has already produced about 200 units and will begin shipping AYA Neo Air models with Ryzen 5 5560U processors, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and white or black cases soon.
Keep in mind that the AYA Neo Air/Lite/Pro only represent a small portion of new AYA handhelds expected to launch in the coming months. The company also has several new models in the pipeline including the AYA Neo 2, AYA Neo Flip, and AYA Neo Slide with AMD Ryzen 7 6800U, a budget model called the AYA Neo Air Plus that will be available with AMD Mendocino or 12th-gen Intel Pentium/Core i3 processor options, and an AYA Neo Next II with either Intel Alder Lake or AMD Ryzen 6000U.
And that’s not even mentioning all of the handheld gaming PCs from other companies that are currently available or coming soon including models from Anbernic, AYA, GPD, and One Netbook/ONEXPLAYER.
I hope they make good on making Linux compatible for the Slide and continue providing fixes/updates post release. That is, Ayaneo OS and SteamOS enablement can apply to other distros due to being upstreamed/applicable. There’s always something that needs fixing especially things reviewers’ < 1 day basic testing never reveal.
GPD devices always have issues with Linux (broken sleep/resume is a frequent problem among many other things). Some of which reviewers never mention since they didn’t test Linux much. Unless you’re a Linux dev and upstream patches, you’re pretty much SOL.
I really hope the Slide turns out well.
Looking forward to finally seeing competition in the gaming handheld with keyboard space. One Netbook entered it but it seems they’ve left (I assume the OneGx1 non-Pros they’re selling on their site are just leftover stock).
Aya established themselves early on as being a company focused on customer service when they gave away upgrade kits to the backers of their original model and this is just a continuation of that. This is why I’m a repeat customer and have backed the Air after having backed the original (which admittingly has design issues not the fault of the current CEO). I continue to watch this company and their future models with great interest.
The AYA Neo Air family’s Achille’s heel here is a battery either significantly (28WHr) or slightly (38WHr) smaller than the Steam Deck’s 40WHr battery. That makes it a no-go for me, never mind the gross lack of domestic warranty support.
How so? From everything I’ve seen, Aya has been very proactive with providing excellent afterservice and haven’t heard any complaints from anyone who had defects that needed repair/replacement.
Post-sales support for foreigners is much much much better than GPD and One Netbook/Onexplayer.
Valve’s support has them all beat my light years of course.
Looking forward to how the Slide or Flip turns out! With all these handhelds, there’s still no competition within the built-in keyboard space and I don’t want to give GPD my money again.
Even the Steam Deck sometimes needs a real keyboard to do stuff. Would rather have it built-in.
There’s just so many x86 handheld options these days. I’m wondering… How would you arrange them, in terms of the Slowest GPU to the Fastest GPU? Or maybe benchmarking in terms of a specific game’s fps (eg GTAV to scale in low-end, Doom Eternal to scale in high-end)?
Is anyone able to make a list of the slowest x86 handheld to the fastest x86 handheld, in terms of GPU/Gaming? Either based on reviews, leaks, specifications, or just based on what you know about the company?
Doesn’t have to be 100% accurate but an overview would be super handy.
To me (could be wrong) but it generally looks like it goes, from Slowest GPU to Fastest GPU, in this order:
Vega-3cu, Mendoccino, Intel Xe 48-cu, Intel Xe 64-cu, Vega-6cu, Vega-8cu, Intel Xe 96cu, RDNA2-6CU, RDNA2-8CU, RDNA2-12CU.
I hope they give more info on the Slide (or maybe the Flip). Built-in keyboards are for me but I feel it’s time to give my money to a company that’s not GPD this time.
Filp is the one for me, if it actually has a keyboard.
Same. There’s been a lot of new bar handhelds but only one company puts a keyboard in theirs so far.
I see so many people asking/showing the compact keyboard they lug around and awkwardly use so there must be a decent amount who’d want it built in.
Even some games need a keyboard (I’m playing Quern now and even hacking at Steam Input settings is annoying) if you’re not into UMPC nor on-the-go game tweaking use cases.
Yeah, I’m just waiting on more news about Aya’s handhelds with keyboards. A lot of slab devices already.