The AYA Neo Air Plus is a handheld gaming PC with a 6 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel IPS LCD touchscreen display, built-in game controllers with hall sensors and hall trigger buttons, stereo speakers, dual microphones, and four different processor options including Intel Alder Lake, AMD Mendocino, and AMD Rembrandt chips.
When AYA first announced plans for the Air Plus last summer, some of those chips hadn’t actually been released yet and AYA promised an extraordinarily ambitious starting price of less than $300 for entry-level configurations. Now the company is preparing to launch a crowdfunding campaign and the actual prices are a lot higher. The AYA Neo Air Plus should begin shipping to backers in April, 2023.
Prices will start at $549 during crowdfunding for the cheapest model, which features a 15-watt AMD Ryzen 3 7320U processor with 4 Zen 2 CPU cores and 2-core RDNA 2 graphics. While that’s $50 off the $599 retail price, it’s still about twice as much as the company had originally said its entry-level model would cost.
And, as it turns out, while AMD’s Mendocino processors offer decent bang for the buck when it comes to CPU performance, they aren’t exactly graphics powerhouses. So while a $250 – $300 handheld with a Mendocino chip might be compelling, I’m less certain that a model that sells for $600 and up is a good buy.
AYA is also launching a version of the Air Plus with a 15-watt Intel Core i3-1215U Alder Lake-U processor featuring Intel UHD graphics with 64 execution units. This is the company’s first Intel-powered handheld and prices will start at $599 during crowdfunding (or $649 at retail) for a model with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.
But if you really like the AYA Neo Air Plus design and want decent gaming performance, your best bet is to pick up the most powerful (and expensive model). Prices start at $889 during crowdfunding (or $979 at retail) for a model with an AMD Ryzen 7 6800U processor, 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.
AYA will also offer upgrade options for every model in the series. Intel and Mendocino versions support up to 16GB of RAM and up to 512GB of storage, while the Ryzen 7 6800U version tops out at 32GB of RAM and 2TB of storage.
Each version of the handheld gaming PC has two USB4 ports, a headphone jack and a microSD card reader with support for data transfer speeds up to 100MB/s. The handheld is powered by a 46.2 Wh battery and comes with a 65W fast charger. It has a fan for active cooling, supports WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 and has a fingerprint sensor in the power button.
Here’s a comparison table showing the similarities and differences between models with different processors:
| AYA Neo Air Plus (Intel) | AYA Neo Air Plus (Mendocino) | AYA Neo Air Plus (Rembrandt) | |
| Processor | Intel Core i3-1215U 2 P-cores / 4 E-cores 8 threads 4.4 GHz max freq 15W | AMD Ryzen 5 7520U 4 Zen 2 cores / 8-threads 2.8 GHz – 4.3 GHz 15W AMD Ryzen 3 7320U 4 Zen 2 cores / 8 threads 2.4 GHz – 4.1 GHz 15W | AMD Ryzen 7 6800U 8 Zen 3+ cores / 16 threads 2.7 GHz – 4.7 GHz 28W |
| Graphics | Intel UHD for 12th-gen 1.1 GHz max freq 64 execution units | AMD Radeon 610M 2 x RDNA 2 GPU cores | AMD Radeon 680M 12 x RDNA 2 GPU cores |
| Display | 6 inches 1920 x 1080 pixels 368 ppi IPS LCD 400 nits 120% sRGB color gamut 85% DCI-P3 color gamut 5-point multitouch | ||
| RAM | 8GB / 16GB LPDDR5-5200 | 8GB / 16GB LPDDR5-5500 | 16GB / 32GB LPDDR5-6400 |
| Storage | 128GB / 512GB M.2 2280 SSD | 512GB / 1TB / 2TB M.2 2280 SSD | |
| Controllers | Dual analog sticks with hall sensors Hall trigger buttons Action buttons D-Pad Adjustable RGB lighting | ||
| Battery | 46.2 Wh | ||
| Charging | 65W USB Type-C | ||
| Ports | 2 x USB4 Type-C 1 x 3.5mm audio jack 1 x microSD card reader | ||
| Wireless | WiFi 6 Bluetooth 5.2 | ||
| Audio | Stereo speakers Dual microphones 3.5mm headset jack | ||
| Dimensions | 237 x 91.4mm x 23.1mm (at thinnest point) | ||
| Weight | 510 grams | 525 grams | |
| Colors | Glacier Blue Starlight Black | Glacier Blue Starlight Black Classic Grey | |
| Starting Price | $599 / $649 (crowdfunding / retail) | $549 / $599 (Ryzen 3 7320U) $649 / $699 (Ryzen 5 7520U) (crowdfunding / retail) | $889 / $979 (crowdfunding / retail) |
AYA will also offer optional accessories including a carrying case and a docking station with HDMI, Ethernet, USB-A and USB-C ports. The dock will be available in almond and “graphite black” colors.
via AYANeo
The price is so crappy. I waited 8 months only to get rugpulled. I just bought a steam deck instead.
At those prices, this is gonna flop
I was just listening to Neil Sedaka Laughter in the rain when saw the title.
If Aya can’t do it, doubt Ayn will.
These prices are terrible. I was interested in the 7320u model, but not for more than $300. This chip isn’t going to out-perform the Steam Deck, so why would it cost this much?
Unfortunately, for the AYN Loki lineup, the Mini and Mini Pro models (the Mendocino models) are going to be the last model they release, so probably Q4 or later.
As many objections as I have about the Steam Deck, I can really see myself buying a Steam Deck this year.
I’d have to guess economies of scale. It’s not cheap to source these components and line up manufacturing. These chips are designed for sub-$400 laptops and it’s probably not too hard to find a manufacturer for those, but purchasing a small quantity of chips and putting them into an unusual design like this is going to cost more.
Not only is Valve probably selling enough Steam Decks to help keep costs down, but Valve can also probably partially subsidize hardware costs because the more Steam Decks it sells, the more users are likely to purchase content from the Steam store and Valve gets to take a cut.
Given supply chain shortages and inflation, it’s not surprising that AYA couldn’t match the prices it promised last year. But I am surprised they were off by such a wide margin. It suggests that either they hadn’t really done their homework when suggesting those prices initially or that they were deliberately making promises they knew they wouldn’t be able to deliver on.
I’m more inclined to believe it is the latter: they intentionally made promises they couldn’t keep to build up hype. To basically double the MSRP (early bird $549 but they plan on actually selling it at $599) is a bait and switch that can’t just go down as a “mistake”.
This right here. They basically turned a USD $300 product into $600 thought we wouldn’t notice lol.
I was very sceptical, but hopeful overall. AYA has experience in this market, so it wasn’t unrealistic to expect them to pull it off.
I thought the USD $300 model with the Intel chipset was the one to look out for, and the only real alternative to the $400 SteamDeck. While the likes of the GPD Win v4/Max2 are decent alternatives to the $700 SteamDeck. Everything in between was just a failure compared to Valve’s offerings.
If you want to take the gamble, AYA has still not (YET) updated their pricing for the Loki Mini Pro. It’s a steal at USD $280 but I doubt they’ll honour that, also expect it to increase to $600. If it even ships to customers AT ALL. It is basically a clone of this handheld, with the same decent Intel chipset. It’s just coming from a company with even more shady tactics and history. Personally, save your self the money, time, headache, just grab yourself the Valve SteamDeck and/or Retroid Pocket 3+.
Here is the AYN link:
https://www.ayntec.com/products/loki-mini-pro-preorder
I was willing to pay 400-450 with shipping for a 16 gig ram config (that’s like £360-370) as the steam deck is too big and the windows support is meh. But they priced it way too high.
Also as for the price, I don’t think it will get a price hike, their previous Odin handhelds haven’t had a price hike and are pretty competitive for the most part.
Ayn is using cheaper components overall to cut costs, they are also reusing the same shell and components for all their devices, this cheapens the cost of everything.
The Ayaneo air plus is using 2 gyroscopes whilst ayn is using one, the air plus also has a better screen and using ddr5 instead of ddr4 ram. Also the software experience is worse compared to the ayaneo and software development also takes up some cost.
The Ayaneo air plus also has a fingerprint scanner as well. All those things add up to make the device more expensive than it should be.
The worst thing I think ayn has done was change the design of the loki but honestly, I don’t think that was much of an issue tbh. The original design just looked like a placeholder and they gave out refunds to people who don’t like the design or are tired of waiting and still do all the time. That is way better than 90% of kickstarter companies.
I remember seeing a company called blanc that made a cool mask taking the money and running when they had so many preorders on indegogo that they didn’t fullfil.
So I don’t think the company is that bad.
Yeah that all makes sense. It’s just crazy that they missed the mark by so much, that I struggle to see any appeal in it now.
The Steam Deck seems closest to the 7520u model, but the Steam Deck 256gb model has twice the RAM and Storage, for $120 less.
The only thing the AYA has over the Steam Deck is that that it has a 1080p screen, and a better M.2 form-factor. But I question whether it has the GPU strength for 1080p.
But the Steam Deck has a warranty, and you don’t need to buy it through crowdfunding, so the comparisons end there for me.
Steam Deck also has much better graphics, but AYA devices ship with Windows pre-installed.
If I was going to buy one, I’d probably get the Steam Deck too. It might not be the fastest or the most portable handheld gaming PC, but it’s competitively priced and it’s by far the best supported at this point (even if not all Windows games run on SteamOS).
Man, what a disappointment. I was pretty interested at the original price point, but absolutely not at these prices.
On the upside, I just got a Retroid Pocket 3+ for $150 (well, more like $170 after shipping), and that device is awesome bang-for-the-buck. It’s Android, which means a lot of the games are full of adds and microtransactions, but there are some gems like Dead Cells and Horizon Chase, as well as emulation and few PC ports.
I would buy the Retroid Pocket 3+ right now if it had Analog triggers. Most of the Dreamcast games I want to play require analog triggers.
I have a retroid pocket 2+ and the thing is fantastic for what it is. Covers all the emulators I care about and there are bonus Gamecube games that are playable too!
Sir India launch date