AYA Neo Kun hits Indiegogo for $999 and up (8.4 inch handheld gaming PC with Ryzen 7 7840U, ships in October)

The AYA Neo Kun is a handheld gaming PC with an AMD Ryzen 7 7840U processor and an 8.4 inch, 2560 x 1600 pixel display. It’s the biggest model to date from AYA, and also has the biggest battery yet, at 75 Wh. The AYA Neo Kun is also the company’s first handheld to feature dual trackpads built into the game controllers, the first with an 8-directional D-Pad, the first with an IR camera with support for Windows Hello face recognition, and the first with optional support for a 4G LTE module.

It’s also one of the most expensive handheld gaming PCs to date… particularly if you want one of the higher-spec models. It’s up for pre-order through an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign with early bird rewards starting at $999 for an entry-level model, but going as high as $1,699 for a top-of-the-line AYA Neo Kun. And retail prices will be substantially higher. AYA says it  will begin shipping the handheld to backers in mid-October, 2023.

The good news is that the starting price still gets you a model with decent specs including 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. The less good news is that the price will rise to $1,129 after early bird pricing ends, and the retail price is $1,209 (or nearly double the price of a top-tier Steam Deck).

AYA will also offer options for folks who want additional memory or storage:

Putting a larger screen on a handheld leads to a larger device, but AYA has made ample use of that extra space. The AYA Neo KUN has redesigned grips that the company says are closer to the feel of traditional game controllers, four buttons on the back of the device that can be programmed for user-defined functions, and the aforementioned dual trackpads.

AYA isn’t the first company to put touchpads on a handheld – Valve’s Steam Deck helped popularize the concept. But the Steam Deck runs Valve’s Linux-based SteamOS software, which was designed from the ground up to be navigated using game controllers. The AYA Neo KUN, like most other recent handheld gaming PCs with x86 processors, runs Windows, which is an operating system that was very much designed for keyboard and mouse input.

While the KUN doesn’t have a keyboard, adding trackpads should make it much easier to navigate the operating system when you’re not in a game. AYA says the touchpads are positioned below most of the other buttons so that they stay out of your way while gaming.

You can also press down on the touchpads: the top, bottom, left, and right sides function as buttons and AYA says you can configure the left or right trackpads to support slide gestures or key presses, with support for more gestures coming in the future.

Of course, there are also down sides to having a handheld with big, high-resolution display and a laptop-class processor: it takes a lot of horsepower to crank out enough pixels to fill a 2560 x 1600 pixel display, and that can take a toll on performance and battery life.

AYA offers a few solutions. One is that you can run games at 1280 x 800p resolution. Another is that you can configure the Ryzen 7 7840U processor to run at 15-watts, 30 watts, or as high as 54 watts.

The company says that even with the largest battery available in a current-gen handheld gaming PC, you’ll only get up to 3 hours and 15 minutes of battery life while running at 15-watts, and that’s with the screen brightness set to low, wireless turned off, and the controller’s RGB lighting disabled, among other power-saving features.

If you want to push the little computer to its limits and run at 54 watts, expect battery life to top out at around 49 minutes with the same power-saving options are enabled.

AYA says the KUN measures 312.4 x 132.5 x 21.9mm, making it a bit larger than a Steam Deck (298 x 117 x 20mm).

It weighs 900 grams (nearly 2 pounds), making it one of the heaviest current-gen handheld gaming PCs. But if that seems a bit too large to comfortably hold in your hands, there is also a built-in kickstand that lets you prop up the handheld on a desk or tablet while gripping the controllers in your hands, so you don’t have to support the weight yourself while you play.

Flipping out the kickstand also reveals a hidden SIM card slot that can be used with an optional 4G LTE module.

AYA says the KUN also features stereo speakers, hall sensor triggers, and a vibration motor for haptic feedback.

The handheld will be available in black, white, and silver color options.

Update: YouTuber Taki Udon got a chance to go hands-on with the AYA Neo Kun and compare it with the Steam Deck:

via AYA Neo (1)(2)

This article was first published August 29, 2023 and most recently updated September 5, 2023 to mark the launch of the AYA Neo Kun crowdfunding campaign.