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The AYN Loki Max is a handheld gaming PC that was announced a year ago as part of a whole slate of Windows handhelds from the company behind the AYN Odin line of Android-powered portable gaming devices.
With an AMD Ryzen 7 6800U processor, the Loki Max should offer gaming performance that’s competitive with some of last year’s best handheld gaming PCs. And with a 6 inch display, it should be a bit more portable. But it’s taken AYN longer than expected to actually begin shipping any of its Loki devices, so the market looks a bit different than it did a year ago.
Still, it’s nice to see that the AYN Loki product lineup isn’t just vaporware. AYN has begun sending demo units of the Loki Max to reviewers (including Retro Games Core, Taki Udon, and Retro Handhelds) and the company says it’s shipped the first 100 units to customers.
A scan of the AYN Loki Discord shows that multiple customers have received confirmation that their devices should ship soon, but hundreds of others are still on a waiting list.
The Loki Max has a 6 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel IPS LCD display, a Ryzen 7 6800U processor with 8 Zen 3+ CPU cores and Radeon 680M integrated graphics with 12 RDNA 2 GPU compute cores. The system has 16GB of LPDDR5-6400 RAM and a 512GB M.2 2230 PCIe NVMe SSD and a 46.2 Wh battery.
It’s substantially larger than originally planned – AYN had initially hoped to make the AYN Loki closer in sized and shape to the Odin, but the size was increased to make room for the more power-hungry hardware. And AYN also used the extra space to offer thicker grips, bigger joysticks (with hall sensors), and larger shoulder buttons, among other things. The Loki Max also has front-facing stereo speakers, which the Odin does not.
But the end result is a handheld gaming PC that’s a little larger than some other small-screen models like the AYA Neo Air Plus or GPD Win 4, while still substantially smaller than the Asus ROG Ally, Valve Steam Deck, or AOKZOE A1.
The Loki Max is also just the first AYN Loki device to ship – the company is still working to bring three cheaper models to market:
- AYN Loki (with a Ryzen 5 6600U processor)
- AYN Loki Zero (with an AMD Athlon Silver 3050e processor)
- AYN Loki Mini Pro (with a Ryzen 3 7320U “Mendocino” processor)
Those models are still on track to ship at some point, probably in the order listed above. AYN has scrapped plans to offer any previously-announced configurations with Intel processors.
When AYN first announced the Loki lineup a year ago, the company was primarily competing with similar devices from Chinese handheld makers like AYA, Anbernic, and GPD. But since then Asus has entered the picture with the reasonably affordable ROG Ally handheld gaming PC with an AMD Z1 Extreme processor based on AMD’s Phoenix architecture with RDNA 3 graphics. And we’re starting to see other companies introduce handhelds with Ryzen 7 7840U chips, offering similar features.
Meanwhile AYN is still working to catch up with backorders of its Ryzen 6000U systems. So while early impressions seem to be pretty positive, it’s unclear if the AYN Loki is too late to the party to make a splash.
In end, I think it was a good decision to maintain the course and release with the 6800U instead of delaying more to put in a 7840U.
What I like about AYN devices, that they did not make keyboard like handhelds with 300 mm wide.
Whish there will be 7840U models around 224 mm wide. From any manufacturer. Cause I am not carrying a bag. Thats for “laydies”
Heh, why such sexist thinking. Plenty of alternatives for guys that are not just for women only: carry pouch, back pack, leather satchel, briefcase, messenger bag, belt clip case, drawstring sack.