The AYN Loki Zero is one of the cheapest handheld gaming PCs with an x86 processor. It’s also been a long time coming.
Positioned as the entry-level model in the AYN Loki line of handheld gaming PCs, AYN began taking pre-orders for the Loki Zero in July, 2022, promising at the time that it would ship units to customers by the end of 2022. That… didn’t happen. But now the company says it’s finally shipping the Loki Zero to customers.
The Loki Zero features a 6 inch, 1280 x 720 pixel IPS LCD display, an AMD Athlon Silver 3050e processor, 4GB of onboard DDR4-2400 memory, 64GB of eMMC storage, a 40.5 Wh battery, USB 3.2 Type-C and 3.5mm ports, and support for WiFi 5, and Bluetooth 4.2. It ships with Windows 11 pre-installed.
The processor is a 6-watt, 2-core, 4-thread chip with support for CPU speeds up to 2.8 GHz and 1 GHz AMD Radeon Vega 3 integrated graphics. It’s not a particularly impressive processor, but it should be good enough to handle some older PC games, casual indie titles, or emulation of older consoles. It’s the same chip used in the highest priced configurations of the Anbernic Win600, so I’d recommend checking out some reviews of that handheld if you want to get a sense of what the Athlon 3050e processor can do.
While the Loki Zero’s processor is what it is, the memory and storage are user upgradeable. The system has a SODIMM slot that can be used for additional RAM, an M.2 2230 slot for PCIe NVMe solid state drives, and a microSD card reader for removable storage.
Other features include a fan for active cooling, stereo speakers, dual x-axis linear motors, motion sensors, and integrated game controllers with dual analog sticks (with RGB LED backlighting), a D-Pad, A, X, B, Y buttons, and analog shoulder triggers with hall sensors.
AYN has already begun shipping higher-priced Loki handhelds including the Loki and Loki Max, with AND Ryzen 5 660U and Ryzen 7 6800U processors, respectively. But there’s still at least one more model to go: the Loki Mini Pro, which has a Ryzen 3 7320U “Mendocino” processor that combines four Zen 2 CPU cores with 2 RDNA 2 graphics cores.
| Loki Zero | Loki Mini Pro | Loki | Loki Max | |
| Display | 6 inches 1280 x 720 pixels IPS LCD | 6 inches 1920 x 1080 pixels IPS LCD | ||
| Processor | AMD Athlon Silver 3050e 2 CPU cores / 4 threads 1.4 GHz base / 2.8 GHz boost 6W TDP | AMD Ryzen 3 7320U 4 Zen 2 CPU cores / 8 threads 2.4 GHz base / 4.1 GHz boost 15W TDP | AMD Ryzen 5 6600U 6 Zen 3+ cores / 12 threads 2.9 GHz base / 4.5 GHz boost 15-28W TDP | AMD Ryzen 7 6800U 8 Zen 3+ CPU cores / 16 threads 2.7 GHz base / 4.7 GHz boost 15-28W TDP |
| Graphics | AMD Radeon Vega 3 1 GHz | AMD Radeon 610M 2 x RDNA 2 CUs 1.9 GHz | AMD Radeon 660M 6 x RDNA 2 CUs 1.9 GHz | AMD Radeon 680M 12 x RDNA 2 CUs 2.2 GHz |
| RAM | 4GB or 8GB DDR4-2400 | 8GB LPDDR5-6400 | 8GB / 16GB LPDDR5-6400 MHz | 16GB LPDDR5-6400 MHz |
| Storage | 64GB eMMC 128GB M.2 2230 PCIe NVMe SSD (optional) | 128GB M.2 2230 PCIe NVMe SSD microSD card reader | 128GB / 256GB / 512GB M.2 2230 PCIe NVMe microSD card reader | 512GB M.2 2230 PCIe NVMe microSD card reader |
| Wireless | WiFi 5 BT 4.2 | WiFi 6E Bluetooth 5.2 | ||
| Battery | 40.5 Wh | 46.2 Wh | ||
| Ports | USB 3.2 Type-C 3.5mm audio microSD card reader | USB 4.0 (Intel) or USB 3.2 (AMD) 3.5mm audio microSD card reader | USB 4 3.5mm audio microSD card reader | |
| Controllers | Full controller w/Xbox-style layout Hall Sensor Analog Triggers Gyroscope Rumble support | |||
| Size & weight | 20mm thick ? | 20mm thick ? | ? ? | 248 x 96 x 22mm 580 grams |
| Colors | black | black, white | ||
| Price | $249 | $349 | $579 (16GB / 256GB) $649 (16GB / 512GB ) | $775 |
via AYN (Discord)
You can also buy an original Gameboy for about 130, or a WowSexyU for 30. No matter which of these you choose to buy they are equally useless as well as humiliating.
Better late than never, I guess. I’m curious if the dual-channel RAM will allow it to perform noticeably better than the Win600.
I’m glad handheld PCs are becoming more of a thing but I wish laptop-esque form factors were more common outside of GPD and/or ONE or whatever they call themselves.
I’d just like a netbook tbh… Even macbook airs feels ridiculously oversized nowadays.
Me too. Even a netbook of this size would be great, just make the controlers detachable so you can put this in your pocket easily. Then put a little thinnk sxreen cover over it so you can use it as a clamshell, and I would take a foldable keyboard for it. Why can’t engineers actually make a pocketable PC? They can, they just don’t ahve VISION. That is why these makers remain “small time”. If thye made a truly pocketable PC with a usable keybaord like the GPD Win Max 2, or even a pocketable folding keyboard, it would catch on big time and explode in sales!
Remember, all the best laptops were made 25 years ago–Really. I feel sorry for all the young people who never saw a Sony Picturebook or Sony P and others made during those times.
I guess they figure morons like you who struggle spelling words won’t mind 😂
Spelling aside, nothing you said negates their point and you’re just being a jerk.
Same, I’d much prefer to get hardware like this in a 7″ to 8″ netbook.
I would gladly resort to using a bluetooth Xbox gamepad, in exchange for the improved functionality of a netbook.
You can do what I did, buy an EOL Samsung Chromebook 3, remove the write protect screw and put linux on it (11in). If you want smaller there is the Panasonic Lets Note CF-RZ4 (Japan only). Its a 10in convertible with 16:10 screen.
More accessible is the aliexpress Toposh computer. Pretty decent specs, incl 12GB Ram. But it is more into the umpc size and takes a bit to get sound fully working with linux.
I have and like them all for various reasons, but the Samsung is great as a cheap netbook type.
I was considering the Toposh but the tab button not being beside the Q looked… concerning.
The smaller the keyboard the weirder things get. I have big hands but it works ok. My biggest complaint (aside from the crap to make audio work as well as an xdg/autostart script to enable sound on boot) would be the mouse buttons. They are literal buttons so drag and select doesn’t really work. But ctrl, shift and arrows work fine. You could use the touchscreen but meh.
Also annoying is the fan is one constant speed the whole time.
IMO the processor is pretty decent, on par with my CF-RZ4 with a Core-M 5Y-71 which when compiling a VSCode program, takes about 14min (compared to 10 on an I5-10500H).
Battery life is pretty decent for me in Arch, about 10-11hours of light/mixed use.
Overall I was very happy with it for the price.
Glad I didn’t wait a whole year for this thing. But now that it’s out, it’s still a pretty reasonable value. For $250, you get better Gamecube and PS2 performance than anything else provides at that price. The Odin only manages most Gamecube games at native resolution, but the AMD 3050e can run most games at 2x resolution (720p).
The Anbernic Win600 does offer more RAM with the same CPU, but the Loki Zero still comes out cheaper with a RAM upgrade. Also, the Win600 made a huge mistake by omitting analog triggers, which prevents the controls from fully supporting Windows’ native support for Xbox controllers.
However, the upcoming Odin2 will outperform it for only $50 more, but who knows how long we’ll wait for that.
ARM devices, thanks to newer software, are able to do emulation from the earliest Atari now upto the latest Nintendo Wii, and basically flawlessly. Soon you could add the Xbox, Windows Xp (32bit) emulation, also PS Vita and NSwitch (translation).
That means for x86 devices, who are much less efficient, need to justify themselves with something else. So they need to be stepping up to the Xbox 360, PS3, WiiU, and Windows 7 (64bit) gaming at the minimum.
The likes of the AMD r7-7840u is punching a bit higher for current Windows10 Games, and potentially some XB1/PS4 emulation.
Which brings me back to my original point, what is the AYN Loki for? It’s not doing anything the AYN Odin2 cannot do. It’s also doing it slower, and less efficiently, and at a comparable size.
I think for anyone thinking about this sector, think of Retroid Pocket 3+ (or smaller) for pocketable devices and running ARM/Android…. and think about the GPD Win-4 (or larger) for portable devices running x86/Windows. The Valve SteamDeck is always in the conversation as being the most comfortable/ergonomic, cheapest, and well supported option out there. It doesn’t make much sense getting a large ARM device (won’t run current games or many other softwares, extra thermals would be mostly wasted) nor getting a small x86 device (it’ll run hot, and blow all the battery life).
So whats the minimum arm processor required for flawless rogue squadron 2 in gamecube? 1x is enough.