PC gaming is becoming more and more portable. Mini PCs like Corsair’s new One i300 are all the rage, as well as streaming PC games to mobile devices or TVs. Valve’s Steam Deck is set to be an new portable PC gaming experience, and it’s garnering some competition.
AyaNeo is a company that appears to be taking a more premium look at portable gaming PCs. Its line of devices look a lot like the Steam Deck, which also happens to look a lot like a Nintendo Switch. A wide screen in the centre with controllers featuring analogue sticks, d-pad, and face buttons on either side, but there’s a huge difference in build between the two, and also in price. The AyaNeo 2021 Pro, for example is packing an AMD Ryzen 7 4800U CPU with a 1TB SSD and also costs $1,315 USD. Steam Decks, for comparison, are set to come in a maximum memory capacity of 512 GB at $649 USD when they release in February.
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Also set to release in February is Ayaneo’s new high-end portable PC gaming, the AyaNeo Next Advance. This one is a real step up, hosting a Zen3 Ryzen 5800U and 2TB of storage, and is only a tiny bit more expensive than the 2021 pro at $1,345 USD. On top of that there’s 16GB RAM, 7 inch high brightness screen, customisable joysticks with magnetic hall sensors that AyaNeo claims will eliminate drift issues, fingerprint wake up and more. It’s even Wi-Fi 6E compatible if you’ve got a router like this one that can support it. It’s also running its own software, Aya Space, though again like the Steam Deck still looks like it can be plugged in and used like a normal Windows PC via the USB C port. Plus, it's a really nice looking piece of premium kit.
The Zen 3 chip should make the AyaNeo Next Advance very strong on the CPU side of things, and that extra SSD space is invaluable with today’s larger AAA games. Whether or not all this will make it worth $700 more than the regular Steam Deck remains to be seen.
On the product page AyaNeo lists a few specs for how the Next Advance has tested to run in the company’s laboratories on various games. Most of it appears to be talking about power use from the 4100 mAh battery which can run games for between 2 and 6 hours. While the numbers are very vague without a lot of info, it does show that Cyberpunk 2077 was running at 30FPS, though we’d like to see that in action.
The AyaNeo Next Advance is currently available for preorder on the AyaNeo website, expecting to release late in February with a limited number of signature editions which come with a special nameplate engraving.
