The AYA Neo Air Plus, the Steam Deck’s top competitor

Handheld consoles have been catching up thanks to the influence of Steam Deck.

Now Chinese manufacturer AYANEO, which specializes in handheld consoles, has announced the AYA Neo Air Plus launch, designed explicitly to compete on price with Valve’s Steam Deck. The AYA Neo Air Plus will go on sale in the coming days, specifically on February 28.

About the AYA Neo Air Plus

All AYA Neo Air Plus models will have a 6-inch diagonal IPS display with a native FHD resolution of 1.920 x 1.080 pixels and an M.2 2280 SSD for storage.

The AYA Neo Air Plus is a smartphone-sized device with controls similar to a video game controller. The ability to use multiple operating systems is a bonus. Valve’s Steam OS console operating system, with which it aims to compete, is also part of the AYA Neo OS, along with Linux and Windows.

AYA Neo Air Plus variants

Although the manufacturer also offers a version with Intel, AYANEO has generally opted for AMD technology, and this model will be no different. The company will market the console in three different hardware configurations:

• AMD Ryzen 5 7520U “Mendocino”: this model will feature an AMD Ryzen 5 7520U processor (4 Zen 2 cores and 8 threads), a maximum frequency of 4.3 GHz, a TDP of 15 W, and a Radeon 610M RDNA GPU.
• Intel Core i3-1215U “Alder Lake-U”: This model will have a Core i3-1215U with 2 P cores/4 E cores and 8 threads, with a maximum frequency of 4.4 GHz and 15 W TDP.
• AMD Ryzen 7 6800U “Renoir”: The most advanced for those looking for better performance. It will be equipped with a Ryzen 7 6800U with 8 ZEN 3 cores and 16 threads with frequencies up to 4.7 GHz and a TDP that increases to 28W.

The best-performing option is the AMD Ryzen 7 6800U “Renoir,” in our opinion. It uses the Mendocino series of APUs launched last spring to power notebooks (or mini PCs) that demand high power.

They are produced by TSMC using a cutting-edge 6 nm production node and combine a CPU, GPU, and memory controller in a single package. AMD opted for the ZEN2 design instead of the new ZEN3 architecture for cost and power consumption reasons. At the same time, they improved the graphics area with an integrated RDNA2 architecture.

The preferred Ryzen 5 7520U processor should be enough for this type of machine with 4 cores and 8 threads; in actuality, it is the same kind of chip that Valve utilized to create the unique “Aerith” SoC for Steam Deck.

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