While gaming consoles often prove to be more commercially popular and more affordable up front, PC gaming is still a booming industry for gamers who prefer highly customizable gaming experiences. Incredibly powerful PCs like the Origin PC Neuron can run with a GeForce RTX 3080 GPU and an AMD Ryzen 9 3.7GHx CPU, which basically lets gamers play anything they want on max settings. But unless one is willing to put money into a gaming laptop, PCs aren't devices that can be stuffed in a backpack for travel purposes. Chinese company Aya is looking to change that with the Aya Neo.
The Aya Neo is a crowdfunded handheld gaming device with the power of a PC inside. The handheld device was first released in a Founder's Edition back in January that immediately sold out. Since then, Aya has made improvements to the design of the Aya Neo, including a better operating system with more efficient power consumption and more targeted performance presets. From the outside, the Aya Neo looks similar to the Nintendo Switch, but, hopefully, it won't experience issues like the Switch's Joy-Con drift.
At $789, the Aya Neo is definitely more expensive than the Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X, and the PS5, but that didn't stop its latest 512 GB SSD version from selling out in under 24 hours. The 512 GB SSD version will no longer be produced, but Aya has another 1,000 units of the 1TB version in production now. The Aya Neo uses a 7nm class AMD Ryzen 5 4500U processor with a Radeon Vega 6 graphics unit, and has 16GB of memory and 1TB of PCIe/NVMe storage.
For internet and wired connection options, the Aya Neo comes equipped with stereo speakers, a 3.5mm audio output, three USB Type-C ports, Bluetooth 5, and WiFi 6. The device runs Windows 10 and features a 7-inch LCD touch-enabled display along with the typical analog sticks, D-pad, and other buttons. The only area that the Aya Neo shows age is in its graphics architecture, which comes from a Polar/Vega GCN 1.4. This graphics architecture is six years old, and it isn't up to the same standards of the AMD RDNA2 graphics architecture that comes with the hardware in the Xbox Series X/S and PS5.
Although 2020 introduced some great video game hardware, the Aya Neo is definitely an interesting addition to the ninth-generation of consoles in 2021. The Aya Neo is a crowdfunded console, so there is no guarantee that everyone that invests in the product will receive a console in return. But considering Aya has far exceeded its target funding, there could be a lot more Aya Neos in the hands of gamers in the next few months.
Source: IndieGogo