Being a predominantly console gamer, I find the concept of PC gaming on the move extremely appealing. The AYANEO Air is one of a slew of devices from Aya that purport to be high-powered quality gaming devices that can give you the full power of a desktop PC in the palm of your hand. 

The AYANEO Air is the lighter and brighter version of its current range, sporting a 5.5” 1080p (1920x1080 pixel with 404ppi) touch screen AMOLED display, dual analogue sticks, a 4-direction d-pad, 6 shoulder buttons and 8 face buttons. And at just 400g in weight with a 18mm thickness at the screen, it is in a similar ballpark to that of a Nintendo Switch Lite!

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5560U Zen 2 ~2.3GHz (6 Cores, 12 threads)
• GPU: Radeon Vega 7 Graphics
• OS: Windows 11 64-Bit
• Storage: 512GB SSD (Expandable via Micro SD card)
• Screen: 5.5-inch AMOLED
• Resolution: 1920 x 1080 (404PPI)
• RAM: 16GB DDR4 (3200MHz)
• Battery: 7350 mAh 28 Wh
• Weight: 410 grams
• Price: $600~$650

The build quality of this oddly named “Polar Black” model is fantastic throughout with everything sturdy and well put together in its quality of components, seams, and buttons. I love the feel of this unit; it has a sleek form factor that is comfortable to hold onto and doesn't fatigue your wrist thanks to that relatively lightweight loadout. Along the top, you have your exhaust vents, a USB-C socket, a volume rocker, and a fingerprint reading power button. Along the bottom, you have your stereo speakers (which are poorly positioned IMHO: pointing down and away from you), the micro SD card slot (which has a dust cover), a 3.5mm headphone jack, and another USB-C socket.

There are only two screws visible throughout this entire unit, and they are also located on that bottom plane, and if you wanted to remove them to take a peek inside, you would only require a tiny Philips head to remove them. The rear of the unit also houses the exhaust/air intake cut-outs, and the ergonomic grips to each edge that your hand envelops when you pick it up. However, there are no rear triggers to utilise, and no grippy, non-slippy textures going on; so if your hands get sweaty or are naturally oily, watch out for slippage.

The main face buttons feel nice, with a tactile click to them that feels solid, and the triggers overall feel delightful under your fingers. I would have liked them to be a little bigger perhaps, a little more substantial, but for the best part, they feel great and work fantastically. Above the LT/RT triggers, you have your LB/RB bumpers and just beyond those as your fingers creep towards the centre of the top are a hidden pair of buttons, though they have no raised bumps or detectable indentation. As such, these rely on knowing they exist, and your ever-evolving dactyl-muscle-memory. You can customise each of these for ‘tap’ and ‘hold’ functions, and I simply personalised mine to bring up the on-screen keyboard, and to take screenshots, which is insanely handy whilst reviewing!

The analog sticks feel great. Given that they utilise HALL non-contact magnetic fields as a potentiometer, there is no such thing as drift! The parts within never touch, never degrade and therefore never fail to draw smooth circles and keep your in-game characters running and aiming straight! Clicking the sticks in provides solid tactile feedback that they have been pressed down, they feel great under your thumbs and really add to the whole gaming feel/experience we have all grown to expect. 

Each of the sticks has a halo of light around them which is customisable. However, this is a little lackluster, as the built-in profiles aren’t that striking. The RGB colour selector for each one also doesn’t even nearly reflect the colour those weak little bulbs are going to display for you. It’s a small niggle, but it should have felt truer and more well rounded. But it’s only cosmetic, and you can always just turn them off.

Techwise, this little pocket rocket packs in a hexa-core Ryzen 5560U processor clocked at 2.3ghz, 16GB of DDR4 ram and 512GB of SSD storage space, with a micro SD slot capable of expanding your storage indefinitely. Powering this all is a 28w 7350MAH battery that is like a hamster on a wheel trying to power a luxury yacht: it’s never going to work for long. Such is the consumption from that 7350MAH battery that you will just about get ONE (yes I said one) solid hour of lag-less gameplay on the 12w TDP (Thermal Design Power) mode, with full fan cooling. However, you will get slightly longer if you use balanced modes such as 8w/5w and silent fan modes.

In testing, I managed to eke out roughly 70 minutes of usage on average use playing games and emulating titles, however better optimized, less demanding games can run on the less power demanding modes to grant you up to 120 minutes or so depending. If a game can handle lower modes that's a bonus, but some games will run extremely choppily until you up the TDP and give it enough power to show you what it is capable of.

The software it comes with is quite simply Windows 11 with a layered application called AYA Space running from start-up. Hitting the AYA button brings up the quick assistant overlay whereby you can alter the TDP and fan speeds, or launch/customise any shortcuts you have configured. Holding down the AYA button brings up the entire AYA Space app that lets you directly boot a game from your library, monitor usage statistics, view hardware information, or configure your device's buttons/RGB etc.

As a casual gamer, I found this layered software a tad confusing and a little annoying at times, mainly because basic things like folder/file names didn't display. This made the process of manually adding titles to your launcher an absolute chore, having to try each folder until you found the right one to add the EXE to the app. I feel like a little more work is required to get this into a similar league as Launchbox, or Retroarch or even Steam's library as a front-end title launcher. I managed to add a few emulators such as Dolphin, Yuzu, RCPS3 and Xenia too, but the process could definitely have been streamlined to be more user-friendly.

I decided, in my wisdom, that perhaps I could dock this device using the old C-Force CF008 I reviewed a couple of years ago for the Nintendo Switch, and low and behold it worked like a charm! Simply plugging in the USB-C charger and an HDML cable from the dock to the TV, the AYANEO Air switched into a dual screen mode whereby I could use it handheld or on the TV (tethered). The latency was extremely minimal in this setup and as a result, I decided to connect a Bluetooth controller and REALLY go to town!

NOTE: You can use the dock in either USB-C sockets, but booting the device with the dock connected forces it into its native portrait mode, rendering it impractical until you reboot without a dock attached again.

Testing out a dedicated PC game first, I thought I would go for a game that I haven't played in a VERY long time: GTA IV. Firing it up the game runs well, though in the settings the AYANEO Air seems to point out that only low settings are usable, and that the specification of the game was nearly maxed out, suggesting I lowered the resolution to run the game optimally, which I still do not fully understand if I am honest. I thought for sure the game would run at a higher level of detail with better textures, but it simply didn't want to. As playable as it was, with controls automatically set up, it wasn't the best experience for playing this title, so if you're looking to play the latest games at the highest settings, you should lower your expectations and aim for mid to low range gaming depending on the titles you wish to run. I also could not get this game to boot whilst docked, it kept erroring out with a D3D error, though it ran in handheld fine, with little to no issues getting it up and running.

Emulation on this device was where my real enthusiasm kicked in, and whilst I didn't want to go for an AIO bloated emulation front ends, I wanted to test bleeding edge builds to push this handheld to the limits. I began with Dolphin emulator's latest nightly dev build and opted to try Super Mario Galaxy 2 on the Wii and Super Mario Kart Double Dash on the GC side of things. Setting it up as vanilla as possible I immediately noticed a lot of slowdown on the Vulkan backend, so swapped it out to DX12, and then eventually to DX11 where I found there to be virtually no stutter or lag. The experience was incredibly well-rounded and very fun to play. Connecting Wii Remotes and a Dolphin bar also meant I could enjoy games like Wii Sports bowling in the most authentic way possible!

Upping the game and going for a newer console to emulate I picked up the latest 64-bit canary build of YUZU to flex on the Nintendo Switch. The thought of having a Switch-capable handheld console in my pocket that could also emulate several other consoles fantastically well appealed to my inner nerd, so I went for a selection of games that would either tax the system or give it an easy ride. I noticed that again Vulkan backend wasn't allowing games to even render, so I swapped over to OpenGL and the games started to boot!

Starting with something simple I tested UnMetal, a simple 2D game with an awesomely familiar Metal Gear feel to it, and it worked great hitting 60fps for the majority of the playthrough. I would suggest that 90% of 2D games like this will work because of their less demanding nature, however, there may be some that simply won't boot properly for one reason or another, or may stutter in complicated scenes full of layered effects.

Trying something a little more 3D, I went for Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania which, though it dipped from 60FPS down to just 4fps on the loading screens, in-game it was relatively stable at 47-56FPS giving me a highly playable experience with very little notable jitter or slowdown throughout. I was very impressed that this game ran so well, I wasn't expecting much from this one, so again I upped the ante and went for a first-party title: Super Mario Party.

Running Super Mario Party was a rollercoaster. The frame rate dipped from 60 to 27, and worse down to 14FPS, in places where YUZU was building shaders. In general, the game plays around the 29FPS mark but it's constantly interrupted by shaders and effects going off. The game looks decent, but I noticed some odd textures on certain objects and character models. I would say that it should be categorised as unplayable in this state, purely because of the constant stutters and slowdowns when any action occurs, but once the shaders are built the game gets progressively more playable. It's whether you have the patience for it is a question.

Links Awakening is where YUZU began to fall to pieces. The frame rate was an unplayable 9-15FPS at best and the screen itself was a blurry mess thanks to the lovely tilt-shift effect the game uses. I managed to get the speed up from 14FPS average to 28FPS average by simply setting the game's advanced GFX accuracy settings to Normal, instead of High or Extreme, and while I'm sure there are patches to remove the Bokeh effect from every scene, I wanted to keep everything stock, so I opted not to dive into any patches at all.

Running Xenia I was able to get the GoldenEye XBLA game to run as smooth as silk in 12w TDP mode, both docked and portably, which is probably the most incredibly easy way to play this game right now on your lunch breaks. The game looked incredible, and with a slight tweak to the button mapping and inverting the Y-axis, I was instantly at home blasting bad guys and storming the Dam, Facility and Jungle for the N'th time! The frame rate was rock solid, and though the emulator itself does tend to crash a lot, I had a tremendous time replaying GoldenEye on newer hardware.

Testing RCPS3 0.0.23 and Skate 3, after a few minutes of caching SPU, PPC, and textures the game finally booted, and rather unbelievably, it ran superbly. Hitting 45-61FPS Skate 3 was very much playable with a couple of stutters here and there, which surprised me. The AYANEO Air is a real powerhouse when it comes to emulation, and with Wii/GC, Xbox 360, PS3 and Nintendo Switch emulation covered alone, this thing is a very formidable handheld to carry around with you as long as you keep it in its highest power modes, and don't mind charging it on the hour every hour.

Docking the AYANEO Air certainly does fix a lot of problems I had with battery life, "consolizes" the machine into a stunning retro gaming device, and gives you a solid large display, but it entirely negates the point of being lightweight and portable, so this is not a permanent solution, though an official dock does exist for it, the portable element needs to remain the core focus of any potential purchasers.

As much as I love this small yet powerful handheld, I can't help but feel that the battery life was so poorly conceived that it should never have been allowed to leave the QA testing. A bigger battery with even just 2 solid hours of full tilt TDP would have been a far nicer experience with a nominal cost increase to bump the mAh to a more acceptable level. The screen size is a little small too, especially when having to navigate Windows 11 with your fingers as a stylus, it's plain ridiculous. 5.5" was ok for mobile phones with a dedicated touch-screen-based OS, but Windows 11 is far less forgiving on the digits, and the common phrase "fat fingers" applies to everyone when using the minuscule screen.

As a concept, the AYANEO Air is a gamechanger when it comes to a $600 Windows 11-enabled Ryzen powerhouse like this, and it surely gives the Steamdeck a run for its money, but if the AYANEO Air also had a 7" screen, 2-8 Hour battery life, and a dedicated OS that had fewer bugs than AYA space: I know for sure I would be shouting "10/10" from the rooftops right now. Instead, I'm wondering just how many times I'll have to charge it back up again today. Either way, I very much look forward to seeing what advances AYANEO comes up with in the future!