Slightly over a month ago, I shared the news about the AYA-NEO, a handheld gaming PC that claims to be the “most powerful handheld gaming device”. While it’s not going to replace a high-end PC, it’s going after the niche, but substantial market of handheld PC consoles, mostly populated by the GPD line. With the dedicated gaming buttons and compact form factor, such devices do have an appeal to them.

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As the AYA-NEO touts itself as the “most powerful handheld gaming device”, there were footage of prototypes of the device running some of the latest games like Death Stranding and Horizon Zero Dawn decently. Its AMD 4500U SoC seems to offer respectable AAA on-the-go PC gaming but what about emulation, more specifically, Nintendo Switch emulation?

Given the obvious inspiration that the AYA-NEO took from the Switch when it comes to the design, the question of how Yuzu performs on it is inevitable. And today I am excited to help clarify things a bit with exclusive footage of the AYA-NEO emulating Super Mario Odyssey via Yuzu. This was made possible thanks to “Uncle A”, AYA-NEO’s creator, who was very kind to provide the video. You can check it below, with English commentary from Uncle A himself:

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As far as I know, this is the first official video performance with English commentary of the AYA-NEO emulating Switch games. I did come across a brief video of Super Mario Odyssey but it was less than a minute long. As you can see in the video above, performance is not fantastic, with choppy audio and unstable frame rate ranging anywhere from 30-50. As Uncle A pointed out, the CPU might not be to blame with higher usage as compared to the GPU. But that’s only one game that we saw and hopefully we’ll get to see more in the future.

And that future might not be too far away as the “Founder Edition” of the AYA-NEO is planned for an October release. This Founder Edition will differ from the later version in that it won’t have a detachable controller (likely to prevent facing lawsuits from Nintendo) and will also be shortened from 282mm to 255mm. While there is no exact price tag for the AYA-NEO, it was previously expected to cost less than $700.

What are your thoughts about the AYA-NEO? Are there any other Switch games else you would like to see get tested on the device?

 

[PatrickD85]

Well you say one thing for sure; The Nintendo Switch has really inspired a market for hybrid consoles.
But still from all I have seen over time. None have that great of an execution.
On the other hand ... I do hope Nintendo is taking notes of what similar hardware can do ... when thinking about what to do with a Pro / Ne model.

 

[Kaioh]

It'll be really cool if this device really does make it to market. Disappointing that the Alienware UFO never manifested into anything. Maybe in time though...

 

[RupeeClock]

Although this is an older news post, I came here to find any details of the AYA-NEO running CEMU or Yuzu emulators.
But it looks like Nintendo copyright claimed the actual footage, and is no longer available.