Earlier this year I reviewed the Ayaneo Next which was Ayaneo’s second portable console (first to make it to Australia), and definitely more of a Steam Deck competitor with its $2,000 price tag. The latest Ayaneo handheld to launch in Australia this week is the Ayaneo Air Pro, which comes with a much cheaper price tag, and a host of new features that make it much more compelling for the average gamer.
The biggest difference between units is the size. The Ayaneo Air Pro comes in at 224mm (w) x 89mm (h) x 29mm (d) and weighs 450g which puts it a very similar size to that of the Nintendo Switch Lite, which is extremely impressive given the technology inside this little console and the type of games it can run. In reality, size and weight are the only comparisons that can be made between the Nintendo Switch and Air Pro’s capabilities.
As soon as you boot the device, one of the standouts of the Air Pro is the display. It’s a 1080p 5.5″ AMOLED touchscreen display that is absolutely gorgeous. The blacks are extremely black, the colours are very vivid and everything just pops and looks that much better than the Ayaneo Next and other gaming devices. It really took me back to the days of the PlayStation Vita, which is the greatest compliment that I could give any handheld device.
It’s really just a gorgeous piece of tech, especially in the black variant that we’re getting in Australia, with customisable LED rings around the analogue sticks adding an extra bit of pop. These can be fully customised in terms of colours, effect and obviously turned off if you find them distracting.
When it comes to ergonomics, it really feels like Ayaneo has nailed that too with the Air Pro. You’ve obviously got your analogue sticks, D-Pad, four face buttons, two shoulder buttons and two triggers which all feel really within reach and not cramped at all. You’ve also got four customiseable face buttons that are mapped to things such as getting to Aya Space (the handheld’s custom game launcher) as well as start and select. Just like with the Next, there’s a fingerprint sensor in the power button which is used to get into Windows.
Something that’s really clever though is the fact that Ayaneo has added two very slim buttons that run along the top between the shoulder buttons that you can customise to things such as showing all your windows or getting to task manager.
In terms of connectivity, there’s a MicroSD port which is great for expanding beyond the 512GB SSD that is inside the Air Pro. You’ve got two USB-C ports (one top and bottom for each charging) and a 3.5mm headphone jack, although there’s Bluetooth built in to connect headphones wirelessly.
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As I established in my Ayaneo Next review, whilst these devices might appear similar to the likes of the Nintendo Switch on the surface, they’re much more akin to portable PCs in the sense that there’s more traditional PC components inside as well as fans and such to facilitate a more hardcore gaming experience.
In the case of the Air Pro, the device is running Windows 11 out of the box, and obviously, Windows wasn’t really designed for this type of portable experience, and as much as you’re able to use the touchscreen (which is very responsive), or connect a mouse/keyboard, you’ll want to be using Aya Aya Space or a custom launcher that has controller support to get around.
The Ayaneo Air Pro running Windows is still it’s biggest positive however, because unlike the Steam Deck which is primarily tied to Steam, the Air Pro can not only run games from Steam, but it can also run games from Xbox Game Pass, Epic Games Store, EA, Ubisoft Connect, Rockstar Launcher, Battlenet or literally any other client that exists on Windows. That might sound small, but once you wrap your head around the fact that this device can seamlessly run literally any game that you could play on a PC without any limitations (or any that I could discover), it’s a pretty big deal, and completely changes your way of thinking in regards to portable gaming.
Aya Space acts a clever way to load all of your games into so that you can launch them right from the app and not having to rely on the Windows OS at all. You can also setup shortcuts, change inputs, look at how your CPU/GPU are running as well as install launchers right from the app. There’s also a really neat overlay that you can easily pull up over your game to quickly change power modes, change the brightness or launch into other apps. It’s still in beta, so it does have its fair share of bugs, but I was also able to load in other launchers such as Playnite which even allow you to create the Switch or PS5 theme with some lovely results. Just like everything else, the device running Windows 11 means that your options are literally endless.
As far as performance goes, the Ayaneo Air Pro has 5560U AMD Ryzen 5 graphics with 16gGB of ram. When it comes to indie games such as Cuphead, Hades or Dead Cells, you can expect to get 60FPS at 1080 whilst on the lower power modes, and even when compared to the Switch, it feels much more capable of an indie gaming device, but obviously you’re probably spending $1,200 to play AAA games on the go and thankfully, the Air Pro mostly delivers in this area too.
When you try to play AAA games such as Forza Horizon 5, Horizon Zero Dawn, God Of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man or the like, which are all games that I played on the Air Pro, you’ll want to be dropping your resolution to 720p and graphics to low, which will result in a performance of about 30-40 FPS, which is a little less than the numbers that I saw with the Next, but still really damn impressive given the size of this device and what we’re working with. AMD FSR 2 (AMD’s DLSS) is really helping do some of the heavy lifting here and will only improve performance with AI processing.
I will say that I’ve been using the Air Pro to play a lot of Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer, and it runs really smoothly and plays incredibly well on this smaller device. There we still moments where I was just in disbelief that I was able to play a game like that on a handheld that is as small as the Switch Lite. I’ll come back to it again, but unlike the Switch and even the Steam Deck, the greatest benefit of having an Ayaneo is the fact that you really don’t have to ever think about whether a game is on a certain store or compatible launcher. If it’s on PC, it’ll likely run to varying degrees and the freedom of that really can’t be overstated.
This is where battery life comes into it and is obviously one of the shortcomings for a device like this, where performance is more than acceptable but obviously running PC quality games will take its toll. Whilst you can expect to get a few hours of battery life for indie games at a lower TDP, once you crank that up to get AAA games running at an acceptable level, your battery life will deplete quickly where you can expect it to last about an hour and a half at most.
This is where the appeal does start to dwindle a little bit, as impressive as it is that these AAA games are able to run on a device like this, it does take the shine away a little bit knowing you’re only getting 60-90 minutes of game time without connecting to a power bank or being near a wall outlet. In saying that, if you’re someone who just travels a lot (and are going to be in hotel rooms away from your console) or wants to be able to play COD or FIFA comfortably in bed, this is where something like this might be worth it.
Another area where the Air Pro feels like a match made in heaven is for emulation. Again performance is just a bit below the Next (which is almost double the price), but it’s a really solid emulation machine across a wide variety of consoles.
The reality of all of this though is that the Ayaneo Air Pro is a really solid gaming device. It’s well-designed, games run well and the launcher is getting to a place where it feels quite stable and really improves the portable Windows experience. The future in this space is incredibly bright and this is absolutely another win for Ayaneo.
