AYANEO 2

AYANEO 2

Most
of the handheld consoles I have purchased and spoken about here have been Android based but
I knew a whole new world would be opened up to me with a Windows
handheld so after doing a bit of research I decided to back the
Ayaneo 2 on Indiegogo on Sunday 22nd January 2023 and from previous
crowdfunding I knew that the ship/delivery dates shown on the site
can be quite optimistic at best.


I
received an email on Friday 10th March from Ayaneo saying they were
sorry to keep everyone waiting and there had been delays due to the
Chinese New Year, but they did state that by the end of the month
they will have produced enough handhelds to fulfil all outstanding
orders, so hopefully not long now (my thoughts from March 2023).

Once
it finally arrived on my doorstep my first thoughts after unboxing it
were that it was quite a heavy beast compared to equivalent sized
Android devices. I found it cumbersome and heavy to hold which may
get tiresome over time but my thoughts turned quickly to what can it
do that an Android device can't and then proceeded to put it on a
shelf and leave it there.

Now,
a couple of years down the line and I lift it off the shelf thinking
the Ayaneo 2 is a high end device even though it's 3 years old, the version I got has the 6800U
processor, 2TB hard drive and 32GB Ram running Windows 11 Home, so
I'd like to do some high end stuff with it. PlayStation 3
(emulation), PlayStation 4 (streaming), Xbox (streaming via Game
Pass), Steam gaming, GOG and more. Quite the list of things I want to
give a go. At present I have no interest in installing SteamOS but I
will give the Steam client a go.

A
comparison of specifications, trying to match like for like
considering there are variants of the Steam Deck not an easy task, also there is no 2TB model of the Steam Deck.

 
 AYANEO 2 
 STEAM DECK OLED 
 CPU 
 AMD Ryzen 7 6800U 
 Custom AMD Quad-Core Zen 2 
 GPU
 Intrated Radeon 680M 
 RDNA 2
 RAM 
 32GB
 16GB LPDDR5
 OS
 Windows 11 Home
 SteamOS 3.0
 Screen
 7.02" IPS
 7.4" (OLED Model)
 Resolution 
 1920 x 1200
 1280 x 800
 Refresh Rate 
 165Hz
 up to 90Hz & HDR Support
 Aspect Ratio 
 16:10
 
 Int Storage
 2TB NVMe SSD
 1TB NVMe SSD
 Ext Storage
 MicroSD
 MicroSD
 Wi-Fi 
 Standard Wi-Fi
 6E
 Features




 USB-C
 Hall Joysticks
 Hall Triggers
 Dual Gyroscope
 HD Linear Motors 
 Twin Track Pads
 USB
 HDMI 
 Display Port 
 3.5mm Jack
 Battery
 50.25Whr
 50Whr

The
big question is where to start, I have a few Steam games now so I'll
install the Steam client and give that a go. I have one of my
favourite titles available in my Steam library “Quantum Break” so
let's give that a go. Well Quantum Break plays really smoothly and at
a good pace, and overall a very pleasant experience so I'll carry on for a couple more hours.


Eventually trying some of my other Steam games and I get a very similar experience. Thankfully
the controls work perfectly out of the box, no key mapping to worry
about which in itself is a god send. I can honestly say I have
nothing negative to say about Steam on the Ayaneo 2 apart from one
gripe, battery life.

So
let's try Playstation 3 emulation. For the testing I'll use RPCS3 which is an open source Playstation 3 emulator for Windows, Linux, MacOS and FreeBSD,
there is a fork of it for Android called RPCS3-Android. I was thoroughly enjoying this as I played Uncharted and I
played for a good couple of hours, thankfully the controls worked
straight out of the box, there was only the slightest slowdown in
some shooting scenes. The only real issues I found were the same as the issues I found on the Android version so no gripes with this emulation.


Next
is some PlayStation Portable emulation with PPSSPP, I didn't spend as
long on this as I did with PlayStation 3 emulation but the time I did
spend playing it I found it played exactly the same as the Android
version. PPSSPP, whether it is on Android or Windows plays smoothly,
the controls worked perfectly and it felt as though I was playing on
original hardware. I can quite honestly see all PlayStation Portable games working with no problems.


Next
is the Xbox Series X, I first tried playing some of my Xbox library,
using the Xbox app and all my library played and played smoothly. I
started having issues when trying to use Game Pass, the lag was
making the experience unbearable, I would press “A” to jump and
the character would leap after I'd let go of the button, not good. I
went back to doing some gaming using my library.


I can see many hours being lost with this handheld and there is still plenty I didn't get round to trying, but I will at some point.

Would
I Recommend?
Yes,
if you wish to have one handheld and it has to be a Windows handheld
then it is quite capable of fulfilling most needs and some of the
higher end systems fair a little better on Windows than they do on Android. If you try to
compare the Ayaneo 2 to an Android machine, such as some of the more powerful Android machines like the Ayn Odin 3 then no, I have found that Android machines are easier to
set up, have longer battery lives and lighter. There is also a much wider variety of Androif machines.

Would
I Use This Purely as a Steam Machine?
Yes,
if I wanted one handheld that I purely wanted to play Steam games on
then I have found the Ayaneo, I would imagine the Steam Deck would be
the ideal but Ayaneo 2 does a great job. I don't have a Steam Deck to do a true comparison (anyone got a spare?)

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Michael