Chinese firm Aya Neo has been pumping out Steam Deck competitors for the past couple of years, and has just released the excellent Air Plus – which we reviewed recently and found to be a welcome (if expensive) alternative to Valve's handheld.
Never one to rest on its laurels, Aya Neo has now announced two new additions to its portable stable: the Aya Neo 2S and Aya Neo Geek 1S (thanks, The Verge).
Starting with the 2S, it looks like this previously-unseen device will be one of the first of its kind to run AMD's new 3.3GHz Ryzen 7 7840U chipset. Aya Neo claims that the 7000 Series will present a "significant improvement over the 6800U" which powers some of its other devices, including the Aya Neo Air Plus. In particular, it is said that "substantial performance gains" exist in the low TDP 8-15W range, which means the system should benefit from improved battery life – a sticking point with all of these portable PCs.
The Geek 1S, on the other hand, is a budget version of the Aya Neo 2 with lower specs – it has an 800p screen, for example (the same resolution as the Steam Deck) – but will also include a 7000-series processor.
Aya Neo also gave us a little more info on its 'Kun' device, which it promises will boast more buttons and screen real estate than any other Windows-based handheld – it will also showcase the largest battery capacity in any device of this type, too.
In other positive news, Aya Neo acknowledged that its much-maligned Aya Space app – which is still in beta and comes installed on all of its devices – simply isn't up to scratch. It is now hard at work on Aya Space 2.0, which should hopefully solve the issues people have been having with version 1.0.
Given that it has pumped out so many devices in such a short space of time, it's welcome news that Aya Neo is also offering the ability to upgrade existing devices, including the Air, Aya Neo 2 and Geek.
A free speaker upgrade will be made available for every Aya Neo Air owner, as well as a free cooling module for Aya Neo 2 and Aya Neo Geek customers to lower its running temperature. Rather than do the upgrades in-house, these will be sent to buyers, who will have to fit them themselves. These packs will ship in the middle of May.
A motherboard upgrade might be coming soon for the Geek and Aya Neo 2, while those of you who have preordered an Aya Neo Air Plus with the 6800U chip but haven’t received it can upgrade to the 7000 series ship for free.