A new gaming console that’s basically like having a PC in your pocket
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Now, before you start getting too excited at this new story, let me start off by saying that, at least for now, the new Aya Neo Founder handheld console is only available in China. The manufacturer is yet to confirm an international release date – but that doesn’t mean we won’t get one. In fact, the manufacturer has hinted that this may be their next step, floating the idea of starting a crowdfunder to help make it happen. The original October release date has been postponed like so many other launches this year (thanks, COVID), and is now slated to start shipping on November 7th.
Inside this impressive console, we see an AMD Ryzen 5 4500U system on a chip that features both Zen cores and AMD Vega 6 graphics. While the CPU is limited to 6 cores and 6 threads, the Vega 5 offers 6 Compute Units (384 Stream Processors). And, it comes with a default GPU clock of 1.5Ghz and 1.,1TFLOPs of performance. That puts it around 19 times slower than Radeon RX 6900XT – but that’s a brand new GPU, and this is a tiny handheld device – so we’re still impressed.
While we saw many variant designs of this console leaked around online, the final design comes in a translucent plastic case surrounding the 7” 1280×800 IPS display panel. There will be two models available, a Founder’s Edition that comes equipped with 500GB of storage for 3999 Yuan (about $605) and a model with a bit more meat with 1TB of storage, coming in at 4599 Yuan (around $756). Although, these prices aren’t finalized as they may increase as development costs need to be covered too (they explain all this in the video above).
Let’s see how it stacks up against other handheld gaming devices currently on the market/ due for release soon:
The prototype version of this console has already been tested by YouTuber “The Phawx” where he put it to the test in Horizon Zero Dawn where it managed to achieve an average of 32 FPS at 1280×800 resolution. Not bad for such a small device.
