Ayaneo Air Plus: Handheld with RDNA 2 graphics at a lower price than Steam Deck

The Steam Deck is still relatively hard to come by and reflects the current need for mobile game consoles, which today have far more functions than a Sony PSP or Nintendo DS used to have. The Steam Deck packs a Zen 2/RDNA 2 custom APU for maximum performance at a relatively low price that makes the Steam Deck cheaper than many other handhelds. But now the Steam Deck is threatened with competition in the form of the Ayaneo Air Plus, which is supposed to offer a similar concept at even lower prices.

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In contrast to the Steam Deck, Ayaneo has so far not relied on a custom APU for its Air series, but rather AMD APUs from the Ryzen 5000U series. Although these are already based on Zen 3 on the CPU side and should therefore be superior to the Steam Deck, the integrated graphics are still a Vega 7 or 8, so that the graphics unit in the Steam Deck offers more performance. However, in the course of Computex, AMD presented a new processor under the code name “Mendocino”, which has exactly such handhelds as its primary purpose.

This is said to be similar to the Steam Deck’s Van Gogh APU, but not identical. Ayaneo has confirmed that the new Ayaneo Air Plus will be among the first consoles to be equipped with it. The new APUs are expected for the fourth quarter of 2022. Otherwise, the Ayaneo Air Plus is said to have a 6-inch Full HD display and an M.2 2280 slot and will be available for an MSRP of $289. Unfortunately, further information regarding the built-in RAM or other internal storage is not yet known, but based on the information so far, the Air Pro definitely has the potential to become a good alternative to the Steam Deck.

Source: Ayaneo