High end emulation, and high end PC gaming. And gaming/streaming combined. Also, I recently bought a budget laptop that is surprising me a LOT. I've searched but you have so many videos, can you upload a video to show how you set up the bios and such for these PCs? I want to adjust the cpu clock and tdp but don't really know what I'm doing with that tbh..afterburner isn't supremely useful as I have a onboard UHD graphics card.
Although the XG mobile eGPUs from Asus are exorbitantly expensive for the class of GPU they come equipped with, it's appealing to someone like me that's willing to spend $2k on a mobile 4090 variant, just to have the flexibility of a complete solution. For that reason alone, the Ally seems like the best fit. Decent power on the go (or for pillow gaming) and good 1440p/4k performance in docked mode. Great video as always, Taki. Appreciate all your hard work on these.
@@crestofhonor2349 valve is the company that made steam, steam is software created by valve. so basically the same i guess? but whatever you wanna call it also love the design of the deck, especially the trackpads
I feel the same… I own an Ayaneo 2 retro power, I do use it daily and like it. I also own an Ayaneo pro 2021 I bought on impulse that I whole heartedly regret purchasing as it is extremely uncomfortable to hold and the screen bleed is horrendous. I personally now I’m considering just purchasing a steam deck as the ergonomics are the best and the software and end user support is outstanding. Plus you don’t realize how much you need an actual PC for some games till you own one of these devices…
Even simply from aesthetic standpoint, the AYANEO 2S is beautiful. I really like how the bezels are hidden, making the screen look bezel-less. The buttons also look very nice and mesh well with the overall design, something I feel like cannot be said about the Ally.
Yeah it's basically the same as on the AN2 and I love my AN2. It also feels really nice in the hands with the high quality materials and shape of the shell.
I'm a fan of Aya Neo. I originally got the 2021 model before the Steam Deck was announced, and I was quite pleased with it. Aya Space pales in comparison to Steam OS, but if you're a PC gamer, Windows is just fine. That said, Aya Space has gotten far better since then. It's just too bad that A) these things are just too expensive even compared to the ROG Ally and B) it's on IndieGogo, so financing options, like pay in 4, are limited if present at all. I'll be getting an Ally next month, but I will always be rooting for Aya Neo, who have had great communication leading up to their initial launch and have pretty much kept to their promises thus far.
If you're that worried about cost, you'll still be better served by the Steam Deck than the Asus Ally just because Linux is more memory efficient. Otherwise, the Aya S2 (specifically the 32gb models, due to iGPU and Windows consuming 9-12gb of RAM) still be the better experience for battery life and newer games.
@@AYANEO Are you the official Ayaneo? That's so cool. First time I saw the Ayaneo 2S, I legit drooled. You guys have the perfected the handheld design.
Hiding the bezels, it looks so good. I hope someone especially Steam can do it on their next Steamdeck. And have freesync for the screen. Every little screen tearing makes me motion sick.
@@No_True_Scotsman I have a RT6700xt and the fsr has been awful in those games I have tried it. No new game thou. Have not bought a new aaa game in years. But as Damian says fsr3 might be much better.
I hear this a lot and don't understand, what benefit is there from hiding the bezels on an handheld? I get if its a stand alone monitor, but even on a phone its a bit of a marketing gimmick, for a device smaller than your standard viewing it makes less sense, just give me a decent sized screen, bezels are fine.
@@aaronbrenkus9126 I think they are ugly. Looking especially on the Steam deck. If the gray surface went all the way to the screen the deck would be a beautiful handheld. Now it's gray, glossy black then screen, terrible!
Ayaneo 2s is without a doubt the best looking handheld on the market, with its gorgeous coloring and subtle rgb lighting on the joysticks, complimented by the unique bezel-less display (which puts it above the otherwise impressive 120hz FreeSync Rog Ally, which is hamstrung by its ugly bezels). It's 50.25wh battery is a step up over its competition from Steam Deck and Rog Ally with only 40wh, losing only to the 8' Aokzoe A1 Pro with its prodigal 65wh battery. The main bummer about it is its steep price (Even with early bird) at $950 for just 16gb ram (admittedly the fastest at Lpddr5x 7500mhz which is another win over the Ally) and 512tgb of storage. I may actually have pulled the trigger on my first handheld if the AyaNeo 2s pricing was $100 cheaper (for $859 one can get Aokzoe A1 Pro with 32gb of ram and 1tb of storage).
Incredible, thank you so much for showing 800p performance, very important for someone coming from the Steam Deck and looking to upgrade to the 7840U Geek S model
It looks good but I think it's hard to recommend getting it over the ROG Ally. I think Ayaneo needs to tighten up their support to compete with Asus and Valve now.
This is a nice handheld but at its price point, it's hard to choose it over the ROG Ally of AOKZOE A1Pro. The GEEK 1S has much more competetive pricing but then you drop to an 800p display.
You don't need anyhing above 800p frankly. Things don't run well at 1080p. There's display scaling issues with windows. Now, VRR on any of these displays would be killer.
Will be a year till Strix Point Apu launches, featuring Zen 5 and the same Rdna 3 (called Rdna 3.5 or 3+), just with up to 16cu instead of 12cu. Its projected to be something like a ~15-20% performance boost, probably similar to the gain of 6800u with its 680m versus 7840u with its 780m. Don't expect new handhelds to launch that usurp this any time. Intel will have meteor Lake at the end of the year, and rumors are that its Igpu will finally be competitive with Phoenix, but I wouldn't rely on that till we see handhelds actually matching its performance in the latest games.
I feel like now we are getting closer to an actual improvement over the deck. I hate the design of the Ally so I was hoping these other companies will use similar chipset with better aesthetic/ergonomics.
The Deck was outdated when it was released. I can understand wanting to treat it like a console and have a long lifecycle but I wish they would release an updated version.
@@AYANEO Whoa AYANEO responding and watching these reviews. Pretty cool. I too am a deck user but the AYANEO has me wanting another handheld. Specifically this.
I'm glad they offered the free upgrade for Air Plus otherwise I'd be really tempted to grab this despite already owning the NEO2. I love the look and feel of Aya's devices so much they extra few hundreds over the more affordable options make it worth it for me. As is, I feel SteamDeck, Neo2, Ally, and AirPlus are pretty much the perfect set that all meet different use cases for me.
If Ayaneo starts building their devices around the steam deck os, they could easily blow every other handheld out of water, and going with SD OS will also help them lower the price as they won't have to pay for windows license
Looks good, but I think I'll pass on it already having the 2, the upgrade is a little too marginal to justify the price tag. However I'm very glad that they're offering the heat dissipation upgrade kit for free! Now if only we could get official Linux support sooner, TDP control is pretty awkward without the Windows UI.
The only thing missing for me is a 120hz free sync display. That way if you want to you could stream a higher power pc at home and then use this for portable power house.
What a powerful handheld although I don't think I see anything that will replace what I have now. This quick jump in graphical performance goes to show you how good the Steam Deck 2 will be I believe. I really like the placement of the directional keys/analog stick/trackpad of the Steam Deck so I'll patiently wait while I enjoy my 1st gen Steam Deck. Plus I can get 5-6 hours on some of my favorite games with messing with just a few settings.
The only thing holding me back from these latest models is the lack of thunderbolt. I travel constantly so ultimately handheld performance is king but being able to plug into an eGPU is such a big advantage I can't leave my OXP yet :(
@@In3rt_ia Yes but if I am not mistaken USB4 maximum theorical bandwidth still somewhat behind of what Thunderbolt 4 maximum bandwidth can offer (in theory). On top of power/charging advantages Thunderbolt 4 can offer against USB4
@@NZRAV3R running a GPU through USB requires thunderbolt regardless of theoretical max speeds, it's not purely a bandwidth issue (though that's the biggest part)
Ayaneo 2S vs the Asus ROG Ally please! Apparently both devices received major firmware and graphics drivers that improved performance dramatically across all TDPs so would love to see how they compare with each other performance wise!
@@TakiUdon its a joke but also will happen! These companies mold 1-2 shells and are doing with the handhelds what pc companies did back in the mid 90’s early 2000’s and are releasing new models with minor cpu increases. Pc companies released a new model every 30-60 days with a 33-100mhz at a time. And none of those increases really bettered the end user’s day to day experience . The experience only changed when huge advancements was made such as dual core and ssd etc
Of course I would be dammed to see you play modern AAA titles on 1080p high, ultra or a mix of high medium ultra settings on the ayaneo 2s. Please make it happen . PLEASE......
Without a VRR Freesync screen, these current crop of handhelds with a 7840u APU are not as desirable as the ROG Ally. These handhelds are also way more expensive for similar performance to the Ally. Hopefully future model's from Ayaneo and GPD will have VRR screens and better battery life at competitive prices.
This objectively always wins on battery life versus the Rog Ally with its 25% larger 50.25wh battery. One cool feature the Rog Ally has though is that one can extend the battery life duration by setting it to only charge up to 80%.
The handheld looks very good, I have ordered one after waiting for a long time for something that would be polished enough in my view and now I am very excited for it. Very nice to aee, that it's not to hard to disassemble, clean and upgrade the SSD if needed (or at least seems to be like that). Also there seemed to be pretty good linux support for the Aya Neo 2 and Geek with ChimeraOS. Hopefully this model will receive some love from the developer of it as well. Looking forward to it.
Um why didn’t you just spend way less and buy the asus rog ally $700 it’s gonna be better supported and it’s plenty powerful it’s one if the only handhelds that can actually do ps3 emulation.
@@sinceredtb3227 because I spent 700$ for the AyaNeo Geek 1s, instead of spending ~860$ for the Ally (Europe pricing). Also I don't really trust Asus with neither hardware support, nor software support. Geek also has a bigger battery, better joysticks, my preferred dpad style and better design (imo). Also the screen is the same res as the SD, which I would also prefer - I won't play games at 1080/1200p res anyway at that display size, and native resolution looks better than playing at 720p at 1080p display.
@@sinceredtb3227 also Ally basically has the same APU, so if it can do PS3, any other handheld with 7840u will do it to, be it AyaNeo, AokZoe or whatever else.
Seeing AAA games playing on a handheld is unreal. Like literally watching you play the games with that I can't believe it. If I was more of a skeptic I'd think you're just playing a video overlay. Can't wait to see what futher iterations of these will bring.
@@samsoulee absolutely I was really tempted to get the ayaneo 2s even after seeing the price because I am a I need the highest specs person but after thinking about it the ally isn't too far off in performance so I'm gonna stick with that
Not happy about how they handle these releases. I just received my 6800u version at the end of March and now they have this 2S Model that can do 40w 😒. Thanks for the video Taki, I appreciate your hard work keeping everybody up to date
Yeh the last thing to worry about is the Tdp, the fact that the AyaNeo 2 goes to 33w is already enough (and im pretty sure 3rd party tools can potentially get it above that). Being able to Undervolt it would be the best way to gain performance at the same wattage, since it will be able to reach higher cpu and gpu clocks (while also lowering temps).
@@AYANEO ...Like what the folks at Framework do with their laptops? That's pretty interesting... Will the warranty still be valid for this upgrade? Or better yet, will the new motherboard extend the warranty further? (As it is essentially a new device inside)
@@j3ffc95xand asus won’t? you don’t need to upgrade every single time a company releases a refresh if your scared a company is gonna release a better version of something your never gonna buy anything
It's interesting how people keep shitting on the Steam Deck, when realistically most will run their higher priced hand held at 15 watts most of the time to get decent battery life. In practice that means, they get maybe 10% at most better fps than the Steam Deck. Nothing really justifying the hype for these more expensive/newer hand held and nothing justifying the "don't buy the deck!" comments. Steam Deck still is a great deal, a great device, a great consumer experience.
finally a video i can show people to shut them up... the difference in ram speed is so minor in actual gaming between 7500 and 6400. All handhelds coming out in the future need VRR And low frame rate compensation. its cool that this device gets higher fps but in the future when it struggles to keep up with newer games, that stuff will make all the difference in needing to upgrade or not
Taki could you please make a more accurate benchmark comparison between Ayaneo2 and Ayaneo 2S? i would like to see if the performance boost justify the upgrade since i own a 6800u Ayaneo2
I'd buy this in a heartbeat if it had a 120hz display. Unfortunately, the Ally is the only one that has it, so I'm going with the Ally for now. Everything else looks SO nice though.
I have a 6800u geek, probably will upgrade the motherboard with Aya in the future. If I was in the market to buy an Ayaneo I’d definitely go with the 800p geek at 699$
The geek at 700 is a good deal (Relative to the super expensive Ayaneo 2s at 950), but aesthetically the AyaNeo 2s is in my eyes much more pleasing, with its unique bezel-less display putting it ahead of all the competition.
Rather ROG Ally Z1 Extreme more premium and hardware like better speakers and cooling system for only 699 USD at any time. Plus i have Asus service center at my city.
thats the great thing about Ally, Asus service centre are pretty much everywhere around the globe, I live in a rather rural area, and the nearest Asus service centre is merely 30 minutes away..
Hey Taki. When you get a chance to do a more in depth video on the 2S & Geek 1S I'd love to see a performance graph across the TDP range. Can these still be custom set anywhere between 3 & 33?
Wait what about battery life though? I was waiting for that. It seems that the focus for these prosucts tends to be more on raw performance than battery efficiency
Recinding my negetive comment because arthur did listen and is going to provide the 1200p screen to geek users. This company has my reapect for genuinely listening to the community, even if their customer service isnt great, they do genuinely care about the product they are offering.
@@lucretius8050 yep to a device that costs 200 less and come with an 800p screen, not the 1200p screen we paid for. A "free upgrade" aint so free when it costs them less and hurt the user experience.
Thanks for your supporting us. We are sorry about the crystal purple GEEK thing. We have tried our best to redo the mold, but there is no good progress.
@TakiUdon good point well made. I'm interested in this sector, however I do believe we will get to capitulation at some point I think they are good for the industry because its so fast moving its speeding the tech race like mobile phones did 20 years ago. When big screen sunglasses tech reaches a decent point, I can see this industry exploding. A handheld pc with a virtual 120 inch big screen in your glasses? Yes please. Nice video BTW.
There is an update from the Aokzoe team that states it is 7500 MHz ram in the A1 Pro but is downclocked at the moment because it isn't officially support by AMD. However they are working on bios compatibily for full 7500 MHz speed. This would make bothe systems equal.
If we can request games to have you test them, I would love to see how do these games perform: Diablo 4, Destiny 2, Borderlands 1 and 2, (Elder Scrolls Online, Elder Scrolls Skyrim, Final Fantasy 14, Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis, Dead Cells, Don't Starve Together, Lost Ark, MapleStory, New World, Onigiri, Path of Exile, Smite, Spiral Knights, Tree of Savior).
Do you think FSR is actually good on these handhelds? We know that unlike DLSS, it scales much worse on low resolutions even on the quality preset and introduces shimmering, blurriness, etc. Wouldn't native 800p be better on these small screens without the upscaling artifacts?
You earned a sub. You just helped me make my decsion. Also I wanted to see if you could try some PS3 emulation and add NCAA College Football 13 or 14 or NCAA Revamped? Either way thank you for this video. Keep em coming!!
No sólo han actualizado el Armoury Crate, si no también el rendimiento,. Ya a 15 watts rinde bastante mejor que la Deck, consumiendo un pelín más de bateria.
strange that afterburner should report 98% gpu at 1906MHz. that igpu is supposed to go all the way up to 2700MHz. i wonder what happens if you use a tool to fix igpu at 2500 at the expense of the cpu. better performance on gpu intensive games probably?
Let's not forget that the local language has to be U.S. English, when launching the Ayaneo software. That's annoying, as I'm in the UK. Also, the part Chinese, part English, menus. They could easily change/fix both issues. Other than that, it's a lovely device as I owned the Ayaneo 2.
Taki you have been a lifesaver into the detailed information of things I didn't know about, things that I cared about, and just overall education of things I need to know about and care about having said that I was looking forward to the Loki then I was thinking of the steam deck and then the Asus r o g came out of nowhere but now I'm thinking of this device even though this doesn't have Dolby Vision or Dolby Atmos I think the stereo speakers will be fine I think having it as a backup emergency laptop that's future proof will be fine but most of all for emulation it's going to kick serious ass on top of that I can do the other things that you listed in the video and I think I should be fine thank you for this review let me know if there's any advice you can give me I'm seconds away from getting the 2s black with 32 gigs of RAM I think that even though they release lots of products and they do it annually kind of like Samsung does with phones I think if you know what your goals are on how to use this handheld and what you want out of it that a time like this is a good time to jump in but let me know your thoughts
If you don't have any handhelds at all, buying any of the four that you mentioned will be a good option. If you plan to use the handheld that you buy for PC things, then that's really the only reason that I'd jump up to 32GB. 16GB is perfectly fine for the games that these things can run.
Hello! One question: Between this, the Win 4, and the Ally. Which one is the better one? Keep in mind that the owner will hook up a 4090 when docking. Anything else the owner should consider?
