PCs converted into portable consoles are in fashion. The Steam Deck has made the sector a remarkable success, and that console has had rivals everywhere. What happens is that those that want to be compared in power are usually much more expensive, but now there is an alternative that goes just in the opposite direction.
It’s about the AyaNeo Air Plusa model that this manufacturer wanted to target a less ambitious audience. The console costs 289 dollars and thus significantly cuts the price of its competitor, but it does so with some sacrifices and surprises such as its main chip, an APU recently announced by AMD.
Welcome Mendocino.
The AyaNeo 2 already presented a frontal attack on the Steam Deck, but this new model goes in the opposite direction and instead of trying to beat it on specs (and price) it cuts a few corners to get the price to be lower than the Steam console.
For this the manufacturer takes advantage of AMD’s new ‘Mendocino’ chipssome APUs that were presented just a few days ago together with the promising Ryzen 7000 and that precisely pose a more modest and affordable option for other scenarios.
These chips are manufactured in TSMC 6nm photolithography and feature a quad-core CPU with Zen 2 microarchitecture, plus a dual-core GPU with RDNA 2 microarchitecture. Although during the presentation it was mentioned that these chips were intended for entry-level laptops, AyaNeo wanted to take advantage of that concept for their new portable console.
that chip is inferior to the custom SoC from the Steam Deck, known as Aerith and that has eight cores in its GPU due to the two from Mendocino. Aerith’s CPU has four cores, like the Mendocino’s.
There is also talk of how this AyaNeo Air Plus will have a 6-inch 1080p OLED displaya slot for M.2 SSD drives in 2280 format and a MicroSD slot, but for example it is not known how much RAM it will have or what type that memory will be.
We will still have to wait to see that console available: Mendocino chips will not appear until the fourth quarter of the year, and that will certainly give AyaNeo time to iron out details and prepare for launch. It seems that there will also be other cheap competitors for the Steam Deck: AYN presented its Loki console just a few days ago.
There is already talk of a promotion that could lower the price of the console to $199, and although its features will undoubtedly be more limited than the Steam Deck, it may end up being a very interesting proposal for many users.
Via | Tom’s Hardware
