Aya Neo Crowdfunding Campaign Starts: $789 for an x86 Handheld Game Console

Aya Neo
(Image credit: Aya Neo)

Aya, a startup behind the industry's first crowdfunded handheld Windows 10-based game console, has begun its Indiegogo campaign. The start of the campaign was postponed earlier due to components shortages, but now Aya thinks that the market situation is right to start the company's crowdfunding campaign.  To be the first to get the Aya Neo, one must pay as much as $789 via the Indiegogo crowdfunding platform, reports Liliputing.

The Aya Neo uses the AMD Ryzen 5 4500U system-on-chip produced using TSMC's N7 fabrication process (7 nm-class). This APU has six cores running at 2.30 GHz/4.0 GHz along with with the Radeon Vega 6 graphics unit (384 SPs), 16GB of memory, and 1TB of PCIe/NVMe storage. The AMD system-on-chip is cooled down using a proprietary cooling system with two copper heat pipes and a fan.

(Image credit: Aya Neo)

The console has a 7-inch IPS LCD touch-enabled display along with analog sticks, a D-pad, and other game-specific buttons. The Aya Neo exceeds expectations with regard to connectivity, which includes Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5, stereo speakers, a 3.5-mm audio output, and three USB Type-C ports.

While a 7-inch x86 Windows-based PC seems impressive, the Aya Neo has its peculiarities. In particular, the console uses a six-year-old Polar/Vega GCN 1.4 graphics architecture that first came to life in the form of the Radeon RX 470 GPU in early 2016. AMD and game developers support this architecture for now, but only time will tell for how long this architecture will be supported given the fact that AMD is promoting its RDNA/RDNA2 GPUs and it is the RDNA2 architecture that powers both new generation game consoles, the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox One X/S series.

In any case, without any doubts the Aya Neo is an interesting device from engineering and gaming performance standpoints. 

Anton Shilov
Freelance News Writer

Anton Shilov is a Freelance News Writer at Tom’s Hardware US. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

  • AlexTSG
    Just a few notes regarding this news piece.

    The Aya Neo is certainly not "the industry's first crowdfunded handheld Windows 10-based game console".

    The original GPD Win was launched back in 2016 as a handheld gaming device, and that ran Windows 10.

    GPD has also just completed an Indiegogo campaign for the GPD Win 3, a similar device running Windows 10, which uses an Intel 1165G7/1135G7 processor.

    The article also seems to suggest that Aya has chosen to use an old graphics architecture in this device, when it uses the AMD Ryzen 5 4500U integrated graphics, and not a discrete graphics card. So, the choice of graphics architecture is AMDs, and not Aya's.

    I've backed the Aya Neo 500GB model, and some friends of mine have backed GPD's Win 3, so it will be interesting to compare them once they are delivered.
    Reply
  • BaRoMeTrIc
    Can't believe i'm saying this, but this would be a lot more interesting if they delayed for a little while and went with Tiger Lake and Iris Xe graphics.
    Reply
  • AlexTSG
    BaRoMeTrIc said:
    Can't believe i'm saying this, but this would be a lot more interesting if they delayed for a little while and went with Tiger Lake and Iris Xe graphics.

    That's exactly what the GPD Win 3 is using in a similar form factor (1165G7). The GPD definitely has faster graphics, however at 28W, which is needed to get the best performance from the Tiger Lake chip, the battery life isn't great (around an hour). At a more reasonable 15W TDP, the Ryzen and Tiger Lake chips perform similarly.
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    heat would be concern..its much smaller then laptop and even they struggle to stay cool during gaming.
    Reply
  • Makaveli
    This looks great but really wanted to see RDNA in it for the graphics.

    Here's to hoping this sells well so we can see a zen3 based version with RDNA2 in it eventually.
    Reply
  • watzupken
    BaRoMeTrIc said:
    Can't believe i'm saying this, but this would be a lot more interesting if they delayed for a little while and went with Tiger Lake and Iris Xe graphics.
    Xe graphics is great, but only when you give it more power. So if you were to limit it to 15W, I don't think it wil perform significantly faster than the iGPU on a Renoir chip. In addtion, while I have not tested Tiger Lake myself, I feel the graphic driver/ game optimization may be a sore point for the Xe graphic.
    Reply
  • MarsISwaiting
    forget about it , it is too expensive for a handheld gaming PC ... The only way for a true handheld "PC Gaming" to succeed is cloud gaming.
    Reply