We got hands on time with the Ayaneo Air– a new portable PC to let you play your favorite PC games as if they were handheld titles.

Admittedly, this niche is quite in-demand- the PC has a huge library of games, and some of them benefit from being playable on the go (especially if you’re in the line of work where you don’t have that much downtime in front of your PC). The Ayaneo Air definitely aims to target this use- providing a convenient handheld to play your favorite games with a pretty decent APU to make sure they run well.

Still, with an RM3999 asking price, it’s a piece of tech that needs a lot of scrutiny. How does the Ayaneo Air hold up against someone who’s grown up with handhelds? Read on and find out.

For Better Or Worse, A Handheld PC

I’m quite a fan of how the Ayaneo Air actually feels in your hands. Like most “Air”-type devices, ease of carrying is the name of the game- to which this one gets full marks. It feels nice enough in your hands that you can pick it up with ease- maybe to play a quick game while taking a break from work and the like. It’s hard to describe the exact cause, but as someone who owns a Nintendo Switch, the Ayaneo Air does feel a little better in my hands, though that’s on a minute scale.

A huge amount of my gripes with the Ayaneo Air, however, come from the fact that it’s quite literally a Windows PC crammed into a handheld- while it’s certainly convenient, a lot of apps aren’t very well optimized for the mobile format. Some windows just will not scale correctly, with chunks of it being off screen. Even Steam, which has a Big Picture mode optimized for controllers, won’t activate it by default. Instead you’re stuck just making extra steps to get Steam running before you can even play your games.

Worse still, the Ayaneo has a most bizarre quirk- a rotation sensor, with no easy means of turning it off. Rotating the console too much will change the orientation of the screen, possibly messing up any windows you currently have open. As a habitual bedtime gamer, I can assure you that this rotation sensor will trigger more than once per session, usually not long before you suddenly remember you need to go be a responsible adult and stop playing games in bed.

Still, the device’s two USB-C charging ports are nothing short of a godsend- using the upper port to charge the device while plugging in any external peripherals via the bottom one is an efficient use of space for the device, especially if you’re like me and the type to totally use your handhelds as portable fighting game setups. The device itself comes with USB-C converters, so you won’t have to worry about getting your fightstick running as you practice some ToDs.

A Fun Gaming Experience

Unsurprisingly, the Ayaneo Air is pretty solid if you’re just looking for a way to access your PC games without having to whip out your massive gaming laptop.

Thing is, don’t expect the Ayaneo Air to be doing max-resolution 60fps gameplay- you’re simply never going to get that kind of performance on a compact handheld, and to expect as much from the console would be borderline unfair. What you do get, however, is a neat compromise- big, triple-A titles like Destiny 2 actually run fairly well on the device, though don’t look too hard because you will notice the visual sacrifices made to get it running so well.

You’re mostly going to notice this in games that use “realistic” art styles. More stylized games get away with this way better- Skullgirls runs like a dream on the console, and the addition of the two USB-C ports and included converters means you can quite literally run your sets on this with no worries.

Similarly, indie games like Hyper Light Drifter or Beat Refle will have no problems on the Ayaneo Air. A lot of the compromises you’ll make running games on will largely come from the triple-A side, since those are games that will put more stake into how things look- and also require more elaborate hardware to get it looking that way.

That being said, once you get games running on it, they will look great- the 1080p OLED screen really makes bright colors pop- I had way more fun playing games with cartoony visuals since sprites like Big Band just look way more vibrant on the display. It’s not that more realistic artstyles don’t look good, it’s just that drab and grey worlds simply don’t take advantage of the popping color quite as much as a giant cartoon saxophone man or a bright fantasy vista.

It should be noted that while the Ayaneo Air could, theoretically, run any PC game, reality is not always so certain. Games that can’t be run on the Steam Deck are a pretty safe bet to not make the jump to the Ayaneo Air either- Guilty Gear Strive, for example, just will not work, with a dash of non-responsive menus as well as massive performance sinks.

Still, these games are more a fringe minority, and you’ll soon find that most games actually work pretty well, be you an FPS gamer, an indie darling or just an FGC Scrublord looking to run brackets at your local restaurant (or the parking lot outside).

Closing Thought

The Ayaneo Air is a huge question as to what kind of gamer you are. If you’re used to the PC ecosystem and just want a way to play PC games on the go, you might have no qualms about shelling out the RM3999 to access your library. After all, don’t they deserve as much?

If you’re starting from zero and want to get into the wonderful world of handheld gaming, you might be better off going for a dedicated handheld like the Nintendo Switch, since games are made bespoke for it and it costs a significant fraction of the price. Games are an expensive hobby, and the least you could do is save yourself the headache of wondering why some games might not work after dropping more than the price of a PS5 to run a game on medium settings.

Because at the end of the day that’s what the Ayaneo Air is- it’s a premium way to enjoy a premium aspect of gaming. While it certainly runs smaller games as well, the fact that it’s designed with a more PC-centric approach in mind means that at the end of the day, it should be viewed through a PC-centric lens.

Review unit provided by Ayaneo