The Aya Neo 2 portable console, does it beat the Steam Deck?

As for handheld consoles based on PC hardware or computers in ditto form, two brands dominate: Steam Deck and Aya Neo. Of both and in terms of technical specifications, the Valve model wins by a landslide, but its rival does not want to be left behind with a new model. And it is that they have just presented their Aya Neo 2 based on the AMD Ryzen 6800U processor.

One of the pending tasks of processors with x86 register and instruction sets, the ones used in PCs, is what we call low power consumption. This is a pending task that has allowed ARM to take over the entire range of portable devices through processors from various brands such as Apple, Qualcomm, etc. However, we are seeing very important advances from Intel and AMD. Although it does not allow them to place a Ryzen or an Intel Core in a mobile phone yet, it has allowed the creation of a new form factor: the PC in the form of a portable console.

The Aya Neo 2 portable console

And let’s not forget that the computer is an excellent video game platform due to the catalog accumulated over the years and the fact that you can play anywhere, be it with a Steam Deck or an Aya Neo, is a significant change. Well, the successor to Valve’s console rival has appeared sooner than expected. Let’s see how it turns out.

Aya Neo 2 with AMD Ryzen 7 6800U is the most powerful laptop

At the moment the technical specifications on the Aya Neo 2 are scarce, but we can assure you that it is a jump that is at least relevant compared to the first generation. If we talk about the CPU, the use of the AMD Ryzen 7 6800U processor increases the cores from 6 to 8. Apart from making use of the Zen 3+ architecture that is more efficient in terms of consumption. On the other hand, the most important leap is made in terms of graphics, adopting the same RDNA 2 architecture as its direct rival.

Aya Neo 2 Ryzen 7 6800U

And how does Aya Neo compare to her rival? Well, very much in favor, since we remember that the CPU of the Steam Deck is 4 Zen 2 cores compared to the 8 Zen 3+ cores of the Aya Neo 2, they are an advantage in performance. On the other hand, if we talk about the graphics, its configuration is 12 Compute Units for the Aya Neo 2 compared to 8 for the Valve console.

In any case, we hope that at some point Valve will release its Steam Deck V2 with better technical specifications than the current model. Whose advantage over his rival is currently the optimization of games for his platform and having much cheaper hardware for the public. This last point is for us the Achilles heel of the current Aya Neo, and that is that they are too expensive despite being exceptional machines for what they are used for. So everything indicates that the Aya Neo 2 is going to cost an entire salary, although we do not know the price at the moment.