Available in France for almost a month, the Asus ROG Ally will have to put up with two possibly tough competitors: the Aya Neo 2S and Geek 1S. Both are open today for pre-orders and are also based on the latest Zen 4 and RDNA 3 architectures from AMD.
On a market monopolized in large part by two tenors of the market: Valve, with its Steam Deck on one side; and Asus, with its very recent ROG Ally on the other, the Chinese brands continue to make their way. After GPD’s Win 4, it’s Ayaneo’s turn to respond with two new portable consoles under Windows: the Ayaneo 2S and the Ayaneo Geek 1S. Both are equipped with the latest Zen 4 and RDNA 3 architectures from AMD… and are open today for pre-orders on the Indiegogo platform.
In terms of pricing, and as expected, the 2S is more expensive than the ROG Ally with a price of 949 dollars in the 16 GB RAM / 512 GB SSD version. For the same configuration, the Geek 1S is on the other hand much more competitive, with a price fixed this time at 699 euros.
Power under the hood… for both
The advantage is that despite a significant price difference, the Ayaneo 2S and Ayaneo Geek 1S are equipped with one and the same APU: the AMD Ryzen 7840U. As a reminder, this latest generation chip combines a Zen 4 CPU part (8 cores and 16 threads rising to a maximum of 5.1 GHz) and an RDNA 3 GPU part (Radeon 780M). The set is also based on 16 MB of L3 cache and benefits from a thermal envelope of 15 W.
This chip is generally more efficient than that of the Steam Deck, and is more or less equivalent to the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme APU of the ROG Ally.
The Ayaneo Geek 1S // Source: Ayaneo
Source: Ayaneo
Source: Ayaneo
Source: Ayaneo
Between the two new Ayaneo consoles, the differences are mainly on the screen (800p with thicker borders on the Geek 1S), and on the overall level of equipment which leans in favor of the 2S, higher than range. Essentially, the technical basis remains the same from one machine to another, with the presence in all cases of LPDDR5X RAM at 7500 MHz and an M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD. Both machines are also equipped with a USB4 (type-C) port, a USB-C 3.2 port, a headphone jack and a microSD card reader. Finally, there is a 50.25 Wh battery, as well as a Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 compatible modem.
Available for pre-order now, the Ayaneo 2S and Ayaneo Geek 1S should start shipping from July.
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