At 22.5 x 9 x 3 cm, the Ayaneo Air 1S is more like a Nintendo Switch than a Steam Deck. In fact, it’s a touch smaller than the Switch. Or slightly bigger than a medium-large banana. The retro model I’ve got in for review weighs only ~405g on my scales, which is a little heavier than my Switch at around ~400g but far lighter than my Steam Deck at ~650g. There’s even a thinner and lighter model, the Air 1S Thin, though that’s a limited edition.

Point is, it’s a handheld gaming PC that feels more like a handheld gaming device of old than any other I’ve used. It’s a powerful GameBoy Advance, and boy, is it powerful.

The Ayaneo Air 1S may look like it needs a downgrade to stuff all its parts into that tiny shell. But, no. It comes with the same AMD Ryzen 7 7840U chip found within the AOKZOE A1 Pro or the OneXPlayer OneXFly. That’s a full eight-core, 16-thread Zen 4 processor. I still can’t really believe that sort of spec comes in a compact PC at all. It’s paired up with a Radeon 780M integrated graphics, powered by 12 RDNA 3 CUs—four more CUs than the Steam Deck’s RDNA 2 chip.

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