AYANEO Air Plus

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Device Overview: AYANEO Air Plus

The AYANEO Air Plus is a full x86 Windows 11 gaming PC squeezed into a 6-inch, roughly 510g body that genuinely fits a jacket pocket. That is the whole point of it: a smaller, lighter answer to the Steam Deck and the ROG Ally for people who refuse to carry a slab the size of a paperback. The catch is that “Air Plus” is not one device but four. AYANEO shipped it with an Intel Alder Lake i3-1215U, an AMD Ryzen 3 7320U (Mendocino), an AMD Ryzen 5 7520U (also Mendocino), and the flagship AMD Ryzen 7 6800U. The chassis is identical across all of them; the gaming experience is not remotely identical, and picking the wrong SoC is the single biggest mistake a buyer can make here.

Emulation performance, generation by generation

Because this is a Windows machine, you are not running muOS or a locked retro frontend, you are running the same desktop emulators as any laptop. What matters is which chip you bought. The Ryzen 7 6800U with its Radeon 680M (RDNA 2, 12 CU) is the one worth owning. Everything up through PS1, N64, Saturn, Dreamcast and PSP is trivial. DuckStation, Flycast and PPSSPP hold full speed with internal-resolution upscaling to spare. PS2 on PCSX2 and GameCube plus Wii on Dolphin run at native speed with 2x-3x upscaling in most titles, which is the reason to buy this device. Cemu handles Wii U well. Switch emulation is where honesty is required: Yuzu and Ryujinx were both taken down in 2024, community forks exist and the 680M can push many Switch games at 30-60fps, but this is now a moving, legally grey target rather than a guarantee. RPCS3 for PS3 is strictly case-by-case; some games are smooth, many are not, and the 680M is near the floor for it. The Mendocino Ryzen 3/5 chips and the Intel i3 are a completely different story. Their weak integrated graphics (the 7320U pairs a 2-CU Radeon 610M) are comfortable through Dreamcast, PSP and lighter GameCube, but demanding PS2 games and full-fat Wii titles will stutter, and Switch or PS3 are effectively off the table. Do not buy a Mendocino Air Plus expecting the emulation ceiling reviewers rave about.

Screen, build and controls

The 6-inch IPS panel is the highlight: a sharp 1920×1080, 368 PPI, 60Hz touchscreen at around 400 nits, with noticeably better contrast than the washed-out IPS you find on cheaper handhelds. At 237mm wide and 510-525g depending on SoC, it is small enough that people with smaller hands find it easier to hold than an ROG Ally. AYANEO used Hall-effect analog sticks and Hall-effect triggers, so stick drift and worn potentiometers are far less likely over the years. Both are real, meaningful wins. The compromises are real too. The joysticks are physically small with a cramped range of motion, the Start and Select buttons sit awkwardly enough that you can accidentally drop to the Windows desktop mid-game, and the right side of the shell gets warm under a sustained AAA load. There is RGB lighting and a fingerprint-unlock power button, which are nice touches rather than reasons to buy.

Software and setup

It ships with Windows 11, which is both its strength and its tax. The strength is total compatibility: Steam, Game Pass, Epic, GOG and every desktop emulator run without a translation layer. The tax is Windows overhead, driver management and a UI that was never designed for a controller. Budget an afternoon. AYANEO’s own AYASpace utility handles TDP limits, fan curves and button mapping, and it is the tool you will live in for stretching battery. For emulation specifically, EmuDeck now has a Windows installer that sets up the emulators and an EmulationStation front-end in one pass, which spares you the manual grind. Enthusiasts who want a console-like experience often wipe Windows entirely and install Bazzite, the SteamOS-style Linux distribution, which boots straight into a Steam Big Picture interface and typically claws back some battery life. That is the closest thing this class has to custom firmware.

Price, value and who it is for

Launch pricing on Indiegogo ran from about $549 for the Mendocino models and $599 for the Intel version up to $779 for the base Ryzen 7 6800U, with retail prices higher and rising with RAM and SSD. The weak point across every SKU is the 46.2Wh battery, small for an x86 machine: heavy AAA sessions drain it in around 90 minutes, though light emulation at a 6-7W TDP cap stretches to two to three-plus hours. PD 65W charging softens the blow. Who is this for? Someone who specifically wants the smallest, lightest genuine Windows gaming handheld and will pay a premium plus accept fiddly setup and short battery life to get it. If that is you, buy the 6800U and skip the rest; the cheaper Mendocino and Intel variants are hard to justify against a Steam Deck that costs about the same and does more.