The Aya Neo and GPD Win 3 are nearly Nintendo Switch-sized gaming PCs

One 12 months in the past at CES 2020 in Las Vegas, Alienware made waves with a modular gaming PC that labored like a Nintendo Swap, with a pair of gamepads flanking a strong Home windows 10 pill. Sadly, Alienware’s UFO was only a idea, as was Lenovo’s tackle the thought this 12 months — however two corporations at the moment are taking over the torch with a pair of crowdfunded devices you would possibly truly see in your lifetime. They appear critically legit.

The 5.5-inch GPD Win 3 and the 7-inch Aya Neo aren’t going about it in fairly the identical means; whereas the Ava tries to intently match Nintendo’s console in form, dimension, and with strictly gaming controls on board, the GPD sticks to its palmtop pc roots with a slide-up display that reveals a tiny backlit keyboard. There’s additionally a fingerprint sensor, a microSD slot and an non-compulsory Thunderbolt 4 dock if you wish to use the GPD like a full Home windows 10 pc.

Photographs by GPD

What’s the identical: each are genuinely making an attempt to ship a strong pill surrounded by joysticks and buttons for underneath $1,000 every. With Intel’s newest Tiger Lake chips and AMD’s Ryzen 4500U respectively, every has among the newest and best built-in graphics you should purchase, they usually declare fairly first rate efficiency in consequence — Cyberpunk 2077 can reportedly hit 30fps on the Aya Neo’s 1280×800 decision at low settings, and GPD gives a protracted listing of examples of current, demanding video games you could coax properly over the 50fps mark with its Intel Xe graphics.

As you possibly can see within the spec comparo sheet I whipped up beneath, every options 16GB of DDR4 reminiscence, a speedy NVMe stable state drive, Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0, a pair of stereo audio system, a real headphone jack, and a number of USB ports. Not dangerous!

Simply know that these methods are going to be chonky in comparison with an precise Nintendo Swap’s 0.55-inch thick body and 0.88-pound weight, and battery life can be an enormous query, with each the Aya Neo and GPD Win 3 permitting you to fine-tune the chip’s TDP wattage to get essentially the most out of their tablet-sized cells. NotebookCheck says you shouldn’t count on to get greater than 1.5 hours out of the GPD Win 3 whereas enjoying a demanding sport, although Taki Udon on YouTube claims you may get 2-3 hours out of an early Aya Neo.

Talking of Taki Udon’s video, it seems like a improbable overview of the hand-held, so I like to recommend checking it out, and this second vid that exhibits off how properly video games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Sekiro play on his Founder’s mannequin. It’s not sufficient to persuade me to crowdfund an organization I’ve by no means heard of, but it surely’s a great begin.

You must also know that not all of those handhelds are going to look and play the identical: the clear Aya you’re seeing within the movies was a restricted version of 15,000 for early pre-orders in China, with last fashions launching in black and white as a substitute once they ship in April. Aya can be launching its Indiegogo marketing campaign in February with a “tremendous early chicken restricted value” of $699, with no phrase on how a lot the remainder of us would possibly pay.

The GPD Win 3 is already on Indiegogo, the place you’ll pay $799 for the Core i5-1135G7 model, with the extra highly effective i7 chip beginning at $899, or $949 for a bundle with the non-compulsory USB, HDMI and Gigabit Ethernet docking station.

Between these handheld gaming PCs, the lovable upcoming Playdate and the beautiful Analogue Pocket, among the squeaky clear mods we’ve seen of late, to not point out the recognition of the Swap itself and the march of ever smaller and extra highly effective chips, it seems like we is likely to be getting into a gaming handheld renaissance. Right here’s hoping.