The Steam Deck is still a hot product right now, with a base price of €399 (€349, around AU$560), making it a very attractive prospect for gamers on the go. With the massive success of the Nintendo Switch, Valve's handheld offers a portable option for PC gamers, but competition in the market is growing.
Still, the Steam Deck has managed to establish itself as the preferred choice for portable PC gaming, thanks in large part to its lower price. Serious competitors such as OneXPlayer Mini and AyaNeo Next Advance offer decent performance but are priced at over a thousand dollars per base unit.
cheaper competition
However, AyaNeo has a new laptop in the works, called the AyaNeo Air Plus. A budget competitor to AyaNeo's burgeoning line of Steam Deck imitators, the Air Plus is heralded as the first handheld to run on AMD's new Ryzen "Mendocino" APUs. This chip runs on AMD's Zen 2 architecture, with Radeon RDNA 2 graphics and a custom Linux operating system designed by AyaNeo.
Other tech specs for the Air Plus are slim at the moment, but we do know that the unit will use a 6-inch OLED screen that's smaller than previous AyaNeo and Steam Deck handhelds, which have two in one 7-inch screen. However, the Air Plus uses a 1080p display, a slightly higher resolution than the Steam Deck's 1280 x 800.
The Air Plus will also use an M.2 2280 SSD for storage (in addition to a microSD card slot), a step up from the eMMC reader found on the cheaper version of the Steam Deck. This is supposed to be removable for easy upgrading and should provide fast loading times in games.
AyaNeo has an Air Plus base model price of just $289 (€230, around AU$400), making it significantly cheaper than the Steam Deck (though still more expensive than the Switch Lite at $200). 200, AU$330.) It's unclear at this time what different models may be available or what other hardware specs they will entail.
Chinese manufacturer AYN also has a budget Steam Deck competitor in the works, expanding its Odin lineup on Android with the Loki series, which will run a full x86 OS. There are several Loki wearables on the way, starting with the €299 Loki Mini, while the higher-end Loki Max will retail for €799.
All Loki models will use a 1080-inch 6p screen like the AyaNeo Air Plus, though that screen is an IPS LCD panel rather than OLED. Unlike the Air Plus, specs for the Loki and its variants (no, there isn't one called Sylvie) are available on the AYN website.
The specs list for the most affordable model includes a user-upgradable 2GB M.2230 128 drive, a choice of Intel Celeron or AMD Mendocino processor, 8GB of RAM, Wi-Fi 6E, and Bluetooth 5.2. The Loki Max features a 512GB SSD and a Ryzen 7 processor backed by 16GB of DDR5 memory.
AYN has been overwhelmed with preorders following Odin's successful crowdfunding, and has yet to fulfill all orders, but has been fairly transparent about when customers can expect to receive their material. Pre-orders for Loki are now available, the product is expected to ship in Q2022 XNUMX.
Analysis: What does this mean for the Steam Deck?
With real competitors coming close in the same price range, Valve may need to adapt its approach to marketing the Steam Deck to stay relevant in the portable hardware realm. Cheaper Steam Deck models probably won't be available, but the real question will be how the wallet-friendly alternatives from AYN and AyaNeo can deliver in terms of performance.
Still, with SteamOS being an option for AYN Loki and AyaNeo Air Plus, it's hard to see how Valve won't emerge victorious. Even if the Steam Deck is too expensive for some, every laptop sold by any manufacturer is another potential customer for the Steam platform.
Valve has already abandoned hardware efforts; Remember the ill-fated Steam Machines, Valve's attempt to merge PC and home consoles? If the broader laptop market seems to expand beyond Valve's reach, it wouldn't be surprising to see Steam Deck lagging behind as the company focuses on bringing gaming to laptops with its ever-evolving library of games. expansion.
Via PCWorld