Handheld gaming PCs have been around for longer than their recent boom might indicate, even if the Steam Deck blew the doors off of the market by making a model that the average person could actually afford. While Valve may lay claim to being the “best value” portable PC with its loss-leadingly low price, if you’re in the market for comfort, sheer performance, or the functionality of having Windows right out of the box, there are plenty of more capable Steam Deck alternatives available to those with bigger budgets. It’s in this space where Ayaneo has traditionally operated, offering full-fledged Windows gaming PCs with high-performance components and instant compatibility across Steam and every other launcher’s full library.
Premium is kind of the direction you have to go in if you don’t also own some kind of store that lets you subsidize low cost products for the mass market. To enthusiasts, Ayaneo’s sometimes four figure devices have been mouthwatering, but even a boutique manufacturer can’t ignore the Steam Deck forever. Valve is now the elephant in the corner of every handheld PC manufacturer’s room.
Launching alongside the flagship Ayaneo 2, the Ayaneo Geek (available on IndieGoGo) maintains a premium status but is the first of the company’s full power handhelds to at least get within spitting distance of the Steam Deck’s price (there’s the Ayaneo Air, but it’s intended for less demanding games than the Deck). It features more in common with the Ayaneo 2 than it doesn’t, including its excellent Hall Effect joysticks and a powerful AMD Ryzen 7 6800U processor. But it starts $150 cheaper than the Ayaneo 2, at $849. That will still set you back more than even the most expensive Steam Deck ($640). But if you’re just looking to spend less than $1,000 for a genuine Windows gaming PC that’s more powerful than the Deck and isn’t much bigger than a Nintendo Switch OLED, it’s a great choice, especially compared to gaming laptops. Finally, we have a “budget” boutique Steam Deck competitor. Or, if it helps to think of it this way, a somewhat affordable “Steam Deck Pro.”
A capable AMD Ryzen 6800U handheld gaming PC
Despite its Nintendo Switch-like design, the Ayaneo Geek is a full-fledged gaming PC and has the specs to match. The most affordable model comes with 16GB of DDR5 memory clocked to a rapid 6,400MHz and includes a 512GB NVME SSD. The SSD can be upgraded to 1TB or 2TB for another $150 and $250, respectively. The top tier model is currently priced at $1,199 and includes 32GB of memory and a 2TB SSD, but if all you need is storage, the Geek also supports MicroSD cards for a cheaper alternative (albeit at a slower 300 MB/s speed). The Geek is also available with 800p or 1200p screens, even if this is slightly unclear on the current IndieGoGo campaign.
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For creative apps, the Geek maintains its middle of the road posture. In Cinebench, it scored 1,338 for single core rendering and 8,845 for multi-core, far exceeding the Dragonfly with all of its cores engaged but falling slightly short in single-core speeds. In Blender, the Geek rendered a BMW in four minutes and 29 seconds, putting it right in between the Apple MacBook Pro 13 and MacBook Pro 14. Without a dedicated graphics card like most gaming laptops have, its processor has to pull double-duty. It’s not the fastest, but can certainly get the job done if you want to use it as a full-fledged PC.
Impressive gaming performance thanks to the AMD Ryzen 6800U
Where it really matters—gaming—the Ayaneo Geek excels. Like the Steam Deck, performance will depend on your graphics settings, resolution, and the current TDP setting for the CPU. It’s a balancing act between battery life and CPU power, but once it’s dialed in (or if you’re playing plugged into wall power), it’s more than a little impressive.
Even though it’s cheaper, the Ayaneo Geek sacrifices nothing in performance compared to the flagship Ayaneo 2. It uses the same hardware to drive the experience, so with identical settings, in-game frame rates should be just about the same. Any scalebacks Ayaneo applied between the models are purely quality of life and don’t impact gaming performance.
There are four different power modes to choose from: Power Saving (11W), Balance (15W), Game (22W), and Pro Mode (3W – 33W). Older games and indies can often be played at 11 watts and sometimes much less. Game mode is the best fit for modern games, though usually drops battery life to less than two hours in my testing. Balance mode strikes a middle ground between the two. With a little tweaking, I found that a number of indie games, like Super Meat Boy and Disco Elysium, could be played with as little as five to seven watts, which greatly enhances battery life. Interestingly, cranking up power settings to 33W doesn’t usually offer the major performance increase you might expect. It usually gives you less than 10 extra FPS total and drops battery life to less than an hour, though if you’re playing plugged into a wall outlet, it’s definitely the way to go, for peak performance.
I tested a wide variety of games for this review and left the console in its Game preset to keep things standardized. I also set the games to 800p for consistent comparisons.
- Forza 5 (High) – 71 FPS
- God of War (Stock Settings) – 39 FPS
- Cyberpunk 2077 (Steam Deck Preset) – 63 FPS
- Borderlands 3 (Ultra) – 32 FPS
- A Plague Tale (Low, FSR 2.0, Performance Mode) – 31 FPS
- Rocket League (High) – 133 FPS
- The Witcher 3 (High, FSR 2.0, Ultra Performance) – 43 FPS
- Dirt 5 (Medium) – 56 FPS
- Elden Ring (Low) – 51 FPS
Playing at 800p, the Ayaneo Geek allows you to turn up the settings on many new games while still maintaining average frame rates above 30 FPS. Some games, like Elden Ring, are best locked to low settings for the improved responsiveness of higher frame rates, but others, like Forza 5, have headroom to spare.
It’s difficult to directly compare the Steam Deck’s performance to the Ayaneo Geek’s, as Valve’s continuous updates and plenty of community support means it’s always getting better. But in our original Steam Deck review, we “just barely breached the 30 fps threshold” in God of War. The AMD Ryzen 6800U is using a more recent processor generation than the Steam Deck’s custom AMD APU, so in general, you’re likely to see slightly improved performance across the board on the Geek.
While PC gaming handhelds used to demand that games be set to their lowest possible settings, that age is mostly behind us. The majority of games I tested were able to be pushed to medium or even high settings. Even when you have to turn things down (it’s usually best to customize your settings and opt for a mix that looks best to you), elements like lower quality textures are less noticeable thanks to the smaller screen. Features like FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), AMD’s method of upscaling images to improve performance, are also becoming more common and allow you to run even more graphically demanding games while still hitting playable frame rates. The Geek even has a built-in FSR option that can be used on many games that don’t support it natively, though the results can vary from great to distractingly blurry.
I’ve mentioned it before, but it bears repeating again: the Geek is able to support any game that’s currently available on Windows. There’s no concern that games will or won’t work like there is on the Steam Deck. There are few performance anomalies that pop up in the middle of games. The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan was unplayable on the Deck but perfect on the Geek. All of this means that you’ll have a massive library of games to choose from on day one and instant compatibility for it in the future, as long as the Geek can physically run it. No waiting on Valve to certify games are playable or for developers to add support. It just works.
The Ayaneo Geek has variable battery life, loud fans, disappointing speakers
While the Geek is obviously a very capable gaming machine, its battery life is extremely inconsistent. If you’ve played a portable gaming PC before, you’re already familiar with just how variable battery life can be. The 50.25 wHr battery could last four hours or 40 minutes depending on your current TDP setting and how demanding the game you’re playing is.
The fan can also get quite loud. If you play on the 22-watt gaming preset, the Geek’s fan can be distractingly noisy. It produces as much noise as a typical gaming laptop, though stops short of “jet engine” status. But since you hold the Geek closer to your face and ears, its noise is more noticeable during use. Running it in Balance or Power Saving modes quiets it down, but at a noticeable decrease in performance in demanding games.
The fan will have you reaching for headphones, but you may be doing that anyway thanks to the Geek’s disappointing speakers. They get loud enough to hear well, but movies and game audio lack body and sound thin. They’ll work in a pinch, but just like a laptop, I wouldn’t recommend using them if you have a pair of headphones handy.
Should you buy the Ayaneo Geek?
The Ayaneo Geek is an impressive handheld gaming PC, especially when compared against the Ayaneo 2 and the Steam Deck. While Ayaneo has scaled back certain features to hit the Geek’s price, its gaming performance hasn’t suffered at all. It’s a top-tier handheld that seems bound to impress. If you can afford it. And that’s the rub: even though the Ayaneo Geek has a lot to offer for a lot less than most of Ayaneo’s devices, for that same $849, you could buy two Steam Decks and have money left over for games.
That doesn’t mean the Ayaneo Geek isn’t worth considering. It’s smaller and more comfortable to use. It’s more powerful and performs better in games. Most importantly, it runs on Windows instead of Linux, so any game or app that runs on Windows should work fine without any extra tweaks necessary (you can run Windows on the Steam Deck, but it takes a bit of work and doesn’t always net great results). Connect it to a docking station and monitor and it can become a genuine, full-featured computer. Because of that, it’s more fitting to consider the Geek like it’s a uniquely designed gaming laptop rather than a simple game console, and in that light, $849 can actually start to look rather reasonable.
Whether the Ayaneo Geek makes sense for you depends entirely on how you plan to use it and just how much you value its comfort, optional upsells like that 1200p screen, and pure gaming horsepower. It also depends on how much you’re willing to deal with some small company jank, as AYAspace is more likely to break than SteamOS. But it’s one of the best options for getting just a bit more than the highest end Steam Deck will get you while not spending more than a couple hundred dollars extra.
Want more of Gizmodo’s consumer electronics picks? Check out our guides to the best phones, best laptops, best cameras, best televisions, and best tablets and eReaders. And if you want to learn about the next big thing, see our guide to everything we know about the iPhone 15.
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