We could sit and talk all day about who was “first” with a modern-style PC gaming handheld, but Ayaneo was definitely the first to start selling a system that closely resembled modern PC gaming portables like the ASUS ROG Ally and MSI Claw. The mainline Ayaneo handhelds are simply called “AYANEO”, and the company just teased the third iteration on its basic design, predictably titled the “AYANEO 3”.
In a teaser trailer with very little information, Ayaneo introduced the upcoming handheld as being codenamed “Revo,” which, as the teaser helpfully explains, represents Revolution. It’s not clear what will be so revolutionary about the AYANEO 3, as from the glimpses of the device that we can see in the teaser trailer, it looks to have a pretty familiar shape with a screen in the middle, handgrips on the sides, and gaming controls on top.
There’s also a glimpse of something with a completely smooth glass face on it. It’s possible that this is some kind of head-mounted display intended for use with the new handheld. We’ve seen that a few times recently, most prominently with the Lenovo Legion Glasses and also the Tecno AR Pocket vision. A head-mounted display makes sense for a device like this, as it allows you to truly recline and play wherever you want without having to worry about keeping a screen in your field of view.
There’s no shortage of options for AMD hardware to appear in the Ayaneo 3. There’s the Ryzen Z2 series, which offers no less than three different generations of CPU and GPU hardware. There’s also the Ryzen 8840 series—although using last-generation hardware wouldn’t exactly suit the theme of “revolution”. It’s even possible Ayaneo is going above and beyond and sticking Strix Halo in a handheld—although the machine doesn’t look nearly meaty enough to provide cooling for one of those beasts.
Ayaneo has already taken a stab at nearly every gimmick you can think of for gaming handhelds, including models with sliding screens and keyboards, systems with flip-up screens, models with dual screens, extremely high-end handhelds with as much as 64GB of RAM, and extremely tiny machines you can fit in a pocket. We’re looking forward to see what the company unveils for its next handheld.