Review AYANEO 3 - A Remarkable (And Pricey) Modular Gaming Handheld

While Steam Deck's humble sales have illustrated that the handheld gaming PC market is smaller than many believed, that doesn't mean there's not an appetite for these monstrously powerful portable beasts.

Before Valve entered the market with its aforementioned device, we'd already seen several examples from the Chinese firm AYANEO, and the company has been a truly innovative force in this sector of the market since then, producing handlers with sliding keyboards and dual screens.

However, AYANEO's latest venture is perhaps one of its most interesting and innovative yet; the AYANEO 3 is a flagship handheld with cutting-edge power and a fantastic screen—but the headline here is that it sports modular controls which can be swapped at will.

Is this feature the game-changer that AYANEO promised, or is it more like a gimmick? Let's find out...

AYANEO 3 Review: Design & Display

The AYANEO 3 is a similar size to the Steam Deck, measuring 28.9 x 11.5 x 2.2 cm and weighs around 690g. It's certainly on the chunky side and feels heavier and bulkier than Valve's device. However, compared to other handheld PCs, it's nothing out of the ordinary, and that girth means there's plenty of room for a comfortable grip during use. The unit I was sent for review—'Starry Black'—is something of a fingerprint magnet.

The front of the device is dominated by the 7-inch touchscreen display, which is flanked by two 'HyperSound 2.0' front-firing (and very powerful) speakers as well as five function buttons. At first glance, the dual Hall effect analogue sticks (with fancy RGB lighting), D-pad and four action buttons look standard, but these hide the AYANEO 3's secret weapon. They're actually removable modules ('Magic Modules', as the company calls them) which can be changed for other interface options—but more on those in a moment.

Elsewhere, the AYANEO 3 has four shoulder buttons—two digital buttons and two analogue triggers, the latter of which can, via switches, be toggled between full analogue and low-travel, with the latter giving a more digital-style response. You also have two additional buttons on the top edge, which are mapped to ESC and the pop-up keyboard. The top edge also has the power button (which doubles as a fingerprint scanner), OCuLink port and USB-C port.

Meanwhile, on the bottom edge, you'll find the button which, with a long-press, ejects the Magic Modules (this can also be used to toggle between joypad and mouse-and-keyboard mode), MicroSD card slot and 3.5mm headphone jack. On the back, there are two additional triggers, which rest under your fingertips.

The AYANEO 3 comes with two display options: OLED and LCD. Both have a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels, but the OLED version's refresh rate goes all the way up to 144Hz, while the LCD tops out at 120Hz. The LCD version supports VRR. In this review, I'm covering the OLED model, so I can only speak about that in terms of performance—and it's excellent. Brightness is great, colours are sharp, and contrast is brilliant. It also supports HDR.

AYANEO 3 Review: Magic Modules

This is arguably the AYANEO 3's biggest selling point in terms of innovation—hot-swappable control modules which represent 56 possible combinations. A six-strong Magic Module set is offered as a bundle option with the system or for purchase separately. They come in a snap-lock plastic case along with alternative analogue stick toppers.

The degree of customization on offer is staggering. You can have Steam Deck-style trackpads instead of analogue sticks or opt to replace the (excellent) cross-style D-pad with a disc-like one, which is similar to that seen on the Xbox Elite controller. What's more, these modules can be rotated 180 degrees (with the exception of the six-button module), allowing you to get the precise layout you want. Prefer your D-pad to be below your analogue stick? Go for it. You can even pop off the A, B, X and Y buttons and rearrange them as you see fit.

As a massive fighting game fan, the aspect of this system I'm most excited about is the fact that the Magic Module set includes a six-button module. Twin this with the disc-style D-pad module, and you've basically got the perfect setup for Street Fighter 6, not to mention Sega Saturn emulation. No other handheld PC offers this kind of customisation, and it's genuinely brilliant—and we could see more modules released in the future, too.

The way you swap out the Magic Modules is pretty cool, too—either via holding down a button on the bottom edge of the AYANEO 3 or using a software-based menu. Motors inside the unit pop the modules up—it's a mechanism which never loses its appeal, even after you've spent a few days with the device, although some will quite rightly note out that these motors could be a potential point of failure a few years down the line.

In the past, AYANEO's innovation has resulted in some unfortunate bugs and teething troubles, and the AYANEO 3 is no exception. Sometimes, when swapping the modules, I found that the analogue sticks would exhibit false inputs, which required them to be recalibrated. The issue here is that you need to input a series of motions and button presses to trigger the recalibration sequence, which is awkward. Hopefully, AYANEO will find a way of making this process a little more streamlined in future firmware updates.

AYANEO 3 Review: Specs

AYANEO 3 Review: Pricing

AYANEO 3 Review: Software, Performance & Battery Life

Like AYANEO's other handheld gaming PCs, the AYANEO 3 runs Windows 11 with AYASpace 3, the company's software overlay, sitting on top. This software handles elements such as the Magic Modules, power modes, and even the game library.

Windows 11 is a known quantity to most people, but it bears repeating that Microsoft's OS was never designed with this kind of interface in mind, and there are plenty of frustrations to be had trying to navigate it using a touchscreen and analogue sticks. When compared to the streamlined nature of the Steam Deck's OS, it can become a real headache—although if you're mainly using Steam, then you can always drop it into 'Big Picture' mode to get a similar UI experience.

AYASpace 3 can be invoked at any time by tapping the AYANEO button below the right-hand Magic Module. From here, you can adjust the system's power mode from 'Power Saving', 'Balanced' and 'Extreme'. If you're doing low-level tasks—such as emulating 8 or 16-bit consoles, for example—then the lowest power setting will be sufficient. However, playing AAA games at 1080p is only possible when running in 'Extreme' mode, and even then, you're almost certainly going to have to drop the graphics settings down a touch to get adequate performance.

Having said that, even in this setting, the AYANEO 3 comfortably outperforms the Steam Deck when it comes to running the latest games. Titles look noticeably better on AYANEO's machine and run more smoothly. There are games which are basically unplayable on Steam Deck—Dragon's Dogma 2 springs to mind—but are perfectly playable on the AYANEO 3.

Even older titles, such as Kingdom Come: Deliverance, run far, far better on the AYANEO 3; you can effectively push the graphics settings up to 'high', and it still performs incredibly smoothly. On Steam Deck, it's nippy but runs at a lower resolution, and the visuals are less striking. Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring, Robocop: Rogue City, Death Stranding... pretty much any title you could mention will look simply stunning on this device. Given the yawning price difference between this and the Steam Deck (the AYANEO 3 starts at $700 and goes all the way up to a staggering $1800 for the top-spec variant), you'd fully expect it to overshadow Valve's handheld.

All of this power means that the AYANEO 3 falls foul of the one big issue which has impacted pretty much every modern-day portable gaming system: battery life. When you're running the system at max power, you can expect to get well under an hour of use from a single charge. Even the Steam Deck—which can hardly be described as the best in class when it comes to longevity—improves on that by some margin. Dial down the power demands, and you'll find it's possible to get a lot more playtime, however; some older PC games can be run in 'Balanced' or even 'Power Saving' mode, and, as I've already mentioned, low-level emulation isn't all that demanding on the AYANEO 3's internal tech. At its lowest setting, you'll get several hours of use.

Speaking of which, it's remarkable to use a portable device which is literally capable of emulating every gaming system on the planet, with the obvious exception of the current-gen consoles from Sony and Microsoft. The AYANEO 3 runs Switch, PS3, Xbox 360 and pretty much everything released beforehand, thanks to a combination of incredible power and the incredibly mature emulation community that has grown up around the Windows OS.

Oh, and it goes without saying that the AYANEO 3 has access to a far wider library of modern-day games than Steam Deck, thanks to its support for the Epic Games Store and the Xbox Game Pass application.

AYANEO 3 Review: Conclusion

While the AYANEO 3 doesn't have that "it just works" magic that Valve has pretty much perfected with the Steam Deck, its insane power, modular controls, and access to the much wider PC gaming ecosystem means it's arguably a much better platform for gaming; it can run AAA games with ease (assuming you're willing to tinker with graphical settings, that is), has a fantastically sharp and colourful display and powerful speakers.

The Magic Modules are also much more than just a gimmick; they're really useful, especially if you've struggled to find the optimal control setup on previous handheld devices. Whether you're playing a first-person shooter, one-on-one fighter or side-scrolling shmup, you're almost sure to find the configuration which suits your personal playstyle—not to mention the size and reach of your fingers. I've lost count of the number of times I've dearly wanted to love a handheld device only to find that the controls aren't quite what I want for covering a wide range of genres; the AYANEO 3 is the first portable system I've encountered which overcomes that problem.

There are wrinkles to mention; Windows 11 continues to be a headache to navigate in this form factor, even if it offers an incredible degree of customization and gameplay possibilities. Battery life is also pretty poor—even more so than the Steam Deck.

However, the biggest catch with the AYANEO 3 is always going to be the price; even the weakest power option, lowest RAM and least amount of storage costs almost twice as much as a Steam Deck (although you're still getting a more powerful platform, even then). If you're looking at the higher end, then you're spending almost $2,000 on a gaming handheld. Granted, this is a handheld which can be connected to a screen, mouse and keyboard and effectively double as a pretty decent desktop PC, but there's no escaping the fact that the AYANEO 3 is expensive.

However, just as there are people who will think nothing of dropping thousands of dollars on the latest graphics card, there's clearly a market for high-end portable gaming PCs, and the AYANEO 3 is one of the best options you can buy right now.