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Review: The AYANEO 2S is my new favourite handheld

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Re: Review: The AYANEO 2S is my new favourite handheld

#21
post #3

These handhelds are great, but the battery life is just not there. They need to be able to sustain ~4 hours of continued gameplay. As they are, they can do maybe 1-1.5 hours. It's simply not enough. Still great machines and I believe they only need a little more power to be able to play 1080p at 60fps; or personally I think we should focus on 40fps (40hz screens) at 1080p and then just focus on efficiency as much as…

Meanwhile, you can play 900p xbox 360 era games on the Steam Deck for at least 4ish hours if you don't run them full bore, or 8+ hours if you do something like emulation or very specific games. The game output the past five years hasn't been good enough to justify needing better than that for me. Millions of units sold seem to suggest that's closer to the real value people see in them as well, rather than playing yes…

>I don't think you guys actually care about PLAYING video games

I am no PC gamer by modern standards, and while I agree withy your sentiment that there's fun good old games out there that don't require cutting edge PCs, I find your spiteful generalization of the people who want to play AAA games on expensive cutting edge machines rude and just as elitist as the people you're attacking. Ironic.

Why do you think people should not have the right to want to play the latest AAA games at full visual fidelity? It's their money, they're free to spend it on their hobby, and AAA games are also fun as well.

Sure, some gamers care more about hype and graphical fidelity, than they care about the fun and gameplay, but so what? Most people care about having good looking eyecandy in their lives: their shiny car, their shiny watch, their shiny iPhone and Mac, their houses, their attractive partners, etc. Who are we to judge other peoples' tastes on what they value in life? Looks sell.

Life is short and many people don't want to wait 5-10 years till their favorite AAA game can be played on a handheld on 720p low settings, but want to experience the full graphical fidelity the original developers' vision intended. And that costs money and a big tower PC.

Re: Review: The AYANEO 2S is my new favourite handheld

#23

I didn't see it in the review, or in the video so forgive me if this was covered.. but the real killer feature of these handhelds is the instant on/instant resume. I can grab my steam deck play for 5 minutes or 2 hours, or 2 hours with interruptions because I can just hit the power button and then resume it right where I left off for any game. It's amazing and it's the real reason I use the steam deck. I also have my…

As I understand it, none of the windows handhelds have instant or even reliable suspend during gameplay.

Re: Review: The AYANEO 2S is my new favourite handheld

#24
post #14

The easiest thing to screw up in a handheld is the D-Pad. A bad D-Pad means that Sonic doesn't roll, Ryu doesn't shouryuken, and Madeline crouches randomly. At least this reviewer admitted that he wasn't knowledgeable enough to review the D-Pad..

That is one thing I'm somewhat disappointed with on the ROG ally. It's both mooshy and round enough that a downright vs a down is a very small input difference, which doesn't feel physically different to perform. The Xbox elite controllers have one of my favorite dpads, colicky and you can choose + or rounded + via insert.

Re: Review: The AYANEO 2S is my new favourite handheld

#25

How are you feeling about the increase in popularity of handheld computers in the last few years? I personally find the idea of playing an MMO on a handheld very interesting, but it seems like the hardware just isn't there yet, as they're either too weak, too hot or have too short of a battery life.

I'm glad to see them get more powerful but I think MMO on a handheld is probably the last thing these are targeting. Being a portable device with somewhat limited input and screen space compared to a normal computer offline single player games are a good fit but online games with tons of inputs and things on screen seem a bad match even in ideal concept.

Re: Review: The AYANEO 2S is my new favourite handheld

#26
post #3

These handhelds are great, but the battery life is just not there. They need to be able to sustain ~4 hours of continued gameplay. As they are, they can do maybe 1-1.5 hours. It's simply not enough. Still great machines and I believe they only need a little more power to be able to play 1080p at 60fps; or personally I think we should focus on 40fps (40hz screens) at 1080p and then just focus on efficiency as much as…

The display in the Steam Deck supports VRR, and the in-game overlay lets you adjust the framerate cap on the fly. 40 FPS is a very popular compromise on it.

The problem with battery life is that any gains made by more efficient chips will be eaten up by more demanding games, especially as developers start dropping support for last gen consoles. But you can play plenty of older games for hours on end with current hardware.

Re: Review: The AYANEO 2S is my new favourite handheld

#27
post #18
post #3

These handhelds are great, but the battery life is just not there. They need to be able to sustain ~4 hours of continued gameplay. As they are, they can do maybe 1-1.5 hours. It's simply not enough. Still great machines and I believe they only need a little more power to be able to play 1080p at 60fps; or personally I think we should focus on 40fps (40hz screens) at 1080p and then just focus on efficiency as much as…

I have a Steam Deck and a Switch and barely use my Steam Deck. You basically have to be tethered to an outlet which defeats the point if you already have a gaming laptop or console. It also takes up too much space if I travel. This also compounds with the fact that you can even get a Switch OLED for $90 used fairly easy. It's a great device, but just too big and power hunger for me to use regularly. These will improv…

$90 used Switch OLED? Is that a typo?

Re: Review: The AYANEO 2S is my new favourite handheld

#28
post #23

I didn't see it in the review, or in the video so forgive me if this was covered.. but the real killer feature of these handhelds is the instant on/instant resume. I can grab my steam deck play for 5 minutes or 2 hours, or 2 hours with interruptions because I can just hit the power button and then resume it right where I left off for any game. It's amazing and it's the real reason I use the steam deck. I also have my…

As I understand it, none of the windows handhelds have instant or even reliable suspend during gameplay.

My windows computer has instantly suspended gameplay for me many times, often as a surprise. It’s the resuming that’s challenging.

Re: Review: The AYANEO 2S is my new favourite handheld

#29

I didn't see it in the review, or in the video so forgive me if this was covered.. but the real killer feature of these handhelds is the instant on/instant resume. I can grab my steam deck play for 5 minutes or 2 hours, or 2 hours with interruptions because I can just hit the power button and then resume it right where I left off for any game. It's amazing and it's the real reason I use the steam deck. I also have my…

Only steamdeck has this feature. Also steamos is way more energy efficient for mobile as the currently windows is already a clusterf*k. I don't see in foreseeable future where windows could catch up with steamos. M$ can't even fix their own laptops

Re: Review: The AYANEO 2S is my new favourite handheld

#30
post #20

Companies iterating so quickly on their products might be their biggest weakness. Since its release, the Steam Deck hasn't been improved by releasing the Steam Upper Decker, but by a constant stream of software improvements, both to the OS, and also Proton. I know my device won't be handicapped by a replacement in six months.

Totally agree. Love Xiaomi products, for example, but they realease so many phones per year that it feels like they never have time to polish them. They might release like 30 different phones in a year!

How on EARTH do you make money with 30 different phone versions? Do apple/google/samsung TOGETHER even put out 30 phones a year? That seems absolutely not profitable but what do I know I guess!
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