When it comes to portable gaming, handhelds are simply the best. They are designed for entertainment on the go in the most convenient way possible. Followed by this, several popular brands are flooding the market with their version of handheld. While Valve’s Steam Deck is quite popular, there are plenty of other handhelds that live up to its criteria. Take the GPD Win 3 and Aya Neo Pro for example. They cram in plenty of powerful specs in a compact form factor and are absolute gaming beasts. Let’s compare them head-on to figure out which one should be your ideal pick.
Design
Design-wise, GPD Win 3 is all about functionality. It boasts a Screen-Slider design with integrated controls as well as a QWERTY keyboard. The fingerprint sensor is also a nice touch while the keyboard has backlighting for convenient handheld typing. The control layout is also quite simple with 2 Alps thumbsticks, D-Pads, 2 Additional buttons on the left and ABXY, and a touch sensor on the right. At the very bottom, we have a USB-C port along with a Dual Speaker setup.
And at the top, we get to see a standard USB, a headphone jack, volume rockers, and a power button accompanied by the triggers. You also get an SD card slot on the left and 2 additional buttons on the back. You can get the docking station that further expands connectivity options. With it, you get a USB-C, HDMI, 3 standard USBs, and an RJ45 Lan port.
In contrast, the Aya Neo Pro provides a pure handheld experience with its retro-like feel. The dual-tone design of Aya Neo Pro combines a minimalist design with a classical stance. As we are talking about the Retro variant, we also want to mention its two color schemes, Light Moon and Dark Star. Aya Neo’s original button layout is fairly similar to this one. An Analog Stick, ABXY, and hotkey buttons are shown on the right. A D-Pad and a joystick are seen on the left, as well as a few extra hotkeys.
The upper area holds the Power Switch along with Volume Rockers, 2 USB-C ports, and a 3.5mm jack alongside the Shoulder buttons. Similar to the GPD Win 3, we also have a USB-C port and dual speaker setup at the bottom of Aya Neo Pro.
Display
GPD Win 3 has been equipped with a 55-Inch Sunny Screen display with a native resolution of 1280 by 720. It can get as bright as 400 nits and has a pixel density of 268ppi for crisp detailing. Moreover, it has been coated with Gorilla Glass 5 to protect the screen from accidental damage. Aya Neo Pro on the other hand has a relatively bigger screen. The 7-inch IPS display on this thing allows it to have a resolution of 1280 by 800 pixels. The peak brightness on this handheld is 500 nits which also is a step up from the GPD Win 3. However, the pixel density is slightly lower at only 215ppi.Both of these handhelds are touchscreen enabled for greater ease of use.
Specs
Under the hood, the GPD Win 3 has been equipped with a Core i7-1195G7 CPU coupled with 16GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 1TB of NVMe M.2 SSD. As for the Aya Neo Pro, it packs a Ryzen 7 4800U processor with Vega 8 Graphics, 16GB of LPDDR4 RAM, and 1TB of M.2 storage.
Performance
While the specs are more or less similar the only difference relies on the processor. According to Droix’s testing of both of these devices, we are looking at a PCMark score of 4834 for the GPD Win 3 and 5256 for the Aya Neo Pro. As for the gaming performance, we can see the GPD Win 3 yielding 67 FPS on very low settings while the Aya Neo Pro managed to extract 78.But the FPS is likely to vary depending on how processor intensive the game is.
Final Verdict
So which of these handhelds should be your ideal pick? We would rather leave that up to you. GPD Win 3 has an ergonomic design with a touch sensor that makes accessibility easier. With a price tag of 899 dollars for the i7-1165G7 model, it is also cheaper compared to the Aya Neo Pro’s 1215 dollar price tag. But if you don’t mind spending an extra bit, Aya Neo Pro definitely has plenty of goodies to offer for its price.
