It’s been a bumper year for gaming on the go. For a spell, it kinda felt like Nintendo was the only name in town, but it’s since become one of the more exciting corners of gaming. Today, there are handheld options for everything from AAA to Indie to retro and beyond. Whatsmore, the current generation of mobile processors means we’re seeing surprisingly capable hardware. The main problem, now, is that the software side of things hasn’t quite caught up. There’s perhaps no better demonstration of this than the Ayaneo Air Pro: a stellar example of what can be done, and what needs improving, in the burgeoning handheld PC world.

If you’re not familiar with Ayaneo, that’s understandable. The company hasn’t been around all that long, but it’s already making a name for itself thanks to remarkably good hardware that brings PC gaming into the portable realm. If you imagine a Steam Deck, but with Windows and a fraction of the size, you wouldn’t be far off.

Before we dive into the gaming experience, the hardware itself is worth a closer look. The Air Pro is impressively well made. It has a similar footprint to Nintendo’s Switch Lite, but it’s thicker (.85 vs .55 inches) and heavier (.88 pound versus.55). In terms of build quality, honestly the Ayaneo feels far superior. The Hall effect analog sticks and triggers are smooth with a nice amount of travel. The D-pad is responsive and the buttons are the right kind of snappy. The centerpiece is the stunning 5.5-inch OLED display - a first on Windows gaming handheld Ayaneo is fond of reminding us. It’s a delight to hold and feels premium in almost every regard. Even the fingerprint reader in the power button somehow adds a dash of sophistication.As this is basically a PC, there are quite a few different configurations available. Some using AMD’s 5560U chipset and others running the 5825U with assorted amounts of RAM and storage depending on your budget. And you will need a sizable budget as you’ll soon find out.

The Air Pro doesn’t quite have the grunt of Valve’s venerable Steam Deck, but it does run Windows 11 out of the box and can run a surprising amount of high-end games in a more-than-playable fashion. And while the Steam Deck outguns it in terms of processing power, the Air Pro is legitimately portable without too much of a performance tradeoff.

Beyond size and the internals, the other main difference is price. Valve’s handheld tops out at $650 for the 512GB version while the Air Pro starts at $699 (5560U/16GB RAM/512GB storage). You can bring that figure right up to $1,399 if you want the faster silicon, 32GB of RAM and 2TB of storage - that’s obviously quite spendy. The model we tested was somewhere between middle and top with the superior processor, 16GB of RAM and 1TB storage (though all models have expandable memory via a microSD card slot).

There are other gaming handhelds that run Windows, but many are too underpowered to handle a lot of bigger games. Anbernic’s Win600, for example, runs on an older AMD Athlon Silver 3050e chipset with Radeon Vega 3 graphics. This is a significant step down, but then the Win600 only costs $375. Ayn’s Odin can also run Windows, but the ARM-based version which brings with it some compatibility issues. GPD has been in this space for a while, but its Win 3 is looking a little underpowered now (though its Win 4 is coming this month and it looks suitably beefy).

Perhaps most tellingly there are many more handhelds in the works from companies like Ayn, the aforementioned GPD and others. There’s even a new flagship from the company itself, the Ayaneo 2, that really should cause potential Steam Deck buyers some headaches. These un-released models all have something in common: AMD’s 6800U chipset. It seems there was always an appetite for PC gaming on the go, just we didn’t quite have the required hardware to run it. Until recently.

Technical limitations are one thing, but there’s another more philosophical question that needs answering: Why make a pocketable PC when you can stream a lot of AAA games without the need for expensive, power hungry dedicated hardware? While it’s true streaming is more viable than ever, that approach requires that you have a console or gaming PC in the first place or a subscription to something like GeForce Now or Xbox Cloud which isn’t economically favorable for many folks (not to mention the libraries might not have what you want). Not to mention its dependence on a network connection - good luck with that on in-flight WiFi.