Ayn’s new Loki handheld runs Windows, starting at only $299

Handhelds are becoming cheap.

Ayn’s Loki is yet another contender joining the ring alongside the Steam Deck and Aya Neo 2, showcasing how much handhelds are in fashion these days.

Advertised as “the most affordable Windows handhelds ever created,” the portable machine is indeed centred on value, starting at a low $299. That outlay nets an unspecified Intel Alder Lake-U CPU with 64GB of storage. Will it be a six-thread Pentium Gold 8500, a Celeron 7300, or something not yet released; your guess is as good as ours.

The next step up the ladder provides a more powerful AMD Ryzen 5 6600U processor with six cores and 12 threads clocked up to 4.5GHz, alongside an integrated six-core Radeon 660M RDNA 2 GPU running at 1.9GHz, and 64GB of storage, all for $499. For reference, Valve’s Steam Deck has eight RDNA 2 cores.

Keep in mind that clocks may change depending on design, heat, and power constraints.

Adding $100 unlocks more storage space for a total of 256GB which is very important as this is a Windows machine.

Another extra $100 doubles storage to 512GB. Hopefully, it will be based on an NVMe SSD and not some slow eMMC memory.

At the very top, we find a powerful Ryzen 7 6800U eight-core, 16-thread CPU operating at 4.7GHz, with a baked-in 12-core Radeon 680M GPU at 2.2GHz, and 512GB storage, yours for $799. A smidge more expensive than Valve’s machine… but packing additional oomph.

Finally, a lot of questions remain unanswered, such as resolution, battery life and real-world performance.