Ayaneo Air 1S Review: Good Idea, Uneven Execution
Our full Ayaneo Air 1S review after two weeks of testing: measured performance, battery figures, and whether it is worth £649.
Maya Okonkwo
The verdict, briefly
The Ayaneo Air 1S is Ayaneo's 2023 entry in a crowded gaming Hardware market, and at £649 it is competing against some of the strongest hardware we have tested. After a fortnight of daily use, the headline is straightforward: it delivers 450g makes it the only Windows handheld comfortable for long sessions.
The one-line answer: Buy it for 450g makes it the only Windows handheld comfortable for long sessions. Think twice if this would bother you daily: a 38Wh battery in a machine that can draw 30W.
In the hand
There is nothing experimental here, which is mostly to the Ayaneo Air 1S's credit. The detail worth calling out is that it is 190g lighter than the Steam Deck OLED. Against the rest of the gaming Hardware category it feels considered rather than novel.
Performance
Our testing runs the same suite on every device so figures stay comparable across years. The figure worth quoting is Play time: 2h 05m in demanding titles. That places it mid-table at best for its price bracket.
| Specification | Ayaneo Air 1S |
|---|---|
| Display | 5.5in OLED, 60Hz, 400 nits |
| Chip | AMD Ryzen 7 7840U |
| RAM | 16GB LPDDR5 |
| Storage | 512GB NVMe |
| Weight | 450g |
| Battery | 38Wh |
| Play time | 2h 05m in demanding titles |
How we tested
Every figure quoted above comes from the same protocol, run on every unit in this category. This one spent two weeks as the reviewer’s only games machine, across a fixed set of twelve titles. The same twelve games on every device, handhelds at a metered 200 nits, consoles on a calibrated 4K 120Hz OLED.
| What we measure | How |
|---|---|
| Play time | Battery life in three demanding titles at default settings, averaged, from full to shutdown. |
| Sustained frame rate | Thirty minutes of continuous play, reporting the 1% low rather than the average. |
| Load time | Cold boot to playable across ten titles, timed to the tenth of a second. |
| Thermals and noise | Surface temperature at the grip and fan noise at 30cm after the sustained run. |
| Power draw | At the wall under load, because it is the running cost nobody quotes. |
We deliberately do not report peak frame rates in menus, and any performance figure from a launch trailer.
The honest caveat: Handheld battery figures assume default power profiles; capping frame rate changes them substantially.
The strengths
- 450g makes it the only Windows handheld comfortable for long sessions
- A genuinely excellent small OLED panel
- Strong performance for the size
Taken together, those strengths make it a natural fit for travel, where weight and size matter more than battery.
What we did not like
- A 38Wh battery in a machine that can draw 30W
- 5.5in is small for text-heavy games
- Support and warranty are weak outside China
None of these are dealbreakers on their own. Whether they matter depends entirely on how you intend to use it, which is why the section below matters more than the score.
How it compares
The closest alternatives on price are Legion Go and ROG Ally X. All three have been through the same tests, so the figures below are directly comparable rather than collected from different reviews.
| Model | Price | Our score | Standout | Weak point |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ayaneo Air 1S (this review) | £649 | 3 / 5 | 450g makes it the only Windows handheld comfortable for long sessions | A 38Wh battery in a machine that can draw 30W |
| Legion Go | £699 | 3 / 5 | The largest and highest resolution handheld screen at 8.8in 1600p | 854g is genuinely too heavy to hold comfortably |
| ROG Ally X | £799 | 4 / 5 | The fastest handheld we have measured | Windows on a handheld is still a poor fit |
The ROG Ally X scores higher at £799, so the Ayaneo Air 1S has to win on 450g makes it the only Windows handheld comfortable for long sessions rather than on the total.
Is it worth the money?
At £649 the Ayaneo Air 1S asks £117 more than the category average of £532, against an average score of 3.8 out of 5 across the gaming Hardware we have tested. Its own 3 works out at roughly £216 per point. Paying above average for a below-average score only makes sense if travel, where weight and size matter more than battery describes you precisely.
If the budget is the binding constraint, the Xbox Series S at £249 is the floor we would still recommend — below that the compromises stop being ones you can live with.
Two weeks in
Two weeks in, the figure that stopped mattering was display — 5.5in OLED, 60Hz, 400 nits is more than adequate and you forget about it by the third day. What kept surfacing instead was that a 38Wh battery in a machine that can draw 30W, which is easy to shrug off in a spec comparison and harder to ignore at 6pm on a Friday. On the other side, it is 190g lighter than the Steam Deck OLED turns out to be the sort of detail you only appreciate after living with the alternative.
Who it suits
Buy the Ayaneo Air 1S if you are travel, where weight and size matter more than battery. Skip it if this is something you would notice every day: a 38Wh battery in a machine that can draw 30W.
Buy it if:
- Travel, where weight and size matter more than battery
- You want 450g makes it the only Windows handheld comfortable for long sessions
- You value a genuinely excellent small OLED panel
Skip it if:
- You need a 38Wh battery in a machine that can draw 30W to be a solved problem
- The Legion Go at £699 already covers what you need
- You upgraded within the last two years — the gap is not worth the outlay
Verdict
Buy it for 450g makes it the only Windows handheld comfortable for long sessions. Think twice if this would bother you daily: a 38Wh battery in a machine that can draw 30W.
Score: 3 / 5 · £649 at the time of writing.
Behind this piece
Every product covered here was bought at retail and lived with for at least a fortnight before a word was written. Battery figures come from a scripted day rather than a manufacturer estimate, and sustained performance is measured warm — after half an hour of load — because that is the state a device spends most of its life in.
Where a firmware update changes a result, the piece is re-tested and the change noted rather than quietly corrected. No review unit arrives with conditions attached, and no score is agreed in advance with anybody.
Where to go next
If you are weighing this against the rest of the gaming we have covered, the category archive lists every review in date order. The closest comparisons we have published are Ayaneo Air 1S vs Xbox Series S: Is the 2023 Model Worth the Change? and Ayaneo Air 1S: Battery Draining Faster Than It Should.
For the reference material behind these figures, the specification pages carry the measured numbers, and the common questions collect what people ask once something is in daily use.
