AYANEO Pocket Air Mini Review: The Best $69 Android Handheld Ever Made

This is a device that has really excited me ever since its reveal many months ago. AYANEO are renowned for higher-end devices; they dabbled in the sub $200 category with the AYANEO Pocket Micro, and now they're venturing into the sub $100 category with this, the Pocket Air Mini.

Which is great for all of us, as it brings even more competition to this budget category. That said, this could make every other budget device feel like a cereal box toy.

It's called the Pocket Air Mini because it takes design inspiration from the larger, and far more powerful, Pocket Air that they launched long ago. This is simply a mini-fied version starting at $69.99 for early birds and $99 at retail.

• Release Date: Late 2025
• Pricing: $69 - $99 ($69 for early birds who back on Indiegogo)
• Where To Buy: AYANEO.com
• Competition: Mangmi Air X

Design & Comfortability

This is obviously an AYANEO product. It keeps many of their signature design traits, such as the long bar across the shoulders, the oversized AYANEO button at the bottom right and the minimal, thick D-PAD.

In the hand, it's a very comfortable device, with large grooves on the backs for your hands, which allow your index fingers to rest naturally on the oversized shoulder buttons.

It feels very much like a modern, thicker GAME BOY Advance, and almost feels small in the hands due to the 4.2" display taking up most of the front real estate.

The DPAD on the left is beautiful, soft, but flexible with no clicking and limited feedback. I am happy they didn't minimise this. Underneath that, your hall joystick, which lights up, and the grips can be removed.

There are lots of travel to them and they don't touch the sides, so you won't wear out the rubber around the edges. I do wish the grips were a bit thicker, more like the AYN Thors that have textured edges; these are a tad thin for my liking, which is likely because AYANEO doesn't want these sitting high out of the shell.

The action buttons are on the small side but incredibly comfortable. They have a matte finished with embossed letters and have a satisfying click to them with a small bit of pressure required to get them to press.

Combining these buttons with great analogue sticks and a lovely DPAD makes this one of the few handhelds that gets all the buttons right.

The same goes for the linear hall triggers up top. R2 and L2 are oversized with lots of travel, close to feeling like a modern-day PS5 controller in all honesty, they're a bunch of fun to use, and I wouldn't change them at all.

R1 and L1 are a little different, in the sense that they are very long and can be pressed from multiple areas, each area having different pressure points, which makes this feel like it's too loose and far too flexible.

I was worried that these would get stuck, just like the ones on the AYANEO Pocket DS, but so far they have not, thank the lord!

There are also extra buttons across the bar, one on each side located near R1 and L1, that can be mapped to your liking. These require very little force, click easily and can often be pressed by accident if you're a little chaotic.

Then, finally, around the edges, up top, a large air vent, volume buttons and an on/off button. Typically, AYANEO has a fingerprint ready here, but they've removed it to cut costs. Then at the bottom, speaker grills, a USB-C port, an SD card slot and a headphone jack.

This feels like a premium product, weighty, on the thick side, with a very comfortable design and button quality that you find on $250+ handhelds, paired with the world's first 4:3 4.2" display. It's the best feeling $69 handheld I have ever held. AYANEO has absolutely nailed this design.

Though I would have liked to have seen more colour variations, AYANEO usually lack on that side. Like, come on, make some transparent ones, please!

A "world's first" display?

According to AYANEO, this is the world's first 4.2" 4:3 display, with a resolution of 1280 x 960 and 500 nits of brightness, making it the perfect setup for upscaling naturally, all while taking advantage of every pixel.

And that's exactly what I found when playing on this. The 4:3 nature, compact design and 2x upscaling on consoles such as Dreamcast and Gamecube make it feel like I am taking full advantage of the screen, buttons and ergonomics.

Viewing angles are great, the bezels are small, and the range of colours this shows off is superb, with great saturation too.

Could it have been better? AMOLED? Higher resolution? Of course, but the price will also go up with this. For a $69 - $99 device, this display is stunning.

Android OS & AYASpace

This runs on Android 11, which is a little older than I'd like, seeing as it's now 5 years old and AYANEO's other products run on Android 13 just fine, but it does the job, allowing for the installation of great Android emulators and a bunch of custom front ends. It's one of the cheapest Android retro gaming devices on the market.

AYANEO has their infamous AYASpace preloaded on here, which has always been a well-designed, clean way to explore your library if you want something more serious than a typical Android app list.

There's still no way to automatically download box art, but you can tweak settings, open different emulators, and make your device feel more like a retro handheld than an Android phone with controls, because that's what it technically is under the hood.

The AYANEO button offers the ability to change performance modes, brightness, controls and more on the fly. I would have liked to of seen the text be bigger, or some custom work done in here, as it is hard to see some of the text, and to press some of the buttons accurately on this small display.

If you have experience with Android gaming and emulation, this will be a breeze to get used to. However, if you're thinking of giving this to someone who has never experienced Android gaming, it may be quite cumbersome and complicated for them to get to hang of it.

It's why many of us gift our family and friends Linux handhelds with "grab & go" front ends. Even though this is in the "gift buying" price range, it's not something I'd buy my dad, or friends that want a "beginner device" even if it is on paper one of the best.

Emulation Quality

Let me answer the question that you have all been waiting for. What can this device actually emulate? And it's not as easy as saying "up to Dreamcast" because it has a lot of power in here, allowing it to over-stretch to some Gamecube and some PlayStation 2 games.

PS2 & Gamecube

I had my fingers crossed that this could emulate my PS2 library at native resolution, but it's clear that I was dreaming here, as this cannot emulate most PlayStation 2 games well.

This is just asking too much of this device, and that's coming from someone who has the top-end version of this device, featuring 3GB of RAM and throttling it in Max settings with the fans putting in some serious work.

Most games struggled, frame rates dipped to uncomfortable numbers, audio stuttered, and I can comfortably say that you shouldn't buy this if you're after a PS2 pocket rocket. You may find a few of the lower-end PS2 games working on here, but just see that as a bonus.

GameCube stretches a little bit further, finding a larger range of games working fine, but again, you will easily find its limits here and will have to filter through games to find ones that work. It's a mixed bag and very hit and miss at times.

I know, we'd all love this to play PS2 and GameCube, we're just not there yet at this price range, but it's a sign that it is coming eventually. but for now, this is as far as budgets and processors can push in this price bracket.

And I want to just take a minute to share how incredible that actually is. I have been reviewing these devices for over 8 years, and it's insane to me that we are now at a point in the gaming industry where we are getting this level of premium at less than $70. It's a great time for handheld enthusiasts, that's for sure.

Dreamcast, Nintendo 64 & PSP

Dreamcast, Nintendo 64 & PSP are where you will find the best performance and the area where you'll be upscaling your games to take full advantage of this beautiful screen and specs.

This era of gaming is a lot of fun to explore and works incredibly well on the Pocket Air Mini, with the screen being a good size to enjoy DC/N64 gaming at full brightness and using the 123% colour gamut range.

Upscaling these games to 2x on a 4.2" display is a sight to behold. I spent a lot of time on these two consoles.

PSP will show black borders along the top and bottom because of its screen ratio, but again can be played at 2x native resolution if you don't mind it feeling and looking like a 3.5" 16:9 display.

PlayStation 1, Mega Drive and GBA

Another selection of consoles I had the pleasure of exploring was PlayStation 1 and SEGA Mega Drive games. Again, due to the screen ratios, I could upscale this by 4x to create a fun, crispy portable PS1 and Mega Drive experience.

Particularly, racing games felt good on here because of the comfortable ergonomics and smooth analogue sticks.

SEGA Mega Drive looked incredibly comfortable, and the DPAD worked well on some of the fast-paced games.

GBA games look gorgeous on this display, and at times the Pocket Air Mini feels like a fat GAME BOY Advance due to its layout.

Everything else

And of course, your old consoles like NES, GAME Boy, Neo Geo, SNES, Game Gear and so on will all work well on here, and if anything, this is a little overkill for all of that, but it's there should you want it, and want to upscale, which is always nice.

Is it worth exploring Android games and Cloud Streaming?

I didn't find myself exploring any Android games or AAA games via cloud streaming, as it quite simply came down to the screen size. It's just not big enough to have a comfortable gaming experience on those. Some Android games can certainly work, but the ones I wanted to play did not look good on here, like Diablo Immortal.

Cloud Streaming isn't something I even attempted because I know from previous experience that I need at least a 6" display for text and gameplay to be easily visible.

Battery Life

The battery life is also very reasonable; I was pushing around 6 hours out of a full charge while emulating an array of different consoles. Obviously, if you're gonna use this exclusively for the higher-end games and manage to find some PS2 games that work well, you'll find that battery life creeps closer to four hours.

4500MAHs in a small form factor like this is much welcomed.

Overall Opinion

This is one of the best budget-friendly handhelds on the market. AYANEO took the risk, used all of their previous experience designing premium handhelds and packaged it into a portable shell, with high-end buttons, a one-of-a-kind screen and enough power to get you a sprinkling of PS2 and Gamecube emulation.

Not much comes close to this in the space, and this will certainly put pressure on ANBERNIC and GoRetroid to take this market more seriously.

Some of you may not like the thickness of this device; it's certainly noticeable due to the protruding grips, and AYASpace needs a few added features to make it a superb experience, so there are areas of improvement, but very minimal.

This is a great starter Android handheld for those wanting to experience handheld emulation for an incredibly affordable price, all while experiencing some quality features that we see in $200+ handhelds.

AYANEO just changed the handheld game. It's one of the best 4:3, budget-friendly handhelds I have ever reviewed. Is it worth buying it if you already have a more powerful device with a 4:3 screen? Probably not.

But for newcomers, this could be the only one they need for many, many years.