AYANEO 3 Review -A Modular Marvel With AMD HX 370 CPU Redefining Handheld Gaming PCs

AYANEO’s third flagship handheld gaming PC landed in our hands and now we have a bit of time playing on it, checking out the innovative modular controls and putting it through its paces, we can share our thoughts in our AYANEO 3 review.

AYANEO 3 Video

AYANEO 3 Overview

We start our AYANEO 3 review with a closer look at the portable gaming PC. The AYANEO 3 measures around 11.4 x 4.5 x 0.8 inches (28.9 x 11.5 x 2.2 cm) and weighs around 690g (1.52 lbs).

Taking centre stage is the 7” OLED touchscreen with a 1080P resolution, supporting 60, 90, 120 and 144Hz for some super smooth updates. As a note there is a second display option, also 7” but LCD with just the 60 and 120Hz refresh rates. In this  review we are covering the OLED model.

It comes with your standard dual hall effect analogues, D-Pad and four gaming buttons modules as standard. Other modules are available separately, we will show them as well as the modular features in a moment.

There are fixed buttons including a Home & View doubling as SELECT & START in games, AYASPACE Overlay and Return To Desktop.

On the bottom is a button to change between controller and keyboard/mouse modes for the controls. There is a USB-4 port for high speed peripherals, a covered micro SD card reader and a 3.5mm audio jack.

On the top there are left and right Shoulder, Trigger and Macro buttons. Along the middle are a power button with integrated fingerprint scanner, volume buttons, an OCulink port to connect to an eGPU and last but not least a USB-4 port for connecting to high speed peripherals.

On the back are two customisable shortcut buttons. And at the top are two switches, these adjust the travel on the trigger buttons, ideal for racing and first person shooters with linear and hair trigger travel respectively.

AYANEO 3 Modular Controls

Next in our AYANEO 3 review we spent some time checking out the modular controls. The AYANEO 3 is the first handheld with modular controls. And for a first attempt, we were very impressed, but there are some shortcomings which we will come to.

Now AYANEO could have gone for a simple push button style module ejection design. But for that real premium feel it has a mechanism that does it at a touch of a button.

You can eject both or one by itself at a time via the AYASPACE software. Or both by holding the button on the bottom for a couple of seconds. 

A module pack is available to buy separately or as a bundle. The pack contains six modules including Steamdeck style touch pads, six buttons and alternative D-Pad setups. There are also some analogue stick tops with different designs.

The modules can be configured how you wish. So, if you wanted the left analogue to be replaced with a touchpad, but keep the right analogue stick, you can do that. If you want a concave D-Pad and six buttons, you can do that. If you prefer PlayStation analogues layout over Xbox? Then simply turn the module around and the argument is over!

We tried many module combinations and all were recognised apart from having a pair of modules with gaming buttons inserted at the same time.

One important thing to note is that this is all software controlled relying on AYA SPACE to function. You may not be able to eject modules in say a Linux OS based setup unless AYANEO provides some kind of support for it.

Technical Specifications

We continue our AYANEO 3 review with a look at the available models and configurations. We also ran our own tests on the battery life, fan noise and temperatures.

AYANEO 3 Display Options

There are two display options for the AYANEO 3 model; LCD and OLED.

	LCD	OLED
RESOLUTION	1920×1080	1920×1080
REFRESH RATES	60Hz / 120Hz	60Hz / 90Hz / 120Hz / 144Hz
NITS	800	500
PPI	315	315
SRBG COVERAGE	100%	150%
OTHER	VRR, Native horizontal screen	Rotated screen

AYANEO 3 CPU/GPU Options

As well as the two displays, there are two CPU options to choose from:

CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 8840U, 8 cores up to 5.1GHz	AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, 12 cores up to 5.1GHz
GPU	AMD Radeon 780M, 12 cores up to 2,700Mhz	AMD Radeon 890M, 16 cores up to 2,900Mhz

AYANEO 3 Technical Specifications

The remainder of the specifications are the same for all models.

RAM	16GB, 32GB or 64GB LPDDR5X 7500MT/s
STORAGE	512GB, 1TB, 2TB or 4TB M.2 2280 NVMe PCIe Gen. 4.0
WIFI	6E
BLUETOOTH	5.3
I/O	2 x USB4, 40Gbps supporting DP 1.4 1 x OCuLink, 64Gbps 1 x Micro SD card reader 1x 3.5mm Headphone Jack
BATTERY	49Wh
CHARGING POWER	65W PD, Supports Bypass Charging
GYROSCOPE	Dual Six-axis Gyroscopes
COLOURS	Starry Black, Sky White, Retro Power

We ran Cinebench on a loop, at full screen brightness at 28W TDP to really push everything. We got a battery life of 57 minutes, around the same as the GPD WIN 4 2025. It is the joint shortest battery life, but to be fair the other HX 370 vary from a minute or two more to around 15 minutes. Average battery life will of course be higher, around 3 to 6 hours depending on demand.

In our highest fan noise and temperature tests, also tested while running Cinebench. We got 68 dB highest fan noise, and 54°C highest temperatures.

System Benchmarks

As always we perform a series of benchmarks to learn more about the performance and to also compare with other similar portable gaming PCs as part of our AYANEO 3 review.

PCMARK

PCMARK performs a series of tests on the CPU, GPU, RAM and storage. 

The AYANEO 3 gets a score of 6,985 which when compared with other HX 370 mobile gaming PCs, is down in last place with around a 4.5% difference in score compared with the highest scoring GPD WIN MAX 2 2025.

GEEKBENCH 6

GEEKBENCH 6 tests the single and multi-core performance on the processor.

We see a bit lower than expected score for single core, again in last place with a 4.5% difference compared to the highest scoring GPD WIN MINI 2025. And for multi-core the score improves getting third place, with the ONEXPLAYER ONEXFLY F1 Pro taking first with another 4.5% increase.

Cinebench 2024

Cinebench also tests the CPUS single and multi-core performance.

For single core we see around the same scores as the GPD WIN MAX 2 2025. And for multi core, we see good scores beating the WIN Mini and Max 2 2025 models.

3DMARK

We are running the Time Spy, Night Raid and Fire Strike benchmarks to see the CPU & GPU performance.

In Time Spy we see a very noticeable drop in score when compared with the other portable gaming computers, as high as a 10% difference to the highest scoring GPD WIN MINI 2025. On Night Raid the scores improve a little with just above the score of the Win Mini, but still off the pace compared to the GPD WIN MAX 2 2025.

Gaming Benchmarks

A we could not forget some gaming benchmarks as part of the AYANEO 3 review. We are running some games benchmarks at 1080P and 720P across a range of TPD settings to compare the performance. 

Forza Horizon 5

At 1080P, the trend continues with the lowest frames per second in our HX 370 models. At 720P we see the lowest results across the range of TDP’s. We thought we would have seen improvements at lower TDPs like we saw on the other compact gaming PCs, but no such luck.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

For Shadow of the Tomb Raider we are running on the Lowest graphics settings. We see quite a drop in performance at 1080P, with as high as 9 frames per second difference to the GPD WIN 4 and WIN MINI 2025 portable gaming PCs. And at 720P the frames per second starts quite low, balances out, then falls below the others.

Cyberpunk 2077

With Cyberpunk we again see lower performance at both 1080P and 720P resolutions at 28W TDP. We do however see improved performance at around 10W to 15W TDP, for frames per second above other portable gaming computers which is good to see.

Benchmark Summary

The numbers don’t lie, overall we see the lowest results across our benchmarks for the AYANEO 3. In some cases this is as low as a few percent, but does go as high as a 10% difference compared to the highest results in our AYANEO 3 review.

We have seen in the past with AYANEO products that they are not the best performance for various reasons such as thermal throttling due to underperforming cooling or the design.

AYA SPACE Software

The AYA SPACE software has expanded a fair amount over the past few years and is becoming more feature packed with every release. You have a game browser which will give you easy access to any installed games. 

Going into the settings you have access to a fair number of features just for the controller. You can eject modules as shown, change the gyro and joystick sensitivity, vibration settings and more. There are also device settings such as the RGB lighting, VRAM size and to set the number of CPU cores to use.

And not forgetting the game overlay which gives you quick access to many functions. These include setting the TDP, performance overlays, module ejection, charging options and much more. Top marks here in this AYANEO 3 review for what is the most complete setup compared with GPD and ONEXPLAYER.

Gaming Performance

Next we will take a look at some games to get the best settings for actual real world gaming.

Indiana Jones

For Indiana Jones & The Great Circle we are running at 720P on the low graphics settings, set to 30 frames per second at 28W TDP. We were getting around 45-55 on average which is why we locked it to 30. 

Hammerwatch II

Hammerwatch II runs very well at lower TDPs. If you want 120 FPS then 15W TDP will work great. If you want to save some battery, then 8W TDP will get you a solid 60.

Overthrown

For Overthrown we are running at 1080P with Ultra graphics and AMD FSR Balanced. It plays very well at 60 FPS at 28W TDP.

UFO50

UFO50 is a very low demanding game that’s perfect for lengthy trips. You can play all the games at 1080P at only 5W TDP.

No Mans Sky

No Man’s Sky can run at 60+ FPS at 1080P with Enhanced Graphics at 28W TDP. You can use a bit of FSR alternatively to increase the graphics settings if you wanted to.

Carrion

And Carrion will get an easy 120+ frames per second with only 5W TDP at 1080P resolution. 

Emulation Performance

If you have been keeping up with our recent reviews of other HX 370 based handheld gaming computers you will already know their performance. Despite the slightly lower performance of the AYANEO 3, it is still more than capable of running all your favourite emulators up to the PlayStation 3 era with little to no issues. lets take a look at some emulators throughout the years as part of our AYANEO 3 review.

With the PlayStation emulator DuckStation we can increase the rendering resolution up to 1080P, apply various graphics improvements and have it looking and running great.

And the same goes for the PlayStation 2 emulator PCSX2. Again, you can increase the upscaling and graphics for improved visuals with no slowdowns.

For the PlayStation 3 emulator RPCS3, compatible games should generally run fine. You may get shader caching notifications, but they should not cause any slowdowns while playing.

And for the Vita emulator Vita3K you can happily run many of the compatible games. For the lower demanding games you can also upscale to 1080P for higher quality graphics.

eGPU connectivity with OCuLink

The AYANEO 3 supports OCuLink allowing for connectivity with high performance eGPUs such as the GPD G1, ONEXGPU or the new ONEXGPU 2 with AMD Radeon RX 7800M GPU. We will cover this more in our dedicated ONEXGPU 2 review coming up very soon. But we saw great performance increases over the internal 890M GPU.

Final Thoughts

Time to sum up our thoughts for our AYANEO 3 review. The AYANEO 3 interested me as soon as I found out about the modular controls. And for many it is something they have desired in a handheld. I can’t fault the ingenuity that AYANEO has put into it with mechanised ejection. And the ability to have a mix and match of modules with analogues, touchpads and extra buttons. If you plan to use Windows only, then you should find it an issue free experience. But the potential lack of support outside of Windows regarding ejecting these modules could be a massive deciding factor for you.

Performance is my next factor. We do see overall lower performance than the other HX 370 based handhelds. Anywhere up to 10% difference depending on the benchmark, which is a considerable amount. You may be able to tweak some power balance settings to improve this to an extent, but we do see a difference which is something to consider.

The AYA SPACE software has improved over time and has become a standout feature than say GPD or ONEXPLAYERS software. While still not perfect, the functions such as a game frontend, updating software, controlling the LEDs, configuring controls, useful overlay and much more, gives it more of a premium feel than say GPD’s Motion Assist software.

When you buy a game controller, you buy it with your requirements in mind. Do you want a XBOX or PlayStation layout, analogues or touchpad or how many buttons? Until now, you did not have this option with a gaming handheld, problem solved with the AYANEO 3.

You can learn more and buy the AYANEO 3 here. It comes with a full one year warranty with DROIX, so if you do run into any issues, we will take care of it all.

That wraps up our AYANEO 3 review, we hope you have found it useful. If you do have any questions about it, please feel free to ask in the comments.