tl;dr - If you're most people, get a Steam Deck. If you've got similar use cases to me Ayaneo 2 might be for you.
I don't think I've ever posted about this before, but I wanted to take a bit of time to talk about one of my pretty-obvious hobbies. Despite having way too many side projects, and working too many hours in the week, I still like to try and find some time to play video games.
After working 50-60 hours a week, I like to unwind - but I don't really have a great place to play console games - my PS 5 is at the same desk where I work, and at the end of the day I really like to get away from all of that. I solved this problem with a gaming laptop (13" Razer Blade - love that thing), but it still required a fair amount of effort - keeping a controller near it, having a lap desk so it didn't burn my legs, etc.
Enter the Steam Deck. I preordered one the moment it became available (well, like an hour in because the servers were crashing) and then waited well over a year for it to arrive. But when it arrived.... oh boy was that thing awesome. The controller layout is top-notch, it's comfortable to hold (if a bit heavy), and since I was playing on the couch - the laughably short battery life wasn't an issue. It solved basically all of my problems... except for one major one.
You see, dear readers, every year I do Extra Life - and every year I need to stream for a full 24 hours. While concievably I could do this on the Steam Deck - the amount of CPU things like OBS take up would be pushing the Deck's hardware to the limit. That, coupled with the screen being a bit sub-par in terms of color saturation and resolution, I started to look for alternatives.
Specifically alternatives that support an eGPU.
Enter the Ayaneo 2. Now, for those of you who don't know about Ayaneo - they're a small Chinese company who (for a good while) had a reputation for the best support of the not-Valve handhelds (because no one is going to match Valve in this space - they're simply the largest player), with a reputation for quality. So, I figured I'd give the 2's Indiegogo campaign a go1.
Long story short, they had a number of issues with that campaign and a lot of folks were having issues with either delivery, faulty hardware, support, or the like. I was not one of those people - I had zero issues with the 2 when it arrived. Let me tell you, I love this thing. The screen is beautiful, it's comfortable to hold (though the Deck has the superior inputs), and after a lot of tinkering and driver updates - I got it to work with my eGPU. Problem solved, I will be able to stream this year without resorting to hijacking what is now my Fiancee's gaming laptop and have a solution for when I need to play those games that have a bit higher graphical demands.
So, how do the two consoles stack up to each other?
Input: The back buttons are amazing and really really useful. Especially when you remap one of them to "right stick depress" - makes toggling run in a bunch of games much easier. Also, trackpads are exceptionally useful for certain games.
Comfort: It's just slightly nicer to hold for longer periods due to where the sticks are placed vs. the d-pad.
Software: The Software experience on SteamOS is really tight. It just workstm. That cannot be said about the Win 11 experience on Ayaneo - and Ayaspace is semi-necessary for changing TDP and mouse support, but it's clunky.
Screen: The screen is beautiful, and higher resolution. Even when dropping the resolution on AAA games to get better performance, it just looks better.
Performance: You can set the TDP on this thing fairly high, higher than the Deck, and at higher TDPs you get better performance for your trouble.
eGPU support: The Deck doesn't have a USB-4 port so it cannot do eGPUs even if it wanted to, so.... here we are.
All in all, they're both great hardware and the Ayaneo 2 is working great for me - but for most people, I think the Steam Deck is going to be the way to go -
1: Full disclosure, I'd already gotten an Air from them at this point, and enjoyed it. The air is my travel console.
Little Kitty Big City just came out on May 9th, and I've been playing it for a few hours now and I absolutely love it.
Like one of my other favorite cat-themed game, Stray (honorable mention to Catlateral Damage) in Little Kitty, Big City you take on the role of a house cat who finds themselves on the street unexpectedly and has to make their way home. Along the way you interact with other animals in the city, as well as the throngs of faceless humans wandering around.
Your primary objective is to get home, which is complicated by the fact that home is an apartment at the top of a skyscraper. In order to do that, you need to eat fish so you'll have enough energy to climb. The first fish is behind a quest that you'll uncover very quickly and there are several more around the map - usually behind a simple puzzle (involving tricking humans).
During this journey, you do all of the things a cat might do, including:
Tripping humans
Stealing bread
Catching (and releasing) birds
Climbing
Giving dogs snacks
Stealing fish
Sitting in boxes
Napping on things
Meeting other animals
Doing cute poses
Collecting hats
The stand out part of this game for me is the writing. There's not a lot of it, but when there is it's pretty dang funny and spot-on. Each of the animals you encounter has a distinct personality and that really comes through. I think Crow is my favorite, but the Tanuki is also pretty great.
Overall I've had a lot of fun with it. It is a pretty short game, if you run it quickly I think you could get home within 20ish minutes if you know where you're going. I expect we'll see an any% speedrun of this game at some point. If you want to collect all of the hats, find all the sleep spots, and sit in a bunch of boxes it'll take a bit longer for you to explore the city and find all those spots.
If you've got Game Pass, it's a no brainer. Go install it or play it via streaming, it's well worth it. Otherwise, it's available on Switch and Steam for a price I think is reasonable from an indie dev making a fun cat-themed game.
In my quest to put Linux on absolutely everything that used to run Windows that I can, I’ve already moved my Framework 13 over to Bazzite, my Surface Go to Aurora, and now the Aya Neo Air over to ChimeraOS. Things are going well-ish.
So, for the Air, there are a couple of options - I could have tried to put Bazzite on it but so far no one on the forums has tried it on the original Air model so I was a bit wary of that whole situation. On the other hand putting ChimeraOS on the original Air is a well-trod path and almost everything works out of the box according to the hardware compatibility page.
Interestingly that page marks “eGPU” support as “?” - it shouldn’t even be listed as the Air doesn’t have a USB-4 port or oculink or anything so outside of a case hack you’re not running an eGPU on it.
Likewise, there are several Youtube videos out there documenting the process and some of the pitfalls. I followed this one:
Setting the Air up to install ChimeraOS was actually pretty easy, once I got past actually getting it to boot from a USB stick. There are a couple of guides that state you can get into the boot menu via various tricks with the power + volume rocker, or via the normal keyboard shortcuts. The only thing that actually worked for me was hitting the delete key to get into the bios and manually changing the boot order.
As a result, I had to reboot like 6 times. The vibration motors buzzed the entire time. It was… not quite maddening, but it was starting to get on my nerves throughout the process. Buzz. Buzz. Buzzzzzzzz…..
But, past that, Chimera’s installer is just a couple of options and it will process the whole thing. At the time of this writing, it is not possible to dual boot ChimeraOS and Windows (but this is possible on Bazzite), so it’ll completely overwrite your Windows partition. I did make a backup of my product key before doing the wipe but it’s unlikely I’ll return to Windows on it.
Once the installation was complete, it booted straight into the SteamOS interface without any issue. Login was seamless and within a couple of minutes I was installing games and ready to go.
One issue that you’ll want to be aware of is that TDP control (at the moment) doesn’t work via the standard Steam controls, but it does work fine from a Decky plugin and a few other methods (I used SimpleDeckyTDP and it works great).
Overall, performance is basically identical to what I was getting on Windows without the hassle of Windows causing problems every time I boot. The whole system caps out at a 15W TDP, so you’re not going to get great performance on AAA Games - but here’s a sample of games I’ve tried on it at the full 15W:
Dead by Daylight - 720p - FSR on, 40+ FPS stable
Skyrim - 1080p - Medium Graphics preset, 60 FPS stable in Dungeons, 45 in the overworld
Neon White - 1080p - High Graphics, 60 FPS stable
FFXIV - 720p - Laptop (Standard), 40+ FPS, mostly stable unless you’re in Limsa or Tuliyollal.
Shin Megami Tensei III HD Remaster - 1080p - Standard Graphics, 30 FPS stable (SMT3 is locked to 30 FPS on this port)
I’ve only had a couple of problems with ChimeraOS since I installed it, the biggest of which is that sometimes it refuses to awake from sleep and I have to hold the power button down for an egregiously long time to get it to boot.
It’s happened twice where I was concerned that the console had given up the ghost. Fortunately, it hadn’t, but it’s been enough to trick me both times into a mini-heart-attack.
The other issue is you can’t really control the LEDs under the sticks (I think there is a way to do it while the console is on, but I’ve not futzed with it too much yet).
It’s been a fine experience, and I’m enjoying it. Way more than I was enjoying Windows on it. Would I do it again? Yes. Would I buy the Air in 2024 just to put ChimeraOS on it? No. Absolutely not. The battery life is terrible and there are better options.
