AYN Thor: New Ayaneo Pocket DS rival released globally from $249
The AYN Thor is now available to order after a relatively short teaser campaign. As we have covered previously, AYN Technologies is gunning for Ayaneo and the Pocket DS. For context, Ayaneo started crowdfunding the Pocket DS on August 18 with a $399 starting price. At that price, Ayaneo includes a Snapdragon G3x Gen 2 chipset, 8 GB of LPDDR5 RAM, 128 GB of UFS 3.1 flash storage, an 8,000 mAh battery, a 7-inch OLED primary display and a 5-inch IPS secondary display.
By contrast, the AYN Thor currently starts at $249 as the Ayn Thor Lite with the same memory combination. Moreover, AYN Technologies has included a pair of 1080p AMOLED displays, which measure 6-inches and 3.92-inches diagonally. However, the AYN Thor drops to a 6,000 mAh battery capacity. Likewise, the Thor Lite features the older Snapdragon 865, which struggles beyond PlayStation 2 emulation in the Retroid Pocket Flip 2 (curr. $269 on Amazon).
Meanwhile, the Thor's Base, Pro and Max variants ship with the more powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 that AYN Technologies has used across the Odin2 series. Theoretically, this chipset puts these variants at a performance disadvantage compared to the Pocket DS. In reality, little separates the two chipsets in synthetic benchmarks. On top of that, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 has superior third-party GPU driver support that can give it the edge in Nintendo Switch emulation.
At the time of publication, the Thor costs between $249 and $429, with the latter price including a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, 16 GB of RAM and 1 TB of UFS 4.0 flash storage. Please note that AYN Technologies will eventually introduce Retail Pricing that will push the Thor as high as $459. Also, the company offers several official accessories that can either be purchased separately or as an Accessories Pack for $50. Please see the images below and AYN Technologies' website for more information.
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