Ryzen 4500U-powered AYA NEO Founder edition suffers a similar fate to that of the Smach Z as release date postponement is announced

There is plenty of excitement bubbling up around the upcoming release of the AYA NEO Founder edition handheld, which promises portable gaming with the help of a nifty 6-core Renoir chip in the form of the Ryzen 5 4500U. However, fans of the console will be disappointed to learn that the company behind the AYA NEO has recently announced that the release date for the device has now been postponed until March 10, 2021.

While the start date for the Indiegogo campaign for the AYA NEO handheld has remained unaltered (February), it appears some “snags” have affected development. The current COVID-19 pandemic and the upcoming Chinese New Year festival have understandably slowed things down, but “minor problems” have also been reported out of a test batch of 30 AYA NEO consoles that were selected from a trial production run of 107 units.

The AYA NEO handheld boasts of the Ryzen 5 4500U (Vega 6 iGPU), 16 GB DDR4 @4266 MHz RAM, 7-inch 1280x800 IPS screen, Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0 support, and it has a 47 Wh battery. There’s a lot of power under the compact console’s hood, and there might have been some technical or assembly issues during production – in fact, one image posted by the company itself seems to depict such a potential problem (see below). Hopefully, the AYA NEO won’t go the same way as the Smach Z, which still has “receive it during 2020” stated on its official site even though it has most likely been shelved.

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