Greetings friends and fellow enthusiasts! This is Mikhailov from Team Retrogue, where we like retro games and the devices that bring them to us.
After a very long wait Ayn Loki units are finally starting to ship and land in people’s eager hands. While many reviewers are looking at the Ayn Loki Zero and the Ayn Loki Max, I’m going to take a look at the Ayn Loki base 6600U model. We’re going to see if this device is worth your time, energy, and most importantly, your money.
This written review is designed to supplement my two videos on the Ayn Loki 6600U. You can find those videos below:
Specs and Device Features
Let’s go ahead showcase some of the features of the device starting with the shoulder buttons. The device features stacked shoulder buttons. There is quite a bit of travel on the L2 and R2 triggers, more travel than I personally care for. I like my triggers to be a little bit more responsive but this seems to be the standard that’s happening for controllers and handhelds.
The top of the handheld features an exhaust vent as well as volume buttons, a status indicator light, and a power button.
The front of the device features two full sized joysticks comparable to what you would find on an Xbox Series S or X controller. The joysticks measure in at about 14.9 millimeters on the Loki and at about 16.3 millimeters on an Xbox controller.
The face buttons measure 8 millimeters on the Loki and about 10 millimeters on an Xbox Controller so you’re not losing that much in button size either. Ayn really kind of went out of their way to make the Loki feel like you’re holding a standard controller and that actually means that they are trying to get a good gaming experience for their buyers.
Also on the front here you have a six inch IPS display as well as Start/Select and two function buttons. The d-pad feels like a dome style d-pad and not a membrane style d-pad, thus it has a lot of firm “clickiness” to it.
The system also features two front facing speakers and LED lighting around the joysticks as well as on the sides of the unit.
The bottom of the device has an SD card slot as well as a headphone jack and a solitary USB-C port for charging as well as video out. On the back of the device you have two un-mappable M1 and M2 buttons as well as some more exhaust. One nice touch is the small Loki icon that is also part of the LED system which will light up along with every other LED on the device.
When you start up the system for the first time, the LEDs around the sticks are going to be at a hundred percent and they’re going to be really bright. If you look at the picture below, you’ll notice not only only a ton of light bleed but you’ll see that the sides are reflecting off of the mat on my table. This could lead to a very distracting experience. Luckily once you open up Loki Command Center, you can lower the LED brightness. I prefer to leave it at around 20%.
Also once you go into Loki Command Center, you can set up a custom fan curve. I learned about this fan curve from Aish in the Retro Handhelds Community as a way to keep the system cool, but also keep the fan from sounding like a hair dryer all the time.
We can also use the dial in the middle to set TDP, and we can adjust the CPU and GPU.
Clicking the settings icon allows users to adjust the brightness, volume, Control Center Opacity, and choose whether or not to start LCC on startup. I recommend you just keep that option turned on, because you can then start the Loki in Steam Big Picture mode and get right into your games.
Unfortunately this device has limited dockability. There is only one USB-C port and it’s on the bottom. Most docks are not equipped for that type of setup and requires a port on the top. Therefore, if we set the system upside down, we will be blocking the vent at the top of the device. If we lay the device down, you are blocking the vent on the back. Unfortunately there really is no good way to dock this device for long periods of time.
Hard Drive Replacement (Optional)
I did ultimately end up getting a 1TB hard drive to upgrade from the 256GB that comes with this unit. the Luckily, the unit itself was fairly simple to open up. There are four screws to remove in the back, and then a guitar pick can be used to gently pry the back of the unit off. However to get to the hard drive, you do need to disconnect and remove the cooling fan. You need to remove a small piece of tape that connects the fan to the radiator at the top, and then simply move the fan aside to access the hard drive slot. This unit takes a 2242 m.2 drive, and I recommend the one linked below:
It’s minor, but the noise that the device makes upon start-up is a turnoff to me. It’s an old-style computer beep and it feels really out of place.
One positive is I can use the Steam Big Picture front-end, and this device is going to very closely resemble the experience that I have with my Steam Deck because the bottom button under the D-Pad functions as an Xbox button when in controller mode. This means that you can get the most out of Steam Big Picture Mode, and all of the benefits that go with it like being able to quit out of a game, see your battery life, even power off the system. You technically never need to see the Windows desktop.
A small complaint I do have is the volume up and down buttons, as they just seem very mushy and just kind of sink into the device in order to trigger. You really have to push down on them to get any sort of reaction and sometimes I feel that when I go to adjust the volume, the button is going to get lost in the unit. Considering every other x86 device I own has very clicky switch style buttons for volume controls, it’s very jarring to have this very mushy solitary button that does work but just doesn’t quite feel right.
Benchmarks
I ran a CPU test on 3dmark just to see what it would come up with and here are the numbers that the 6600u chip was able to put out:
It doesn’t perform as well as the ROG Ally, but better than the Steam Deck. The 6600U chip in this model is very capable.
PC Game Testing
Below are some games I have successfully tested on this device, and their settings:
Mega Man Legacy Collection: 8W TDP/720p/Default Settings
God of War HD/PS3/RPCS3/2x Resolution (720p)/15w TDP
X-Men/PS3/RPCS3/2x Resolution (720p)/15w TDP
Battery
Below are the battery results I received while playing various games on the Ayn Loki.The games tested are:
Pokemon Brilliant Diamond/Switch/Yuzu
Yu-Gi-Oh Master Duel/PC
Final Fantasy XIV/PC
Fae Farm/PC – 2023 Release
Final Thoughts
Positives
The 6600u that comes in this specific model Loki is still very powerful and it handled pretty much everything I threw at it. The only thing that kept me from playing certain games was the amount of power that I was drawing from the unit itself. I would play something less powerful if I wanted to get more battery life out of the device, and if I just wanted to play something for the sake of playing it I would take the risk of drawing that extra power.
I love that this device has a dedicated Xbox button.
The battery seems very decent for a Windows x86 handheld.The ergonomics are very very passable. I can’t say that I’ve had an uncomfortable experience using this device The Loki is an interesting middle ground. It’s not as light as an Aya Neo Air, but it’s not as heavy as a Steam Deck.
Negatives
If you leave the fan curve on auto it sounds like a jet engine, but if you put a custom fan curve the screen does get a little bit warm when you are actually taxing the device.
The volume buttons on the top are fairly mushy and they are a little bit awkward to press. It’s nothing like other devices that typically have a clicky volume button.
That 256 gigabyte Drive is going to fill fast. You can supplement that with micro SD card storage but the fact that Windows takes up a lot of hard drive space on its own that may compel you to want to upgrade the hard drive or try one of these custom windows builds that allegedly doesn’t take up as much space. That leads to this being a little bit less of a Plug and Play device than you would typically want.
Let’s consider pricing and availability. If you go on AYN’s website you’ll notice that the prices for the Loki units have dropped pretty significantly and you can get this specific model for $499 and they will ship it with 4px. However, when you do go to order this from their website they are still listing it as a pre-order and they don’t necessarily explain when these units are shipping. You may have to wait a bit for these devices to actually ship out and then if you’re going to ship it with 4px, you are probably looking at about a two to four week wait on top of that. With that in mind, you can purchase a 256GB Steam Deck for just a little bit more.
I ultimately enjoyed my time with the Ayn Loki, but I found that it never quite secured a place in my heart like the ROG Ally and the Aya Neo Air Plus. However if you are looking for a good mid-range handheld that can handle a variety of games, this may be the unit for you.
