The Author's Experience with the Ineo 2 Handheld Gaming Device

I felt weird holding the Ineo 2, wondering if I was doing something right. The device's size and design make it feel more like a regular gaming PC than a handheld console, which is reflected in its price point. Most reviews focus on the fact that it's a handheld gaming device, but I wanted to highlight the additional features and capabilities that set it apart from other devices.

The Ineo 2's Form Factor is Unconventional

While the Steam Deck is massive, the Ineo 2 is even more surprising in its compact size. It's clear that the designers aimed to create a sleek, bezel-less device that would appeal to gamers. However, this also means that the Ineo 2 looks dated compared to other devices on the market. The Steam Deck's bulkiness is reminiscent of old gaming consoles like the Wii U, which was affectionately referred to as "the giant pad." I couldn't help but notice how much smaller the Ineo 2 is.

The Controls and Hardware

I was impressed by the quality of the controls, particularly the hall-effect joysticks with magnets. They're super accurate, and I didn't experience any drift or issues during gameplay. The buttons, including the ABXY keys and triggers, feel solid and responsive. The temperature control is also noteworthy, as the device can be adjusted to run at various levels of power. According to Afterburner, the RTX 3080 TI's temperatures are relatively low, even when running demanding games.

Power Management

The Ineo 2 allows users to adjust the TDP (Thermal Design Power) of the device, ranging from 3 Watts to 33 Watts. This flexibility is significant, as it can greatly impact performance, temperatures, and noise levels. I discovered that switching the TDP to 22 Watts resulted in a substantial increase in frame rates while maintaining a relatively low temperature.

The Importance of Proper Configuration

To get the most out of the Ineo 2, users need to configure it correctly. This includes connecting external peripherals like keyboards, mice, and monitors. The device can be paired with an external GPU (eGPU) to enhance performance, but this adds significant cost. If done properly, however, the Ineo 2 becomes a powerful mini PC that just happens to be handheld.

Gaming Performance

I was blown away by the gaming performance of the Ineo 2. With proper configuration and sufficient power, it can deliver impressive frame rates and smooth gameplay. However, I'm not convinced that it can handle demanding games like Fortnite or other titles with high graphics requirements. The device's capabilities are better suited for more casual gaming experiences.

Streaming Capabilities

While the author has not extensively tested streaming capabilities on the Ineo 2, they suspect that it may not be the most suitable option for this purpose. Streaming would likely require significant power and resources to maintain a stable connection, which might put a strain on the device's hardware. However, if users are willing to experiment with different settings and configurations, it's possible that streaming could work.

The Author's Conclusion

The Ineo 2 is a remarkable device that offers more than just handheld gaming capabilities. Its versatility and power make it an excellent choice for those who want a compact, high-performance PC that can also be used as a handheld console. To fully justify the price point, users need to invest in peripherals like keyboards, mice, and monitors, and possibly an external GPU. However, if configured correctly, the Ineo 2 is a fantastic device that's sure to delight gamers and tech enthusiasts alike.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's going on guys so this is my gaming setup uh hear me out here okay I want you to wait for it you guys this is gonna blow your mind I'm about to blow your mind this is my gaming setup I've got a nice high-end gaming PC on the wall there right super fancy custom liquid cooled and all that I got triple 4K monitors so right now I've got do maternal running at 4K Ultra nightmare graphic settings completely maxed out getting well over 100 FPS I've got a w Premiere Pro open in the background and a few browser tabs Discord Twitter right okay so what's the big deal Kyle I mean obviously a high-end gaming PC can run all that no problem but what if I told you that this isn't being run off of that PC everything you see here is being run off of the imeo 2 this little dinky little handheld gaming device to be fair we do have some help from an egpu which is an RTX 3080 TI that's connected to this but this is literally handling everything that you see here and it's it blew my mind the second I realized that that little device could do all of this well that's when I picked up the camera and started recording before we continue thanks to CD key offer for sponsoring this video right now cdkey offers having a Windows 10 sale including Global lifetime keys for Windows 10 Pro right now they're even letting you stack my offer code on top of their offer use code bw20 at checkout for an additional discount and snag a legit Windows 10 key for just 16 bucks afterwards simply View and copy the key you just purchased paste it into the Windows activation page and Presto enjoy every feature Windows 10 has to offer ditch The Watermark and even use it for a free upgrade to Windows 11. see the keyoffer.com is also having a back to school physical sale on gear like mechanical keyboards gaming headsets RGB decor and more remember kids just because you're going back to school doesn't mean you can't leverage this awful time in your life to your benefit by the way you don't need to be a student to take advantage of any of these deals so congratulations everything sucks a lot less for you check out the links in the description below and start browsing all of the limited time deals on cdkeyoffer.com what's up guys so you yeah this is just sort of a talking head video because I I wanted to just share this with you I wasn't planning to make this video Aya Neo is that the name of the the company as well editing rate the people who are responsible for this device sent me the device what's this thing about you know why is it eleven hundred dollars why is it almost three times as much as the steam deck and then I started doing some digging and I even asked you guys on Twitter like what's the deal with this thing why are people losing their minds over this thing when it's so much more expensive than the steam deck and people started telling me what it can do and then I started messing around with it and finding out for myself and I was like holy this is insane like the steam deck is a toy this is a Mini PC that I neo2 is just a freaking straight up computer there's a lot that goes into that right it's running Windows natively as opposed to Steam OS on the steam deck which is based on Arch Linux and with that comes just a much more polished desktop UI it's just the desktop experience is so much better on Windows than it is on on the Steam OS now you can do some workarounds with the steam deck to get it up to par but who's got time for that I just wanted to work out of the box do all this stuff and it does that so Windows obviously you can run any game as well pretty much any game that you can run a normal gaming PC you can run on this thing anything on this steam store epic game store whatever you know the fact that it's windows so it can run Windows desktop apps I have Adobe Premiere Pro I was I was editing I was editing 4K video footage flawlessly it doesn't make any sense I can really see why you might like how you could justify spending 1100 bucks on this thing and that's starting mine is 32 gigs it's configured with 32 gigs of lpddr5 it has uh two terabytes of Storage nvme storage PCA Gen4 it also has a ryzen 7 6800u which is I reckon that rdna2 architecture so it's got a 680m Radeon 680m graphics and when you're using it in handheld mode the screen is 7 inch 1920 by 1200 but I would scale it down to like 800 P if you really want to get over 30 FPS and a lot of the uh the more demanding games it can do like 60 FPS and like the really light Indie titles stuff like that maybe a few Esports games but where this thing really shines where this device really makes sense at eleven hundred dollars is when you use it as a Mini PC when you dock it when you have a dockable setup like the one I have here if you're just using it to game handheld then just get a steam deck because it's three times cheaper if that's all you're gonna do if all you're doing is gaining handheld on the ineo 2 you're leaving in my opinion you're leaving a lot of money and performance on the table another thing that sets the inao2 apart from the steam deck is that not just that it runs windows but also that it supports egpus right now I have an RTX 3080 TI connected to this device and it's just making all my games fly at 4K mind you at 4K it's doing work like I said I'm doing like do maternal oops what's going on here so yeah I've got an external GPU connected there are some caveats to that though for one you're not going to get 100 of the performance that you would see if you were to just slot that GPU into like a full by 16 slot of a motherboard because you're you're dealing with some limited bandwidth due to the Thunderbolt 3 Connection so maybe you're getting 10 15 maybe 20 less performance out of that card and then the other caveat is that this doesn't work seamlessly like for me it was Plug and Play Pop the 3080 TI in installed NVIDIA drivers done deal but what's been reported is that a lot of AMD cards are not playing nicely with devices like this the AMD drivers are a complete mess which is interesting because this is like the ineo 2 is an AMD based processor but that's I guess irrelevant um but what I found is that GTX 10 series cards all the way up to RTX 30 series cards work pretty well 40 series a little finicky if you're not sure don't roll the dice it's it's two nudes too fresh but 10 series to 30 series you're usually in good shape but yeah I've been testing at 4K as well as 1440p just to gauge frame rates and see how we're doing with that 3080 TI helping us uh we're pushing well over 60 FPS at 4K well over 60 FPS at 1440p well over 100 FPS I mean obviously yeah you got to incur the extra cost of the the discrete GPU and the enclosure and that sort of thing but just the having the option of expandability is something that the steam deck just doesn't have so maybe on the next revision or whatever but the fact that you can do that it just it you know means that you can really push this this little handheld a lot further now I have seen some videos online of people connecting an external GPU to a steam deck through very tedious workarounds like they have to buy an m.2 to PCI Express adapter and then like do this weird macgyvering you know connection to a GPU it's a mess it's a total Royal mess it's tedious you have to spend extra money who has time for that um whereas the ineo 2 can just do it natively out of the box it's pretty awesome I've been editing man I've been editing on this thing it's crazy I've been using Premiere Pro the render times are pretty decent plus with uh the connected external GPU it's got some assisted rendering performance there sorry for the super random cut in but while we're on the topic of video editing I just want to confirm and let you guys know that this video that you're watching right now was edited on the Aya Neo 2. I'm actually editing the video that I just shot that you're watching right now I've been editing for the last hour or so it's just smooth it feels weird is this like can we do this this feels wrong but apparently we can most of the reviews of this thing are focused on the fact that it's a handheld gaming device they're treating it like as such which it is um but I wanted to bring more attention to the fact that it can do so much more and that's why it's priced a lot higher than a steam deck it's also just way smaller like the freaking steam deck in comparison to this thing you can't really tell on camera the steam deck is massive it's a freaking remember when like the Wii U came out and they used to call that the giant pad a dinner plate this is the new dinner plate this is ridiculous and also like there's bezels there's like ugly bezels around the screen on the steam deck it's completely bezel-less on the the ineo 2. you know from left to right top to bottom it's all screen whereas this looks just this already looks dated the steam deck just looks old to me in comparison now the joysticks are their hall effect joysticks she uses like magnets and stuff they're super accurate you don't get like joystick like the drift and stuff like that really good quality controls everything feels good feels solid the abxy buttons are solid good throw on the the triggers the temperatures are in check too like right now gpus are relevant because whatever you're going to add your own that's going to vary but in case you're wondering 75c on the RTX 3080 TI right now and do maternal the CPU is chilling dude it's chilling at 58 uh it's only playing 10 watts at the moment according to afterburner that's another thing is that you can adjust the the TDP of this device anywhere from like I think three Watts all the way up to 33 Watts obviously that's going to heavily impact the performance the temperatures and the noise levels as well and obviously battery life is just going to tank if you crank it up to 33 Watts TVP then you're gonna get less than an hour of game time so if you do want that extra performance then you want to also make sure that you're plugged into power but um for a while I was like seeing kind of like lackluster performance and realized oh it's because it's operating 5 Watts right now I switched the TDP to 22 watts and just saw the frame rates just blow through the roof and that's just that's not even the max like I said max is 33. at that point you're it's it's getting a little hot not dangerous level or anything like that but it's getting toasty and uh you know the little fans in it ramp up higher so it's a bit more Audible and stuff I found 22 watts to be sort of The Sweet Spot especially because we got the egpu connected but overall this thing is just ridiculously cool the whole moral of the story here is that if you're gonna buy this thing you have to be using it to its fullest to really justify the price you don't even have to get an external GPU get a monitor connect the monitor to it connect the keyboard and a mouse and get the dock you absolutely need like to have a docking set up to justify spending eleven hundred dollars but if you do that if you do all those things it's crazy I'm just kind of enamored by the whole thing I mean you can just connect any like all your peripherals connect the an Xbox controller to it you know a headset I haven't tried streaming with it I don't know how it would do with streaming I don't think it can it can really game in stream effectively uh maybe in some very limited scenarios but um if you wanted to do just like just chatting you know stream away 6800 you sure why not you know you bump it down to 720p or something like that I know this video is all over the place and I'm just kind of rambling and stuff but I really just wanted to share this with you guys because I'm just so blown away by it and no one told me that this device could do all this stuff you know here I am just thinking this is a really overpriced steam deck when in reality it's it's a perfectly viable Mini PC that just happens to also be a handheld device hopefully you guys don't mind the uh very unscripted format it's very loose but I just had to take a moment to geek out with you guys on this thing so let me know what you guys think I'm curious to hear your thoughts and maybe there's something I missed that uh that you'd like to share with the class as well leave it down below toss a like on the video If you enjoyed it get subscribed for more Tech content on the way and I will see you guys in the next videowhat's going on guys so this is my gaming setup uh hear me out here okay I want you to wait for it you guys this is gonna blow your mind I'm about to blow your mind this is my gaming setup I've got a nice high-end gaming PC on the wall there right super fancy custom liquid cooled and all that I got triple 4K monitors so right now I've got do maternal running at 4K Ultra nightmare graphic settings completely maxed out getting well over 100 FPS I've got a w Premiere Pro open in the background and a few browser tabs Discord Twitter right okay so what's the big deal Kyle I mean obviously a high-end gaming PC can run all that no problem but what if I told you that this isn't being run off of that PC everything you see here is being run off of the imeo 2 this little dinky little handheld gaming device to be fair we do have some help from an egpu which is an RTX 3080 TI that's connected to this but this is literally handling everything that you see here and it's it blew my mind the second I realized that that little device could do all of this well that's when I picked up the camera and started recording before we continue thanks to CD key offer for sponsoring this video right now cdkey offers having a Windows 10 sale including Global lifetime keys for Windows 10 Pro right now they're even letting you stack my offer code on top of their offer use code bw20 at checkout for an additional discount and snag a legit Windows 10 key for just 16 bucks afterwards simply View and copy the key you just purchased paste it into the Windows activation page and Presto enjoy every feature Windows 10 has to offer ditch The Watermark and even use it for a free upgrade to Windows 11. see the keyoffer.com is also having a back to school physical sale on gear like mechanical keyboards gaming headsets RGB decor and more remember kids just because you're going back to school doesn't mean you can't leverage this awful time in your life to your benefit by the way you don't need to be a student to take advantage of any of these deals so congratulations everything sucks a lot less for you check out the links in the description below and start browsing all of the limited time deals on cdkeyoffer.com what's up guys so you yeah this is just sort of a talking head video because I I wanted to just share this with you I wasn't planning to make this video Aya Neo is that the name of the the company as well editing rate the people who are responsible for this device sent me the device what's this thing about you know why is it eleven hundred dollars why is it almost three times as much as the steam deck and then I started doing some digging and I even asked you guys on Twitter like what's the deal with this thing why are people losing their minds over this thing when it's so much more expensive than the steam deck and people started telling me what it can do and then I started messing around with it and finding out for myself and I was like holy this is insane like the steam deck is a toy this is a Mini PC that I neo2 is just a freaking straight up computer there's a lot that goes into that right it's running Windows natively as opposed to Steam OS on the steam deck which is based on Arch Linux and with that comes just a much more polished desktop UI it's just the desktop experience is so much better on Windows than it is on on the Steam OS now you can do some workarounds with the steam deck to get it up to par but who's got time for that I just wanted to work out of the box do all this stuff and it does that so Windows obviously you can run any game as well pretty much any game that you can run a normal gaming PC you can run on this thing anything on this steam store epic game store whatever you know the fact that it's windows so it can run Windows desktop apps I have Adobe Premiere Pro I was I was editing I was editing 4K video footage flawlessly it doesn't make any sense I can really see why you might like how you could justify spending 1100 bucks on this thing and that's starting mine is 32 gigs it's configured with 32 gigs of lpddr5 it has uh two terabytes of Storage nvme storage PCA Gen4 it also has a ryzen 7 6800u which is I reckon that rdna2 architecture so it's got a 680m Radeon 680m graphics and when you're using it in handheld mode the screen is 7 inch 1920 by 1200 but I would scale it down to like 800 P if you really want to get over 30 FPS and a lot of the uh the more demanding games it can do like 60 FPS and like the really light Indie titles stuff like that maybe a few Esports games but where this thing really shines where this device really makes sense at eleven hundred dollars is when you use it as a Mini PC when you dock it when you have a dockable setup like the one I have here if you're just using it to game handheld then just get a steam deck because it's three times cheaper if that's all you're gonna do if all you're doing is gaining handheld on the ineo 2 you're leaving in my opinion you're leaving a lot of money and performance on the table another thing that sets the inao2 apart from the steam deck is that not just that it runs windows but also that it supports egpus right now I have an RTX 3080 TI connected to this device and it's just making all my games fly at 4K mind you at 4K it's doing work like I said I'm doing like do maternal oops what's going on here so yeah I've got an external GPU connected there are some caveats to that though for one you're not going to get 100 of the performance that you would see if you were to just slot that GPU into like a full by 16 slot of a motherboard because you're you're dealing with some limited bandwidth due to the Thunderbolt 3 Connection so maybe you're getting 10 15 maybe 20 less performance out of that card and then the other caveat is that this doesn't work seamlessly like for me it was Plug and Play Pop the 3080 TI in installed NVIDIA drivers done deal but what's been reported is that a lot of AMD cards are not playing nicely with devices like this the AMD drivers are a complete mess which is interesting because this is like the ineo 2 is an AMD based processor but that's I guess irrelevant um but what I found is that GTX 10 series cards all the way up to RTX 30 series cards work pretty well 40 series a little finicky if you're not sure don't roll the dice it's it's two nudes too fresh but 10 series to 30 series you're usually in good shape but yeah I've been testing at 4K as well as 1440p just to gauge frame rates and see how we're doing with that 3080 TI helping us uh we're pushing well over 60 FPS at 4K well over 60 FPS at 1440p well over 100 FPS I mean obviously yeah you got to incur the extra cost of the the discrete GPU and the enclosure and that sort of thing but just the having the option of expandability is something that the steam deck just doesn't have so maybe on the next revision or whatever but the fact that you can do that it just it you know means that you can really push this this little handheld a lot further now I have seen some videos online of people connecting an external GPU to a steam deck through very tedious workarounds like they have to buy an m.2 to PCI Express adapter and then like do this weird macgyvering you know connection to a GPU it's a mess it's a total Royal mess it's tedious you have to spend extra money who has time for that um whereas the ineo 2 can just do it natively out of the box it's pretty awesome I've been editing man I've been editing on this thing it's crazy I've been using Premiere Pro the render times are pretty decent plus with uh the connected external GPU it's got some assisted rendering performance there sorry for the super random cut in but while we're on the topic of video editing I just want to confirm and let you guys know that this video that you're watching right now was edited on the Aya Neo 2. I'm actually editing the video that I just shot that you're watching right now I've been editing for the last hour or so it's just smooth it feels weird is this like can we do this this feels wrong but apparently we can most of the reviews of this thing are focused on the fact that it's a handheld gaming device they're treating it like as such which it is um but I wanted to bring more attention to the fact that it can do so much more and that's why it's priced a lot higher than a steam deck it's also just way smaller like the freaking steam deck in comparison to this thing you can't really tell on camera the steam deck is massive it's a freaking remember when like the Wii U came out and they used to call that the giant pad a dinner plate this is the new dinner plate this is ridiculous and also like there's bezels there's like ugly bezels around the screen on the steam deck it's completely bezel-less on the the ineo 2. you know from left to right top to bottom it's all screen whereas this looks just this already looks dated the steam deck just looks old to me in comparison now the joysticks are their hall effect joysticks she uses like magnets and stuff they're super accurate you don't get like joystick like the drift and stuff like that really good quality controls everything feels good feels solid the abxy buttons are solid good throw on the the triggers the temperatures are in check too like right now gpus are relevant because whatever you're going to add your own that's going to vary but in case you're wondering 75c on the RTX 3080 TI right now and do maternal the CPU is chilling dude it's chilling at 58 uh it's only playing 10 watts at the moment according to afterburner that's another thing is that you can adjust the the TDP of this device anywhere from like I think three Watts all the way up to 33 Watts obviously that's going to heavily impact the performance the temperatures and the noise levels as well and obviously battery life is just going to tank if you crank it up to 33 Watts TVP then you're gonna get less than an hour of game time so if you do want that extra performance then you want to also make sure that you're plugged into power but um for a while I was like seeing kind of like lackluster performance and realized oh it's because it's operating 5 Watts right now I switched the TDP to 22 watts and just saw the frame rates just blow through the roof and that's just that's not even the max like I said max is 33. at that point you're it's it's getting a little hot not dangerous level or anything like that but it's getting toasty and uh you know the little fans in it ramp up higher so it's a bit more Audible and stuff I found 22 watts to be sort of The Sweet Spot especially because we got the egpu connected but overall this thing is just ridiculously cool the whole moral of the story here is that if you're gonna buy this thing you have to be using it to its fullest to really justify the price you don't even have to get an external GPU get a monitor connect the monitor to it connect the keyboard and a mouse and get the dock you absolutely need like to have a docking set up to justify spending eleven hundred dollars but if you do that if you do all those things it's crazy I'm just kind of enamored by the whole thing I mean you can just connect any like all your peripherals connect the an Xbox controller to it you know a headset I haven't tried streaming with it I don't know how it would do with streaming I don't think it can it can really game in stream effectively uh maybe in some very limited scenarios but um if you wanted to do just like just chatting you know stream away 6800 you sure why not you know you bump it down to 720p or something like that I know this video is all over the place and I'm just kind of rambling and stuff but I really just wanted to share this with you guys because I'm just so blown away by it and no one told me that this device could do all this stuff you know here I am just thinking this is a really overpriced steam deck when in reality it's it's a perfectly viable Mini PC that just happens to also be a handheld device hopefully you guys don't mind the uh very unscripted format it's very loose but I just had to take a moment to geek out with you guys on this thing so let me know what you guys think I'm curious to hear your thoughts and maybe there's something I missed that uh that you'd like to share with the class as well leave it down below toss a like on the video If you enjoyed it get subscribed for more Tech content on the way and I will see you guys in the next video\n"