I’ve been biting at the bit to see if Ayn was going to stick with their current pricing structure or jump into a higher tier offering with the Thor.
I’m here to let you know that Ayn has made the Thor yet another affordable option in their lineup. They also showed off 3 colorways including a translucent purple.
We have a couple other posts about the Ayn Thor as details have come out listed below:
https://retrospecd.gg/ayn-thor-announced/
https://retrospecd.gg/ayn-thor-cpu-options/
I will likely create a post with everything pulled together once we have the complete picture.
Colors
The three colors choices for the Ayn Thor are Black, Rainbow (which is White with skittles buttons) and Clear Purple. Aside from the odd naming of the White variant Ayn is going with the most common popular colors. I would love to see a Yellow colorway to compete directly with the Ayaneo Pocket DS for a couple hundred bucks less.
It appears that the buttons are still up for debate on the “Rainbow” color and up for vote over in Ayn’s discord. If they change those button colors Rainbow being the color descriptor will even be more silly.
Pricing
If you are like me as much fun as the colors and some of the other details are it’s the pricing I’ve been waiting for. I definitely had a concern they would price the Ayn Thor closer to the recently up for pre-order Ayaneo Pocket DS.
The great news is that’s not the case with Ayn. In fact their pricing fits inline with previous Ayn Odin releases. This will keep Ayn the most competitively priced premium handheld line as of this writing.
Ayn has also previously tried to not interfere with Retroid pricing running under the same ownership umbrella. Not only do they have an SOC option that the Thor shares with the Retroid Pocket Flip 2 but they are also similarly priced.
This pricing structure does feel a bit Apple. For $20 more than the Retroid Pocket Flip 2 using the same SD865 SOC you can get the Ayn Thor with a SD865 for $249 and gain a second screen. But then once you make that choice it’s only $50 more to get the more powerful SD8Gen2 powered Thor. The price to memory both RAM/ROM goes up incrementally to top out at $429.
The most expensive Ayn Thor is roughly the same price as the second cheapest Ayaneo Pocket DS at Ayaneo’s Early Bird pricing. Keep in mind the Pocket DS is slightly more powerful though with less driver support. It also includes bigger screens but the bottom screen isn’t OLED on the Pocket DS.
Accessory
One of the g biggest complaints we hear around the Retroid Pocket Flip has been comfort. Ergonomics has actually been an issue with lots of recent handheld releases.
Instead of waiting to release a TPU grip that we are still waiting for on the Flip 2 since the grip was released for the RP5, Ayn is launching the handheld with an option grip to pickup. This can be a life saver for a lot of gamers.
Maybe Ayn better recognizes their customers are a little older with more fragile wrists. That or they have taken notes from their recent handheld releases and know if they don’t make it they will flood Etsy.
Another accessory that will likely work at launch for the Thor is the Ayn Dock. I’ve been using the newest dock on every Ayn and Retroid device I have since it released with the Odin 2. Both docks Ayn has produced have had expandable store, the first with an SSD and the current doc with an NVMe M.2 SSD (oddly not listed on Ayn’s website).
I love loading a bunch of games up I don’t need to play on the go onto a 2TB drive and having them available whenever I sit down to play docked. With the new docks M.2 I’ve experienced no lag and the drive can be transferred over to my handheld PC dock as well.
Once we get more info like a pre-sale release date we’ll keep you update. If there is anything else you would like to know let us know?
Check back here and the Ayn Website for updates on the Thor.
Are you planning on getting the Ayn Thor and if so which model?
GameOn
CellPhish
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