Early Review - AYN Odin 2 Pro

I received the most excellent AYN Odin 2 Pro from my lovely wife this Christmas, and this is an early review of the device (approx. 3 hours playing so far).

Feel

My initial impression was, this thing is light. I really expected the device to weigh twice as much, perhaps closer to a kilogram, and I fretted over an imagined heft while it was in transit. It feels good in my hands, however I do wish the controls (ABXY buttons, sticks, and D-pad) were a bit larger — say, 25% or so. I have smaller hands (size 7½ surgical glove), which is a blessing in this scenario, but still. The triggers (R1/R2, L1/L2) are perfect, as is the palm extrusion. I’m not used to ring-finger triggers (pads?) but mapped the left one to “back,” which turned out to be pretty useful. The right one is currently unmapped.

Screen

The screen is amazing. It’s “only” 1080p, but it’s heaps bright and very responsive. It seems larger than it actually is — it’s a 6" IPS LCD — being only a few millimeters smaller than my Pixel 7 Pro. The 60 Hz refresh rate isn’t that noticeable, even coming from the 140 Hz monitor I have for my PC. AYN helpfully included a screen protector in box.

Android

I’m an Android man, so using the OS is no problem — everything is where I expect it to be. It’s plenty fast and behaves as expect. No surprises. I considered putting Arch on it, but wanted to get started playing stratightaway, so that may be a project for another day.

Emulators

Write this when I use emulators.

Steam Play

I’ve always been skeptical of play-over-WiFi (surely there’s a term of art for this — probably “streaming”), but I was impressed with Steam Link from the get go. Despite expecting hiccoughs running Steam on Arch Linux, Steam Link saw the app running immediately and had no problem playing Path of Exile 2 EA. The gameplay itself was a bit up and down — there was some frame stuttering, but that came and went, and I got over it easily. Our household uses multiple devices simultaneously at nearly all times, so perhaps that had something to do with it. The in-game text can be difficult to read on account of the font size, and I did have to squint a few times at the screens more than I’d care to, but I suspect this is more an effect of aging rather than an issue with the device/service. I’ll dig into the accessibility options and see what remedies I can find.

Battery Life

I played close to three hours of Path of Exile 2 EA and the battery went from 88% to 73%. Granted, I did have the device muted, but I was thoroughly impressed with a loss of only 15% battery. This was with a screen brightness of maybe 66%, which was just fine. I don’t quite remember, but I think I had Bluetooth turned on for some reason, so if that in fact was the case, color me doubly impressed.

Emulation

I haven’t emulated anything yet, and if you’re familiar with my previous posts, you’ll understand I only emulate games I physically own. Will report back later on this topic.

Miscellaneous

• I don’t like the font AYN chose for the ABXY buttons.
• Huge thanks to Retro Game Corps’ superb AYN Odin 2 Starter Guide for providing an in-depth guide to getting started.
• AYN included a carrying case despite my wife not purchasing one. Unclear why that happened, but I am not complaining.
  • They included a screen protector as well, so that’s even more mysterious.
• I bought a 256 GB SD card, which ought to be enough for a while, but a half-terabyte card might be more useful later on.

Conclusion

I am thoroughly impressed with this device. A higher refresh rate for the screen would have been preferable, and I do wish for larger controls, but the positives more than make up for the negatives. For the sake of reviewing this again in the future, I rate it ~87 / 100.