The AYANEO Pocket Micro 2 Has Me HYPED

Admittedly, it’s pretty easy to get me hyped, but I think this time it’s for a damn good reason.

AYANEO released one of my favorite handhelds, the Pocket Micro, all the way back in late 2024. Back then it had a few things that were pretty new for these devices: an all-glass front, aluminum construction, and a genuinely surprising level of performance in so small a package thanks to the MediaTek Helio G99 chipset that powered it. It even had a fan, all packed into a device big enough to fit into your pocket! When I found out this thing was available, it genuinely felt like a new frontier in the market.

But as AYANEO usually does, there was just that one little thing…

The sticks. My problem (and most other people’s, famously) with the original Pocket Micro was the super tall analog sticks. These things were tall compared to the face of the device, and they were even tall compared with other handhelds released around a similar time. Inset sticks were only beginning to become a ‘standard’ of smaller handhelds, and in truth, the few that had tried it hadn’t really gone over well with a certain sect of the community. I personally recall many complaints about it on the Miyoo A30 at the time, despite the point of the design being to be compact. The Pocket Micro, I feel, definitively proved why they were necessary.

The AYANEO Pocket Micro, with its insanely tall sticks

That design flaw alone kneecapped the Pocket Micro from being a true EDC (every day carry) candidate. Instead it was relegated to a jacket pocket or a small bag, which significantly limited its ability to outshine similar power-level handhelds that were a little more comfortable to hold. There were a few other small flaws, like the lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack or the shape of the shoulder buttons. The battery, too, was considered to be pitiful even on release, with only 2600 mAh to play with on the relatively power-hungry G99.

Despite these flaws, I still happily purchased the Pocket Micro. More specifically, I purchased the Antec Core Micro, which was a rebranded version of the Pocket Micro licensed out to PC case manufacturer Antec. Some others sold their models after realizing they were unable to adjust to the sticks, or adjusted as best as they were able with 3D printed stick caps intended to cut as much space out of the original design as possible.

An example of the low-profile stick caps 3D printed by some to mitigate the size of the originals

AYANEO eventually responded…but in the completely wrong way. A few months after the Pocket Micro’s release, they announced the Pocket Micro Classic, which was, for all intents and purposes, identical to the original internally. The only difference was the lack of joysticks altogether.

Huh?

My Pocket Micro was actually in transit from the Netherlands when AYANEO announced the Pocket Micro Classic. I remember being so utterly confused at the time as to why anyone would even want that much power as the G99 was able to offer without so much as a stick to play Nintendo 64 games. The 3:2 ratio screen and high PPI 960 x 640 display were perfect for GBA, which was the main draw to the device to begin with, but for that to be the only thing you use it for confounded me utterly. I’m the kind of person who has to be able to do multiple things with a device, or I find it pointless to own.

A few days ago, AYANEO answered my prayers when they revealed the Pocket Micro 2.

Originally, we only knew that this was going to be a new Pocket Micro with a Snapdragon (specifics as-of-yet unknown) processor. AYANEO (and other companies apparently, like Anbernic) like to drip-feed details over a period of weeks in order to enrage me specifically, so information on this thing is still sparse. However, the reveal of a bigger battery (3950 mAh compared to the original’s 2600 mAh), a 3.5mm port, and larger buttons are really shaping this thing up to be an impressive piece of hardware. And, of course, the sticks are now inset, barely (if at all) extending beyond other controls.

Genuinely, AYANEO could have done nothing else but this to the design, and it would have been a day-one purchase from me. Suddenly the Pocket Micro 2 is a top contender in the small-to-micro handheld space, and every detail they reveal about it makes it that much more attractive in my eyes.

As of this article’s writing, there’s still two days to go for the full device reveal, where we’ll learn about the SoC and see the full thing for the first time. But what we know about it already has convinced me to pick one up. I’m really digging that white colorway, which was apparently planned for the first model but dropped before production. Only time will tell what other features this thing has hidden away, and the all-important price tag.

If you’d like me to review a product, email me: me@jaw.fyi