The KONKR Pocket FIT is the affordable flagship gaming handheld of my dreams

AYANEO has been the king of ultra-premium Android gaming handhelds for years, but the unfortunate truth is that most people are priced out of ever buying one of its devices. The last release was the Pocket S2, featuring the fancy new Snapdragon G3 Gen 3. However, starting at $439 with early bird deals ($499 retail), it’s a difficult device to recommend.

The KONKR Pocket FIT flips that script on its head. The first device from AYANEO’s value-oriented sub-brand, KONKR, features the same G3 Gen 3 processor but comes in at roughly half the price, starting at $239.

So what compromises does the Pocket FIT make to hit this price point, and is it the affordable AYANEO flagship fans have been demanding for years? Let’s dive in.

Premium design, minus the OLED

On the surface, the KONKR Pocket FIT looks every bit as premium as every other AYANEO handheld I’ve tested in the past. The plastic feels great, and the all-glass front gives it a premium look. Aside from the price and the K on the menu button, there isn’t much to indicate that this isn’t just another AYANEO handheld.

The face buttons and D-pad feel just as great as they have on every other device the company has released this year. The buttons are mostly quiet, but have a slightly hollow feel to them. There are also start and select buttons at the bottom left, plus two more hotkeys on the bottom right, one of which opens the AYASpace quick menu.

Unlike any other AYANEO device to date, this one features a neat ability to swap triggers between analog and digital inputs. There’s a small toggle next to each trigger to swap between the two modes. Personally, I’m not a fan of the microswitch-style inputs found on the Nintendo Switch, so the linear inputs felt better to me. The triggers themselves have a nice flare to them, and the stacked shoulder buttons are very quiet.

Two more hotkeys flank each of the shoulder buttons, and they’re configurable in the settings for both short and long presses.

An interesting addition here is the back buttons, next to the grips on the back of the device. This is the first time I’ve seen these on an Android-based handheld from AYANEO (its Windows releases have had them), but they don’t seem to be fully fleshed out. I was really looking forward to setting them as hotkeys in emulators, but they aren’t mappable. They can only be mapped to existing inputs (A, B, X, Y, etc.), which makes them pretty useless.

The sticks are also pretty sub-optimal. They’re the same TMR sticks found on the Pocket S2, and although the inputs are fine, the range of motion is very limited. AYANEO calls these “mid-sized” sticks, but the truth is that they’re small. Thankfully, the caps can be pulled right off and replaced. I’d recommend getting a taller stick, since larger caps make it rub up against the glass front without the added height.

Of course, I also need to address one of the most divisive aspects of the Pocket FIT, and that’s the screen. The 6-inch 144Hz FHD display is most notable because it isn’t an OLED, but rather an LCD panel. While the device is cheap for its specs, at this price point, most fans expect OLED. But I’m happy to report that this screen delivers.

The 144Hz FHD display is nice and snappy, with none of the light bleed problems that have plagued some of AYANEO’s other handhelds. The blacks don’t get as black as an OLED panel, but honestly, it was hard to tell the difference unless I was in complete darkness. The edges of the screen blend in with the glass front in a way that isn’t often seen with LCD panels. However, it’s not quite as bright as some of the panels AYANEO has used in the past, like the one on the Pocket S2.

The ergonomics are also on point. The grips on the back, combined with the overall size of the device and shape of the triggers, make it very comfortable to hold for long gaming sessions. The plastic shell juts out slightly at the bottom to house the front-firing speakers, which both sound great and stay out of the way of your palm.

While AYANEO may have saved a little on the LCD screen in the Pocket FIT, it absolutely didn’t pull its punches when it comes to power. There are technically two versions available, one with a Snapdragon G3 Gen 3 and the Pocket FIT Elite launching later this year, which is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite. This review will focus on the cheaper G3 Gen 3 version, as that’s the model I was sent by AYANEO, although my test model had 16GB of RAM, which is the maximum for the non-Elite model.

But despite being cheaper, it’s still an absolute beast. This is the second time AYANEO has used this chipset, with the last being the Pocket S2. As stated earlier, that handheld costs twice as much, although it partly makes up for it with a larger, better screen and ultra-premium metal build. Likewise with the only G3 Gen 3 handheld from another company, the awkward dual-screen transforming OneXSugar SUGAR1.

I ran the device through our suite of benchmarks, and you can check out the results below. This one slots in at the very top of the scale when it comes to Android gaming handhelds, so I’ve compared it with the aforementioned Pocket S2, AYN Odin 2 Portal, and the last-gen G3 Gen 2 on the AYANEO Pocket ACE.

In terms of the CPU, the KONKR Pocket FIT nearly matches its more expensive peer, offering a roughly 25% boost in multi-core performance over the AYN Odin 2 Portal. Until the Pocket FIT Elite and Odin 3 drop later this year, that’s as good as performance gets on Android-based handhelds.

GPU performance shows an even wider gap, coming in roughly 40% higher than the AYN Odin 2 Portal. It even averaged slightly higher than the Pocket S2, and managed to stay a little cooler while doing so. Temperatures peaked at just 38°C in the most demanding tests, while the Pocket S2 reached a maximum of 42°C.

Putting that into more practical terms, the Pocket FIT was more than capable of emulating everything I threw at it. Retro systems with heavy shaders and black frame insertion at 120Hz ran just fine in the Balanced power profile, with the sizeable 7,400mAh battery lasting over 10 hours in the process.

Nintendo Switch emulation via Eden required jumping up to the Gaming power profile, but compatibility was impressive. Switch emulation still hasn’t been perfected, but the well-developed turnip drivers on the G3 Gen 3 still outperform the 8 Elite, despite having less power. That said, it does drain the battery faster, getting a little over six hours of gameplay in games like Super Mario Odyssey. For slightly less demanding PS2 emulation with 2.5x upscaling on the same Gaming profile, that number jumped to nearly eight hours.

Windows emulation, which I think will be the thing to watch going into 2026, was also very impressive on this chipset. I was able to play Hollow Knight: Silksong via GameHub without any tweaking, averaging around 100fps at 1080p. It’s not the crazy numbers we’ve seen from 8 Elite devices, but it’s seriously impressive for an emulation category that’s just starting to mature.

That said, I had to jump to the max power profile to get those numbers, which had the fan spinning at maximum speed. It’s not the loudest (and there’s a headphone jack at the bottom to mitigate this), but it listed roughly 13W of power draw in the process. All of the heat buildup was concentrated in the middle of the device, well away from my hands, but it did drain the battery exceptionally fast. On average, Windows emulation got me around three hours of gameplay, although the high internal temperatures made me nervous to play that long in one sitting.

Thankfully, the Pocket FIT charges up very quickly. It took around 80 minutes to charge from 5% to 100%. There are also options in the quick menu to turn on bypass charging or limit the maximum charge level to keep the battery healthy in the long term.

While it does have a few minor concessions in the size of the stick and the lack of an OLED display, the Pocket FIT’s early bird pricing makes it an incredible deal. Initially, that early bird pricing was set to expire after the first week, but popular demand caused AYANEO to extend the deal until the end of September, and now until the end of the campaign.

In other words, I’d consider this the absolute best value gaming handheld you can currently buy. That will change in a little over a month when pricing jumps by $60 for all variants.

The other elephant in the room is the Pocket FIT Elite shipping later this year, which is set to eclipse the G3 Gen 3 model as drivers improve over the course of 2026. It’s a $30-$40 premium for the upgraded chipset, plus additional options with 24GB of RAM. Those are most certainly the best options for Windows emulation, which benefits heavily from the extra power and RAM. For everything else, the G3 Gen 3 should be more than enough.

The obvious alternative here is the AYN Odin 3, which again features the Snadragon 8 Elite chipset. That one starts at $329 with early bird pricing, which ends in just a few days. After that, it jumps to $349 for the 8+128GB model, which is $80 than the equivalent Pocket FIT Elite. Of course, the Odin 3 has a 6-inch 120Hz OLED screen, which may make it worth the extra cost. It’s set to start shipping in November.

In terms of handhelds you can buy now, nothing offers the same level of power and value. The ANBERNIC RG 477M ($329.99 at Amazon) comes close, with a unique 4.7-inch 120Hz screen with a 4:3 aspect ratio that’s perfect for retro games. Still, the Dimensity 8300 chipset suffers from worse driver support for Switch and Windows emulation.

The AYN Odin 2 Portal ($433 at Amazon) is also a great choice, and it remains one of the easiest premium Android handhelds to recommend. The 7-inch 120Hz OLED panel is gorgeous, and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 still breezes through most emulation tasks. It’s not as future-proof, especially for Windows emulation, but it’s still a killer handheld.

Ultimately though, the KONKR Pocket FIT is truly in a class of its own. If this is an indication of AYANEO’s strategy going forward, it’s great news for anyone interested in emulation handhelds.