AYANEO is selling an $89 Game Boy Advance, and the screen is the reason to care

Pre-orders opened this week for the KONKR Pocket Advance, AYANEO’s Game Boy Advance tribute, at $89 for the 3GB and 32GB model and $109 for 4GB and 64GB. Those are pre-order prices. Retail is $109 and $129, so the discount is real rather than the usual twenty dollars off a number nobody was going to pay. AYANEO says stock is limited, orders are first come first served, and units ship before the end of August. Three colours: navy blue, coral orange and heritage gray.

The number that matters on this spec sheet is 960×640. A Game Boy Advance screen is 240×160. Multiply by four and you get 960×640 exactly. That is not a coincidence and it is not marketing, it is a panel chosen so that every GBA pixel becomes a clean block of four by four with nothing interpolated, nothing stretched and no shimmer when the camera scrolls. Most handhelds in this price range put a 16:9 phone panel in a retro shell and leave you to pick between a blurry stretch and a small sharp window. AYANEO went and found a 3.5 inch 3:2 LCD that divides properly. For a device with Advance in the name, that is the whole argument.

The rest is sensible rather than exciting. A MediaTek Helio G90T, the same chip AYANEO used in the Pocket AIR Mini, with active cooling behind it. Android 12 under AYANEO’s own layer. A 4000mAh battery, USB-C with power delivery, microSD, Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.0, a 3.5mm jack, dual speakers, a rumble motor, a gyro and a volume wheel. It is 151.3 by 82.4 by 22mm and about 224 grams, so it is a chunky GBA rather than a slim one. AYANEO has added L2 and R2 alongside L1 and R1, which CEO Arthur Zhang frames as better mapping for 3D games, and which is the sort of detail that tells you the shape is a costume rather than a constraint.

What makes this interesting beyond the device itself is who is selling it. AYANEO’s day job is Windows handhelds that cost more than a games console and sometimes more than a laptop. KONKR is the budget line, and here it is at $89 undercutting most of the Android field. That is the same week Anbernic put a GBA SP tribute on sale at $57.99. Two companies from opposite ends of the market both decided the shape to build in 2026 was a Game Boy Advance. Nintendo, which owns the actual thing, is not selling one.