Mangmi prices the Air Y and Air Y Pro, and the cheap one walked into a bad week

Mangmi has finally put numbers on the Air Y line. Pre-orders open on August 12 at 7:00PM Pacific and the early bird pricing runs for 72 hours, closing on August 15 at 7:00PM. The Air Y with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage is $89.99 early, $94.99 after. The Air Y Pro is $145.99 for 4GB and 64GB, or $175.99 for 8GB and 128GB, going to $159.99 and $189.99 at retail. Two colours, black and a translucent “Retro GB” finish that is doing exactly what you think it is doing.

Both machines are vertical, both use the same 4.2 inch IPS panel at 1280×960 in 4:3, and both carry a 5000mAh battery, active cooling, microSD expansion, USB-C, a 3.5mm jack and a six-axis gyro. The 4:3 screen is the reason to look at either of them. Almost everything worth playing from the era POCG covers was drawn for a squarish screen, and a 1280×960 panel scales that cleanly instead of parking it in the middle of a widescreen phone display with black bars either side.

The Pro is the one to want. It runs a Snapdragon 865 with an Adreno 650, which was a flagship chip in 2020 and has since become the reliable workhorse of the Android handheld category, along with stereo speakers, Wi-Fi 6 and 18W charging. At $175.99 for the 8GB model, it lands under most of the 865 field. There is one oddity: the Pro ships Android 13 while the cheaper Air Y ships Android 14. That usually means the Pro is sitting on an older vendor software base for the 865 rather than anything sinister, but it is the sort of thing that decides how long a device keeps getting updates.

The Air Y is where I would hesitate. It runs a Snapdragon 662 with an Adreno 610, a low-end phone chip from the same year the 865 was a flagship, a single speaker and Wi-Fi 5, and it asks $89.99 for it. That price would be fine in isolation. It is not in isolation. In the same week, Anbernic put the RG SP on sale at $57.99 and AYANEO opened pre-orders on the KONKR Pocket Advance, a Helio G90T machine, at $89 flat. The Air Y has to argue that its 4:3 screen and its shape are worth paying the same as a stronger device and thirty dollars more than a cheaper one. It might win that argument with the right shell. It has to actually make it.

Weights, for anyone who cares about pockets: 279 grams for the Air Y, 286 for the Pro. Neither is light, and both are heavier than the Game Boy they are dressed as.