AYN Odin 2 Portal Review

Buy the AYN Odin 2 Portal here: https://joeysrh.link/IGG_ODIN2P

Looking for the AYN Odin 2 Portal Setup Guide? Find it here.

Specs & Price

ColorsBlack (Base) / White (Pro/Max) / Indigo (Pro/Max)
Screen7″ OLED 120hz 1920×1080 16:9 Touchscreen
CPUSnapdragon 8 Gen 2
GPUAdreno 740
RAM8GB (Base) / 12GB (Pro) / 16GB (Max)
Storage128GB (Base) / 512GB (Pro) / 1TB (Max)
Operating SystemAndroid 13
Battery8000mAh
FeaturesWiFi, Bluetooth, Video Output
Good ForPS1 & Under, N64/DC, Saturn, PSP, GC/Wii, PS2, Switch
Custom Firmware (at launch)None

So the Odin 2 Portal starts at $334 US dollars for the Base 8GB/128GB model with black only as a color, then $398 USD for the Pro 12GB/512GB model with black, white and indigo and finally $501 US dollars for the Max 16GB/1TB model with all three colors once again.

Given the base Odin 2 is $299 US dollars, that’s a $35 price increase base to base, or $30 from the Odin 2 Pro to Odin 2 Portal Pro. 

Compared to the Odin 2

So what all do you get, well let’s compare the Odin 2 to the Odin 2 Portal. Let’s start with what’s the same.

It’s the same Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor with the Adreno 740 GPU, which at this point is a mature combination for Android with lots of custom driver support and is still a great choice, there’s the three RAM and storage options of 8GB/128GB, 12GB/512GB and 16GB/1TB, still DisplayPort, still WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3, Android 13, both have a massive 8000mAh battery, active cooling, and that’s about it for similarities. 

Differences wise, there’s quite a few.

First, there’s no more micro HDMI port at the top, instead it’s just the single USB-C port for both video out and charging, which is fine – this works with docks nicely.

The big change is of course the screen, the Portal has a 7” 1080p 120hz OLED screen with over 800 nits brightness and it’s just beautiful whereas the Odin 2’s screen is a 6” 1080p 60hz IPS display.

Design and material wise, they’re massively different as well. Let’s take a tour.

Sticks

The sticks on the Portal are taller than the Odin 2’s by a large margin, gives it a much wider range of motion and helps when playing more modern games through streaming or even just emulation wise, it’s a nice change.

AYN will have larger stick caps available as well that should help transform these sticks even more, but they still aren’t full sized sticks.

They are more similar to Anbernic’s RG406H in height and feel than a modern controller stick.

So not as small as the Odin 2’s, but not as big as an Xbox controller for example, I’d say they’re right in the middle. On my end, I’d love to see full sized sticks, but I’ve been having a good time using these either way, it’s a nice change.

Dpad

My favorite change is the dpad.

The Portal’s dpad doesn’t stick out as much as the Odin 2’s did, it’s also bigger by a slight amount and looser feeling.

Now, AYN and Retroid have the same type of dpad style and we’ve seen this for a lot of models, but this is my favorite iteration of the dpad so far.

Larger, looser, still very accurate, this is a fantastic dpad and it’s awesome to see.

I did a longer livestream when I received the Portal and tested the dpad out quite a bit, and found that it was great in each situation of platformer, pokemon and fighting games. 

Buttons

My second favorite change to the controls is the buttons.

Not only did they make the buttons larger, but through that, they brought them closer together too thanks to the new size.

These new buttons are more flat than the rounded Odin 2’s are, and have a slightly more muted sound to them, but have the same feel as the Odin 2’s when pushed down. 

Shoulders & Triggers

Third favorite change to the controls because honestly, all of the controls got updated here and for the better, but it’s the shoulders and triggers.

Both got an update with textures on them to help make them more grippy.

On the Odin 2, the shoulders are more of a mouse click style, whereas here on the Portal, they’re slightly more muted and have more travel to them.

It doesn’t matter where I push on the shoulder buttons, they do their function as well, so no dead spots which is great as these shoulders are much larger than the Odin 2’s.

Moving onto triggers, and same idea here, the triggers are much larger than the Odin 2’s, and also still have great ranges of use with no real deadzone issue when pushing the triggers down.

They feel and play fantastic in different uses like racing games or just shooters. 

Overall, just looking at controls alone, really the only improvement I would point to is moving to a full sized stick at some point otherwise this is as close to perfect as you can get for a handheld’s controls.

Comfort

From controls, let’s talk about overall comfort here. The Odin 2 is more compact, and slightly bigger grips on the sides which contour to my hands nicely. I’ve always said the Odin 2 is very comfortable, and that opinion hasn’t changed a year later.

However, the controls on the Odin 2 aren’t offset with the dpad and right stick being right below and not offset at all and while it was never a personal issue of mine, I know a lot of people had problems with hitting the right stick with their thumbs because of that.

On the Portal, the grips aren’t as pronounced on the back as they are on the Odin 2, and in practice, I didn’t find it to be a concern as it was still comfortable to me.

The controls are offset on the Portal, leading to better positions for your thumb and while my right thumb will occasionally touch the top right of the right stick, it wasn’t enough to be a concern and should solve that problem for those that had it. 

Plastic

My biggest concern with the comfort is the slippery plastic.

I found it tough to maintain a good grip holding the device when it wasn’t resting on a table or my hands weren’t. Lying down, or sitting and holding the device in the air, and I can feel the device slipping out of my hands due to the plastic, it’s not grippy at all.

AYN is selling a grip for $15 US dollars, which depending on the feel and material of it, should hopefully fix this, but I never like to look at grips as a fix for a design flaw.

This part is a decent negative to me in getting comfortable with the device, and while ergonomically I think the Portal is great, the slippery part has been tough to get used to and at this point, I’m hoping the grip fixes it.

Let’s conclude the tour part with a continued note on the plastic.

Viewers of my livestream saw me share the back of the Portal a few times throughout the stream as it is quite a fingerprint magnet.

Smudges, fingerprints, all of it are visible on the plastic and is another area that I think AYN should improve on in the future as Retroid seems to have figured this out with their lineup.

Screen

At this point, let’s talk about the screen.

I mentioned it before, but this is a 7” 1080p 120hz OLED panel and there’s absolutely no comparison to the Odin 2, it’s a massive upgrade.

At launch, the Odin 2’s panel was decent, but not great.

Fans, like myself, were enamored with the performance and the rest of the device and sort of made do with the screen as it was.

Personally, at launch and using it for months, I was quite happy with it and it was only after moving on from the device and going back to it that you started to see those flaws. Other panels started getting better and the Odin 2’s started looking dated. 

No Ghosting

On the Portal vs. Odin 2 front, there’s no visible ghosting like the Odin 2 has, and it’s a tough measure without expensive tools, but the responsiveness of the Portal on the input lag and delay front is much lower than the Odin 2’s is thanks to the 120hz display.

To put it simply, if you have a problem with input delay or responsiveness on the Odin 2, the Portal solves it.

There is a toggle through the swipe down menu that lets you go from 60hz to 120hz as by default, it’s set to 60hz when you unbox it, but there’s no scenario that I can ever think of where I will ever be changing it to 60hz.

The 120hz is beautiful, and fantastic on this handheld and if you’re going to drop it to 60hz, for shame. 

Beautiful OLED

The screen itself, being OLED, is gorgeous.

We are eating well this year with OLED devices, the RG556, Retroid Pocket Mini and 5, Odin 2 Portal and so on, it’s a nice year for OLED handhelds.

I can’t say that I’m noticing anything unusual on the display itself, like for example the Ayaneo Pocket Air had very saturated reds, whereas to my eyes, the Odin 2 Portal’s screen is pretty close to accurate as I can tell.

I think if you’re going to nitpick OLED display panels in this hobby at this point, you’ll have a bad time no matter what, and I’d take a slightly less accurate OLED than the budget IPS displays we’ve been seeing lately, so with that, and my eyes, OLED great, me likey OLED.

Software

Let’s jump over into the software now and talk about the minor differences and additions. On top of adding the 60hz to 120hz toggle, AYN also updated the joystick LED options.

You can now change the colors separately for the sticks, the brightness, saturation and more and you have a whole wheel of colors to choose from.

It’s a nice addition, and a welcome one. Other than that, no visible other difference that I can tell.

I was hoping to see the OdinTools functionality baked into the software of being able to set your performance mode, fan mode, and even control mode on a per app basis, but no such luck.

The only other big difference software wise is the 120hz display just makes everything silky smooth to use and that’s a great thing.

Battery

On the battery front, the Odin 2 Portal is insane. Like, absolutely crazy numbers.

Looking at sleep drain, and it’s slightly above average at 6% drain while sleeping over a 24 hour period, which is great, Android is awesome.

Then, all of my tests are 100% to 0% battery drain, WiFi on, Bluetooth off, 100% brightness, 10% audio and 120hz is of course on.

For Game Boy Advance, I got a whopping 14 hours of battery life using the standard profile with quiet fan.

For GameCube and PS2, at a 3x resolution, with performance mode and quiet fan, it was a massive 10 hours of battery life and lastly for Switch and Android games like Honkai Star Rail and so on, with high performance and smart fan, it was 450 minutes or 7 and a half hours. These are fantastic numbers for battery life. 

Heat

Alright, let’s talk sound now, from fan noise to speakers and the like.

On the fan and I suppose heat front, most all of my testing was in performance mode with the fan on smart and at no point did I find the Portal to get hot.

I did lots of testing, especially for the battery tests and while sometimes the grip part of the device would get warm, it was never hot or uncomfortable.

It was a slight warmth, rather than a TrimUI Brick warm. Even doing my 7 hour Switch battery test, it got warm, but never hot. I wasn’t able to get it to a high temperature during any use. 

Fan

The fan is a different scenario, I wasn’t able to pin it down, but there’s lots of times where the fan was acting as a fan – you rarely hear it, there’s air being pushed out and it’s doing its job.

But then I’d run into scenarios where there was a coil whine sound or a pitched whine sound, not super loud, but enough to annoy and it would bug me.

I experienced the same on my Odin 2 Mini when I was playing Nintendo DS on it with fast forward on – it’s super specific I know, but there must be a certain speed of the fan where it starts making that sound.

It definitely bugged me.

For the most part, the fan is inaudible and fine, and I can’t recall it ever going into super speed mode during my testing, which is a good thing.

Audio

Here’s my thoughts.

The buttons and so on are pretty muted, they aren’t Retroid Pocket loud, and have more muted clicks and such, which should be a good thing for a lot of people. 

The speakers, however, are a different story.

My first issue is the minimum volume is just too loud, and I’m hoping it’s something they can adjust because it’s just too loud at minimum.

The second concern is the actual speaker quality. Let me clarify – to me, and my ears, it sounds fine and I don’t have an issue with it like I did on the Retroid Pocket 5 for example. But it does sound wildly different compared to the Odin 2, let’s have a listen to both. 

So it’s different, and while it’s very far away from me saying they’re bad, I think this will likely be a divisive topic for people. 

Performance

At this point, we can jump into performance and games.

Not going to spend a lot of time here as the performance is well documented as this is the third Odin 2, there’s an Odin 2, Odin 2 Mini and now the Portal, so if you need to see how things run, there’s tons of videos and information out there.

I actually want to specifically look at streaming first because that will be my use case and I think it nails it.

Most of my testing this week was streaming through Artemis with Apollo as the backend, PXPlay for PS5 and XBPlay for XBOX both cloud and local streaming from my actual Xbox. 

Streaming

Going to actually use my Ally X as a comparison point since I find it to be fantastic for streaming, and so we can do some side by side here for Artemis and Moonlight.

Depending on the game and the scenario, I’ve seen between 5-10 ms decoding time on the Odin 2 Portal, which is great.

On my livestream, it was slightly higher than 10 ms and I assume because I was using my PC for the livestream and OBS and everything, but in my personal tests, typically under 10ms and Artemis has a feature called Warp Drive to get it sub 5ms or at 5ms as well, it’s pretty awesome.

Same sort of scenario and idea on the PS5 and Xbox.

Overall, if you’re looking for a G Cloud 2 type device, this is everything you want for that and yes, GeForce Now also works and controls are recognized.

Then we have the usual emulation and Android games tests, and just like the previous Odin’s, the world is your oyster here.

A year later, the Odin series is still the one’s to beat for compatibility and performance across everything on Android and it’s no different with the Portal.

120hz is Great

But I do want to point out something about the 120hz screen – I mentioned it before, but the responsiveness can’t be understated.

It’s a fantastic, crazy difference between this handheld and others when it comes to input delay and just how quickly you can do input, it’s near instant.

I had an absolute blast with it and my normal Super Mario World tests because it just felt so responsive in a way that you don’t normally see. 

Black Frame Insertion

Another potential benefit of the 120hz display is something called black frame insertion, which you can toggle on in the newest builds of RetroArch.

However, I tested this across multiple cores and systems, and it creates a pulsating black frame across the entire picture that you might not see if you’re susceptible to it, and that’s great because you can enjoy the benefit, but for me, it caused headaches and nausea.

I tried a bunch of combinations of settings and things to see if I could get it to not do that, but no such luck.

I’m filing this under experimental because it is, but this one really got to me in a bad way – worth you trying for yourself to see if you like it or not.

The dpad makes it fantastic for older retro games, since I like playing Pokemon quite a bit, and I find that to be comfortable to use and the 7” screen makes DS screens easy to scale and look good.

PlayStation 2 Performance

PlayStation 2 will have the usual problem games that it always has, but you can upscale past that 3x in some scenarios to let you dock this to a 4K TV and have that experience. But generally, 3x for 1080p is a given on this device and easily.

GameCube follows that exact same scenario, and if it wasn’t for Dolphin on Android not having Retro Achievements support, I would likely be playing a lot of my GameCube on this device as well. It just feels awesome and smooth and the screen is fantastic for the bright colored gamecube games.

Switch Performance

Switch emulation is last, and not much to really say here, you have a ton of custom drivers to use, lots of compatibility and Switch emulation is hit and miss as usual, but you’d have the best time playing them on this device compared to any other. 

Wrap Up vs. Odin 2

This is a long review, let’s start to wrap things up here with some final thoughts. 

In the case of should you buy an Odin 2 or Odin 2 Portal, the answer is simple, an Odin 2 Portal. However, I would suggest not buying the Base model.

128GB of storage is too small, quite literally, Android games like Honkai Star Rail, Genshin and so on, are at least 20GB each, and if you want to do HD textures for GameCube or PS2 and so son, you’ll hit the 128GB cap really quickly and no, you can’t move this stuff to an SD card.

I would suggest the Odin 2 Portal Pro at $399 USD instead, but it’s your money. In either event, Base, or Pro, the Portal is a better purchase in every single way over the Odin 2.

vs. Retroid Pocket 5

In the case of Retroid Pocket 5 vs. Odin 2 Portal, I actually plan on doing a dedicated video for this, so I’ll make a simple statement here.

Do you want a larger Retroid Pocket 5 with the sticks in the right place and no ergonomic issues? You’ll pay for it, but you’ll get that and a lot more.

There’s a lot of nuance to this question, but I think if you’re even asking this question, you can afford both and in that case, unless you have a size requirement, grab the Portal. 

Which model to buy?

And lastly, in the case of you’re already sold, which model do you buy and the answer is the Pro model.

The RAM ended up being a non-issue on the Odin 2, even 8GB was enough for any emulation and a lot of Winlator uses too, however, the 128GB internal storage is just too small nowadays and so my suggestion is the Pro 12GB/512GB model to cover the best of all worlds.

The Max is too expensive and unnecessary, save your money with the Pro. 

Final Thoughts

As some final thoughts here, overall, I’m impressed.

I wasn’t expecting much out of this device, I’ve said it many times over the past few months that this was never really on my radar despite preordering it and I didn’t expect to like this as much as I do.

I’m still working on where this might fit into my life, especially with how many new x86 handhelds are coming this year that are OLED, 120hz and so on, but they will easily be double this price and so a whole year later, the Odin 2 still has a niche completely carved out only for them.

3 thoughts on “AYN Odin 2 Portal Review”

  1. I’ve heard that the battery deteriorates and inflates on the Odin 2 after a few months, and the portal didn’t have any noticeable improvement on that part.
    So i wonder if it’s possible to open the device and change the battery if it happens?

    My handheld choice mostly depends on it’s durability and reparability, i don’t plan to buy a new one for the next 3 or 5 years.

    Reply

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