Currently, we are in a golden-age of emulation handhelds. The market is being flooded with new machines, and gaming companies have seemingly thrown up their hands in defeat at the idea of protecting their older games from them. It feels similar to when new Pentium PC's were coming out seemingly every couple months with bigger and better chips and capabilities.
Like an obedient consumer-whore, I jumped onto many of these devices and always found something could have been done better. This is all very subjective, and people all have different requirements for what they believe to be a perfect device.
Here's a quick breakdown of the devices I've bought over the years:
• GCW Zero: A decent start for a kickstarter machine. Horribly terrible OS, and verry painful to put games in. Buttons felt cheap. Could do up to SNES, so not that powerful.
• Dingoo A320: A step-up from the GCW, and very pocketable. Could do up to arcade games fairly well. Horrible placement for the L / R buttons made fighting games horrible.
• RG351P: Could do up to PS1 well with some Dreamcast. Great quality build. Extremely pocketable. No WIFI!!! If you use retro-achievements, that's a dealbreaker. It had the wifi dongle, but it looked ridiculous sticking out of the top.
• RG351M: Same as above, but heavier and with wifi. This was my daily driver for a while. Still a tiny bit underpowered and unnecessarily heavy. Plastic is the way to go.
• AYN Odin: Powerful enough to do up to do almost up to GC and PS2. Feels great in the hands. Great battery life. Not pocketable at all, especially with the necessary case. Also running on a chip that's multiple years old. Playing android games feels a bit sluggish.
• AYANEO Geek 1S: Went all out to get a powerful handheld. Can run anything I can throw at it. Smaller and more powerful than a steam deck, but still feels huge. With the case, it takes up a huge amount of space in a bag, and the battery life isn't great. Very useful for long flights, but not a daily driver.
There are still some being released by Anbernic that are interesting. The RG35XX-H and RGB30 look nice, but they're not enough of an upgrade from the RG351M. The addition of Bluetooth is always nice. The Retroid Pocket 4 looks interesting, although it looks a little less pocketable. The slightly larger screen may be the sweet spot for RPG games on the go.
I'm sure there are other people who have their issues with what they have, or they've found the perfect device for what they need. Always happy to hear what people have to say.
Like an obedient consumer-whore, I jumped onto many of these devices and always found something could have been done better. This is all very subjective, and people all have different requirements for what they believe to be a perfect device.
Here's a quick breakdown of the devices I've bought over the years:
• GCW Zero: A decent start for a kickstarter machine. Horribly terrible OS, and verry painful to put games in. Buttons felt cheap. Could do up to SNES, so not that powerful.
• Dingoo A320: A step-up from the GCW, and very pocketable. Could do up to arcade games fairly well. Horrible placement for the L / R buttons made fighting games horrible.
• RG351P: Could do up to PS1 well with some Dreamcast. Great quality build. Extremely pocketable. No WIFI!!! If you use retro-achievements, that's a dealbreaker. It had the wifi dongle, but it looked ridiculous sticking out of the top.
• RG351M: Same as above, but heavier and with wifi. This was my daily driver for a while. Still a tiny bit underpowered and unnecessarily heavy. Plastic is the way to go.
• AYN Odin: Powerful enough to do up to do almost up to GC and PS2. Feels great in the hands. Great battery life. Not pocketable at all, especially with the necessary case. Also running on a chip that's multiple years old. Playing android games feels a bit sluggish.
• AYANEO Geek 1S: Went all out to get a powerful handheld. Can run anything I can throw at it. Smaller and more powerful than a steam deck, but still feels huge. With the case, it takes up a huge amount of space in a bag, and the battery life isn't great. Very useful for long flights, but not a daily driver.
There are still some being released by Anbernic that are interesting. The RG35XX-H and RGB30 look nice, but they're not enough of an upgrade from the RG351M. The addition of Bluetooth is always nice. The Retroid Pocket 4 looks interesting, although it looks a little less pocketable. The slightly larger screen may be the sweet spot for RPG games on the go.
I'm sure there are other people who have their issues with what they have, or they've found the perfect device for what they need. Always happy to hear what people have to say.
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