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I feel like at this point the only ones worth getting are the RG350M or the Retroid Pocket 2. The RG350M is the absolute best of the lot for ergonomics and build quality, but it's significantly weaker than most other releases this year (although it handles everything up through PSOne just fine, a couple problem games per system aside), while the Retroid Pocket 2 is significantly more powerful but doesn't QUITE match the RG350M for controls. There's also an RG351 on the way, but nobody knows when it's coming out and since it's based on the Odroid / RK2020 chipset, it's going to still be weaker than the Retroid Pocket 2. Personally I'm happy with my RG350M, it does all the systems I want it to do well and I'm a real stickler for how a device feels, but I don't feel like you could go wrong with either device at this point.
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Aug 31, 2020 19:21
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MarcusSA posted:The RP2 looks to be a real winner at $90 shipped. It absolutely is, but the build quality is fantastic and the general design and layout is pretty much perfect. How much that matters is gonna vary from person to person, but it's not nothing.
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Aug 31, 2020 21:52
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obi_ant posted:A user said it was probably drop and play. It would be great if it were because there are one too many steps for some of the home brew on my n3ds. The n3DS is an outlier, most things work just fine with standard roms.
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Sep 15, 2020 03:46
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Pretty good posted:Is there anything that fulfils all of the following: The RG350M hits all of those, with the exception of a couple particularly difficult PS1 games (Bloody Roar 2, for example).
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Sep 22, 2020 17:04
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Pretty good posted:The M has the bad dpad position problem though.  The M has the same dpad position as the P. Only the original RG350 had the flipped orientation.
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Sep 22, 2020 17:22
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The RG350P/M really are fantastic devices. Yeah, they're a little slow by comparison to the newest things out there, but what they can run they run very well, and the quality of the buttons and overall construction is more important than I think some people give it credit for.
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Sep 22, 2020 19:27
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Pretty good posted:Brain fart, guess I was thinking of the 350. The only real drawback for the RG350M is the price for how powerful it is. It'll run everything up to PSOne just fine, but that's its absolute limit, and a few games like Yoshi's Island and Tekken 3 still challenge it. The P is cheaper and has the same button layout of the M, but the screen is lower resolution (you CAN do an aftermarket replacement if you really want to, but at that point you might as well just get the M from the beginning). The original RG350 is kind of pointless at this point IMO, and only makes sense to get if you find an incredible deal on it and are willing to put up with the dpad positioning. The 351p is looking... iffy. I've seen reports of input lag and general bugginess, and the screen is basically only good for GBA emulation.
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Sep 23, 2020 18:53
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Weedle posted:note also that retroarch lets you bind controls to the analog sticks even if the game you're running doesn't support them natively, so you can create your own dual stick control schemes and for some games it actually works great. king's field and armored core are way more playable this way If King's Field doesn't feel like you're controlling a human by yelling commands down a hallway then you're not playing King's Field. But yeah, the second stick has more utility than it initially seems if you're into custom layouts or playing native ports, but I just can't deal with the lower-res 3:2 screens on the 351P and M, and after having my RG350M for almost a year I can still count the number of times I've actually used the right stick on two hands.
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Jun 9, 2021 09:19
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The United States posted:Looks like the Trimui got improved and price dropped, which makes it competitive for an ultra tiny ultra slim portable in the $50~ category I've had this for a bit over a week and yeah, the early reviews really don't convey how good it is now. It's still a small, cheap, weak device, but it's amazing for handheld games up through the GBA and it absolutely disappears in a pocket.
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Jul 12, 2021 22:07
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I love how the first line of that article is "ANBERNIC are struggling to find their mojo recently" when their most recent release is the RG351V which by all accounts has been a big success, and when the last two generations of devices have essentially been defined by Anbernic releases.
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Jul 14, 2021 00:21
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LODGE NORTH posted:I also kinda hate when people say “if I’m paying for it, it should just work out of the box” when these things, the whole idea of them, is that they may involve some tinkering *at best* I agree with the rest, but I think it's fair to say the majority of these that get sold are run on their stock firmware with the included games. Hobbyists have certainly made them take off in the last couple years, but their primary markets are still mainland China, people impulse shopping for a cheap and simple way to play some retro games, and people looking for a gift.
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Jul 14, 2021 02:17
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I get that the touchpads are supposed to work for mouse-only games, but this thing has a touchscreen and between that + mouse emulation on the joysticks it feels like there were already enough options to cover mouse input when needed without kneecapping controller input (which people are going to be using the vast majority of the time on this thing) in the process.
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Jul 16, 2021 15:06
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The specs seem worse than the Steam Deck, but if you're primarily here for emulation then that may or may not matter as much, the $400 Steam Deck has some pretty big limitations, the Steam Deck is a hell of a lot chunkier with controls less obviously suited to emulation, and it will almost certainly get far worse battery life than this will. I don't think the comparison between the two is as clear-cut as it might look on paper when you take their respective goals into account.
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Aug 19, 2021 02:41
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I don't need to have multiple devices that I'm just gonna wind up playing Aria of Sorrow and Gunstar Heroes on again for the 50th time each, but I want to have multiple devices that I'm just gonna wind up playing Aria of Sorrow and Gunstar Heroes on again for the 50th time each.
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Sep 20, 2021 03:30
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These days a cheap low-spec PC will handle Saturn emulation just fine, and while it was garbage for a very long time accuracy has significantly increased in the last few years, to the point where I'd say it's now significantly less of a question mark than N64 or PS2 emulation.JazzFlight posted:Yeah, I'd have to say my Powkiddy A66 (previously named Trimui S) is the same size as a Game Boy Micro and it is the perfect tiny cheap emulation device (after updating the firmware and adding MinUI). Here's a shot I found for size comparison: The A66/TrimUI really is a hell of a device with the latest updates. It's just big enough to be playable while being small enough to completely disappear in a pocket, and it feels way more solid than just about anything else Powkiddy puts their name on.
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Sep 22, 2021 03:28
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GetDunked posted:I got my 351MP in the mail. It's a gorgeous little device! I hear that 351elec doesn't work with it though? Are they in the process of developing that? They don't have any of 'em in yet, but they're in the mail and they fully plan to support it.
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Sep 24, 2021 17:51
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A lot of reviews seem to be dumping on the RG351MP for basically being yet another RK3326 device, but there really aren't many 4:3 ones (it's basically just this, the RG351V, and the Gameforce Chi as far as I can tell), this seems to be the best of the lot, and while it does seem overpriced compared to its processing power, I feel like there's something to be said for these smaller Linux-based devices. I'm as interested in the Ayn Odin or the RG552 as anyone, but Android comes with its own host of issues and they're both going to be quite a bit chunkier. The 351MP seems like the last, best one that'll still reasonably fit into a pocket and boot in under a minute.
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Sep 29, 2021 11:12
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Froist posted:I agree on your last sentence completely, it does feel like the best/most premium of the RK3326 devices. I think the trouble is most people passing judgement on it have already got a similar device (myself included, doubly so) and it’s not worth the cost to sidegrade. If I was entering the market now it’s absolutely the model I’d go for. I completely agree it's not worth a sidegrade (I don't think any of them are, really). My point is more that I think the people saying "this sucks, get an Odin or a Steam Deck" are missing the appeal of smaller devices like this in the first place. I got into all this because I wanted a decent portable handheld that I could actually carry in a pocket unlike the Switch, so the fact that these things are slowly ballooning back up to the Switch's size makes them a hell of a lot less appealing to me. I'm glad more powerful devices are coming, but I'm also glad we finally have an ultimate version of the current gen. Taki Udon is hinting that there might be an internal upgrade for the Retroid Pocket 2 available that'll make it more powerful while retaining the same small footprint, which could be great, except... well, it's Taki Udon, and it's the Retroid Pocket 2, so I'm taking that with a whole shaker of salt.
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Sep 29, 2021 13:15
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Ever since the Adam image came out I've been using my RG350M more than my 351V. There's just something really nice about how fast the menus are to navigate, and I've always preferred the feel of the 350M to the 351V.
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Oct 10, 2021 17:33
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Meanwhile, Adam 1.3 came out for everyone on the previous generation of Anbernic devices.
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Oct 17, 2021 20:54
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I think it's also worth pointing out that the 350M, 351V and 351MP all look just fine for GBA. It's not pixel-perfect scaling, but they're all powerful enough to be able to pre-scale the image and then filter that, which results in nice chunky pixels that are still properly interpolated and don't shimmer. And while you don't get as big a GBA picture with them as you do with the 351P or M, you still get a bigger picture than an actual GBA would give you. Basically, I think the 640x480 displays handle GBA content better than the 480x320 displays handle standard 4:3 content.
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Oct 26, 2021 13:49
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evilmiera posted:Trying out the Anbernic for a bit more and noticing some of the sound is garbled or tinny at times. I'm not sure if its an emulator issue or a sound chip one though. Anyone else had a similar problem? I'm running ArkOS and Retroarch and I've mostly tried out SNES and GBA games so far. What cores are you using? Some are better than others (snes9x-2005 has really bad sound, for example).
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Nov 6, 2021 02:35
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evilmiera posted:Yeah, its only got the SNES9X and 2010 ones. I'll see if adding a few ones helps there. But I was noticing some issues on the GBA one as well, where it was just set to auto. I'll see about fiddling with that as well, though. SNES9X 2010 when possible, and 2005 Plus or Supafaust when not. For GBA, mGBA is ideal. Make sure run ahead is disabled, it's not quite fast enough to work with that.
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Nov 6, 2021 04:12
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MarcusSA posted:Well $50 more and you can get the steam deck which absolutely would. The Steam Deck is definitely interesting, but it's also bigger in every dimension than the original Atari Lynx.
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Nov 9, 2021 05:52
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MarcusSA posted:We don’t have them yet obviously but the increased size might not be such a bad thing especially for longer play times. And that's fair but I feel like a big reason a lot of people got into this market in the first place was because these devices are small and pocketable, or at least slim enough to slip into a laptop bag's side sleeve.
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Nov 9, 2021 06:12
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oh wow i'm shocked that the new retroid has great specs undermined by needlessly lovely design and material choices
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Dec 2, 2021 06:52
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The RG552 seems to be what I was worried about from the initial leaks: it's definitely more powerful than the RG351 series, but not to the degree that more systems are consistently playable. PSP, Dreamcast and N64 have less issues but still have enough to not be worth buying the system for, and GameCube / PS2 / Saturn is firmly in "neat to mess around with, but consider it a bonus" territory. Honestly, the RK3326 lineup was about as far as these things were going to be able to go without a significant jump in power.
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Dec 9, 2021 22:32
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The United States posted:It may not be as thin as the Trimui/A66, but I gather it wins the "tiny gameboy micro sized device with a way too tiny screen" category simply due to using the Funkey OS. I just hate the perfectly square screen. Pretty much nothing fits that properly.
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Jan 10, 2022 22:39
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The United States posted:The new meta is installing a local webserver with built in javascript emulators to serve up roms in a browser to get around iPhone/Xbox restrictions I guess A few days late, but none of those are actually square. The Gameboys are close but still wider than they are tall, and the Game Gear actually had a standard 4:3 screen, just with wider-than-usual pixels.
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Jan 14, 2022 14:58
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Cory Parsnipson posted:drat why old hardware gotta be so weird Rectangular pixels were quite common back in the day, which is why NES and SNES games in particular can be a bit of a pain to get looking just right on modern displays.
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Jan 15, 2022 02:47
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Chumbawumba4ever97 posted:That's a really good idea and I am glad you said it because I ended up hating the Adam CFW and it would have sucked having to go back. The appeal of Adam is that it's stable, incredibly simple to use, fast to navigate your games and make them look decent in the process, and comes with all the emulators set up to look and run their best out of the box (as opposed to being stretched bilinear-filtered messes by default). If having 20 system apps on an RG350 is important to you (for what?), it's clearly not the image for you, but most people who buy these things see tinkering as a necessary evil, not a core part of the fun, so the Adam image gets them to the main event faster.
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Jan 21, 2022 16:29
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MarcusSA posted:So my steam deck will deffo be here before my Odin and I'm for sure not regretting getting it now, This is why I continue to insist that there's more to these devices than impressive pre-release specs. "Why would you buy [weak but proven handheld] when [new thing promising the moon for cheap] is coming out" is a refrain I've heard time and time again, and it's amazing how many times it's just demonstrated why the weak-but-proven handheld is proven.
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Apr 13, 2022 00:09
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:Manufacturers haven’t topped the rg280v yet I think the RG351MP and the Miyoo Mini are both better than it. They're my two favorite emulation handhelds, actually... the more powerful ones all make a few too many compromises in comfort, build quality, interface or general wonkiness (like the Odin's aforementioned 61hz screen) to be worth their higher asking prices for me. I'd love to have good portable N64, Dreamcast and PSP, but I'm willing to wait for a device that can do them right.
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Apr 13, 2022 09:03
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kirbysuperstar posted:A portable PlayStation Portable, you say now listen here
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Apr 13, 2022 16:38
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The Deck is also massive and complete overkill if you just wanna play Yoshi's Island on the go. It's portable, but the kind of portable you have to plan around.zzMisc posted:So, slaminger of TechToyTinker - the guy who does the TheRA custom firmware, which historically has often been the first cfw available on new Anbernic and other devices - put out a video defending the RG503: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnUINS3GRjg In the comments he also says Anbernic low-key helped him pay for his brother's funeral, which is honestly pretty drat cool of them. sethsez fucked around with this message at 13:02 on Apr 29, 2022 |
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Apr 29, 2022 12:59
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Valve Steam Deck posted:Seems that "we'll only give you advance access as long as you give us good reviews" is an arrangement that makes the company doing it look bad, first and foremost As far as I can tell the only person they've shut out is Taki, who's incredibly open about his close relationships with competing companies (whose products also happen to get superlative-laden reviews from him). Other reviewers have given Anbernic devices mediocre or bad reviews in the past and still appear to be getting review units from them just fine. It's ridiculous to expect a reviewer to be "literally objective" but it's reasonable to expect a reviewer to avoid exceedingly blatant conflicts of interest, and Taki really doesn't. sethsez fucked around with this message at 19:08 on May 25, 2022 |
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May 25, 2022 18:59
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Just got my Miyoo Mini and drat, it's really nice with MiniUI. Also more comfortable to use than I was expecting.
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Jun 2, 2022 01:29
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Lifepuzzler posted:I just ordered one a few days ago, I'm looking forward to it. It seems like the perfect little pocket device for everything up to the 16-bit era. Or maybe even a little further, if the review videos are to be believed. I can confirm that PSOne games also play pretty much perfectly.
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Jun 2, 2022 12:47
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Walla posted:20 extra dollars and not having to deal with DHL is a bargain. Yeah, people like to say "order from AliExpress, it's so much cheaper" but you really can't argue with the speed and quality of Amazon's shipping, and if something equivalent is even available from an AliExpress store it tends to cost more. Also much easier to deal with if there's an issue.
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Jun 3, 2022 14:00
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uiruki posted:In the case of Taki I’d take it more in the context of his status as the de facto English language spokesperson for Retroid and AYN at this point. I don’t think it’s deliberate but he does seem to be getting quite close to the manufacturing side and combined with English being his second language I think he’s being a bit too direct at times. Yeah, Retro Dodo's just dumb but Taki's clearly advertising Ayn and Retroid products more than he's reviewing them at this point.
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Jun 6, 2022 18:58
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