Go to hell, Ayaneo
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why, what did they do?
I feel like AAs are way better for this sort of thing. I already have rechargeable AAs (check out Eneloops and the offbrand discount varieties) but whatever bespoke lithium ion one might use will be vastly more annoying to replace (if even feasible) when it inevitably loses capacity. Not to mention how many devices like this end up with battery defects of some variety or another. Give me something replaceable and serviceable imo
curious what this actually puts out. wonder if it’s like a 1080p signal. can’t imagine they are sending a native signal out, i don’t think most modern displays would take it without scaling
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I’ll never forgive them for ignoring all my emails and Discord support posts. They only care if you’re buying their newest and greatest, get fucked if you want help on anything older.
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Okay, yeah, so I got my Retroid Pocket 5 thingy and I’m pretty impressed with it so far. Thing can play Wii U games without much of a hitch, which is wild. Got it loaded up to probably primarily serve as a portable PS2 Atlus RPG machine
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Awwww hell yeah
I bet it handles 3DS pretty well too, should give Soul Hackers a run
Neo Geo Pocket…clone? New shell?
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If only he released the schematics for that thumbstick and the switches inside 
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Messed with my Anbernic Cube some this morning and dang…it’s alright, it’s fine, but those tiny joysticks have extremely short throw and heavily favor cardinal inputs. It kinda varies with the emulator (it feels smoother playing PS2 games in AetherPSX2 than Dreamcast via Retroarch, for whatever reason), but when it’s in full gear it’s pretty annoying.
Rather than butt my head against the tiny handheld I relented and decided to try PS2 emulation on my Steam Deck again.
I’ve tried EmuDeck before and found it…too messy? Cluttered? I also just don’t really care for Emulation Station. Too many memories of setting up RetroPie, again and again…
Anyway, I’m running the app image through Steam and it seems to work pretty well. I can’t figure out why it won’t generate save states, maybe I can map them to one of the back paddles (currently using L4 to toggle full screen so I can mess with settings). Only have R&C3 downloaded so far but…yeah, runs great. No real need to push games beyond 2x, maybe 2.5x to get a little closer to the Deck’s resolution.
I’ll have to see if there are more standalone emulators I can load this way, or just slap Retroarch in there and call it a day.
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lcl up there for new favourite guy
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oh that would be very nice. please put one in my steam deck (no, it probably wouldn’t fit)
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Due to the anxiety of, well, Current Events, I panic/stress/godpleasegrantmedopamine bought a 35XXSP and 40XXV.
Both run the same chipset, so they’re both equally as capable. Basically the same guts, but wildly different form factor and…ethos isn’t the word. I don’t know.
Anyway!
40XXV: Pretty nice. Really bright, sharp, clear big screen. Buttons and D-Pad have a squishiness to them that feels about right. While it’s impractical for a number of games, I shocked how well some Dreamcast games run on this hardware.
The one con I have feels like a long-term concern (on what is, admittedly, disposable hardware…or was! Shit might be worth its weight in gold before long), but: I’ve noticed that if I press L2 or R2 with anything other than a light press, you can actually see the button…impinge on the screen? Like a little distortion that appears and disappears from it physically making contact. Maybe there’s a way to, uh, mod this out. Shove a little foam in there or something.
Anyway, it’s good, I like it. Coming from using the RG35XX as my main Anbernic for a while, it feels good to hold something that doesn’t make my hands feel like they’re on fire after an hour. “Cozy” in a true sense.
35XXSP: What a weird thing. I can’t really explain this one. The pros I just listed for the 40XXV are Real and Legitimate to me - I’m not so old and decrepit that I struggle with tiny screens, it’s just…why struggle even a little bit, y’know? Though the hand feel of the 35XX can be a bit much!
So why is it I keep coming back to this one? With its hard clicky D-Pad and buttons, with the screen that is inexplicably washed out in MuOS (it’s apparently a known thing, they just…don’t fix it, I guess).
Part of it is probably nostalgia (the SP was my baby through high school…so many times I could have established better physical health, but I played Sapphire instead…so many times I could have learned a little more algebra…but I played Astro Boy instead…). But I think the SP might just be the perfect handheld form factor?
Like, yeah, you can sorta short-long press the power button on some of these things and put the handheld to sleep, that’s cool, that’s fine. But it ain’t “oh shit phone’s ringing, let me snap this fucker closed.” That’s good! That’s essential! We regressed as a society when we eliminated the satisfying thunk, the literal closure, from our lives (I guess you can still do it with a laptop, but that’s…dangerous).
One thing I keep seeing on Xiaohongshu is how many users are just using classy, late era Sony Ericsson flip phones and stuff and I keep thinking “yes god yes please let’s do that again.” Like I guess we’ve got folding phones now but that’s…that not the same!
Okay, in short - both are good. 40XXV is probably better for folks who are, ugh I’ll type this I’m sorry, “as retro as the games they play,” because I think the form factor is kinder and more accommodating. That screen is super nice!!
But that 35XXSP…there’s something to it…
Anbernic is supposedly working on a new SP that uses the larger GBA-scaled screen from their recent GBA clone, so that could be a happy medium between these two.
And part of me is fighting the urge to get the CubeXX…“don’t you have the more powerful Cube already” yes but…Android is complicated…
I dunno, the Cube is super comfortable and it’s so goddamn good for vertical shooters but I don’t need another one of these. Not after this. Not now.
Anbernic…
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If you’re wondering what I’m doing with two functionally identical handhelds simultaneously:
I’m playing Gameboy Picross on the 35XXSP and the Super Famicom Picross on the 40XXV.
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@Grandpa my pursuit of minui aesthetics at any cost has become all-consuming
emulationstation
open-ps2-loader, usbloadergx
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MinUI is so slick, I dunno how people can stomach the weird Rolodex spinning logos and videos and stuff.
Even with the box art there it’s still extremely tasteful!
I’m glad MuOS has some MinUI ripoff skins but lets you tweak stuff a bit more on the Retroarch side of things (and you don’t have to download extra emulators to make it work).
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was inclined to leave off boxart altogether since it’s another fiddly thing to bother with but both the ps2 and wii loaders let you zoom and spin them around which is kind of charming, and i’m stuck with smaller font size + big margins anyway, at least without setting up their buildchains which is a bridge too far
the analogeos-lite style is less appealing on the tube, but a want for the smooth pablum of monochrome pills and friendly round text on boot has sunk deep into my brain. these console loaders and their contemporary themes have such an of-their-era homebrew vibe
next stop is an ES-DE theme for the pc n android stuff i suppose 
edit: and done
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I had one last dumbass panic and got a cheap Cube XX off AliExpress before the slowly lowering (then raising, then lowering, then raising, then lowering) Indiana Jones temple door comes crashing down on this sort of thing.
This…is a good one. “Grandpa don’t you have a Cube” yes I have a regular Cube I know I know I know. I know. But goddamn do I hate the Android file system, trying to figure out what’s on board storage and what’s mounted storage and what’s simulated mounted storage…it’s bad. That extra power and touch screen are nice, yes, but it’s just so damn cumbersome.
So the Cube XX is just another one of these things, as the core guts go, but with a big 720x720 screen, dual analog sticks, better triggers, a disc style d-pad. It’s still pretty small, but it feels really good in my mangled old mitts.
You gotta do some tooling around with screen settings to make the best of it, at least using MuOS. I’m not sure what sorta stretching is going on with GB/GBC games (it’s there, you can see it if you look for it, but at first glance it’s not noticeable), but by default it fills the screen and looks pretty good. Same goes for NGPC, with the added bonus of being able to map D-Pad controls to the analog stick (it’s no Click Stick, nothing ever will be, but given the screen aspect ratio and that I’m not gonna mod my dang NGPC, good enough!!). Pico-8 is also really good for filling the entire screen, and setting that up was easier than I thought it would be (honestly the hardest part was making a dummy cart file for the Splore app - I wound up just downloading one, my computer kept trying to make it into a text file).
GBA is a little weird since it’s wider. MuOS defaults to slapping the entirety of the GBA screen to the top and putting a fat GBA logo down in the bottom. It looks…really bad, so I managed to hunt down some of the overlays that Anbernic uses in their stock firmware and moving the video a little to get this.
4:3 stuff also gets a little tricky. Older consoles that had those huge overscan dead zones can easily be blown up to 8:7 and not lose much. But with PSOne you start losing side detail, so I haven’t found much of a solution for that. For now I’m sorta doing this, which…look it’s tacky but it works, it works (overlay + CRT geometry/scanline shader).
Dreamcast is still sorta hit or miss. It’s nice to play Soul Calibur, even if the audio crackles now and then.
Anyway, as a final rundown of these things (I’m not gonna get another, not if I gotta fight in The Water Wars or something in the next few months):
35XX: Nice but too small, made my hands cramp, gave it to a family friend.
35XXSP: Also small but perfect? It’s really good. I don’t think it’s just GBA SP nostalgia talking either, it’s got a real good feel to it. Love to snap that lid, baby.
40XXV: 35XX for folks who gotta rub that generic Walmart Icy Hot on their backs because they tried to pick up something the wrong way three days ago. Real nice big screen, nice feeling controls, weird pointless analog stick, maybe a design flaw with the shoulders where it might be poking the LCD.
Cube XX: For me this is Baby Bear’s bed…uh…baby. Nice high resolution screen, room to fiddle around, small but still ample enough not to cramp my hands.
Cube: I got this one for Christmas so it didn’t cost me anything but I still regret it just a touch, just a bit. Pretty capable, I need to try to get my configurations straight because it’s still probably good DS/3DS. But if you’re spending this much for power, it’s probably better to go for Retroid Pocket 5 or something. I don’t think I’ll ever find configuring Android for these things as anything other than miserable, and I’ve been using Android stuff for almost 20 years.
I’ll probably keep rotating these things…because I’m weird and fickle and love my options, love my toys, I guess.
You shouldn’t be like me, though, so: SP is great, maybe get that, 40XXV is good if you’re old, Cube XX is great if you’re looking for something in-between.
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I got a 35XXV last year and modified it a big but have always been a little jealous about the 40XXV. Given the current situation we are in, like you said, and that Anbernic had units available to ship from the US, I went ahead and ordered one at last. I can definitely gift my 35XX to someone.
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