Retroid Pocket / Retroid Pocket 2+ Review
Mar. 10th, 2022 04:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroThe original Retroid Pocket cost about $100 and was a disappointment with a lot of work involved.
For one thing, it runs Android, not OpenDingux. That has advantages, like letting it run RetroArch and other popular emulators and letting it install apps from the Play Store; but it also has disadvantages like having a lot of apps that use touchscreen controls but not having a touchscreen. Android also means it can connect to my PC, but at least with the original hardware, you still needed to pop the SD card to put files on that.
This is the biggest of the devices I’ve tried in this go-round, with a decent handgrip, two analog sticks and both sets of shoulder buttons. The screen size is 3.5”, the same as the RG350 (though the device is large enough and the screen has a big enough bezel that I’m annoyed it isn’t larger). It has properly-functioning micro-HDMI out port and a headphone jack. The battery life is a perfectly fine 4-5 hours. It has a dedicated Menu button, but depending on what app you’re using that can have different effects.
The big issue is this is a heavily DIY system. It comes with an assortment of emulators pre-installed and just thrown up on the app list—and you’ll probably want to clear out some of them and use the Play Store to upgrade others, though you’ll either have to maneuver the joystick mouse pointer or plug in a USB mouse (it comes with a USB-A to USB-C adaptor) to manage that. You might also want a splitter so you can plug in a keyboard and type passwords and search terms. And unlike most of these, when you buy directly from the manufacturer this didn’t come with any games on it, so you’ll need to fill up the SD card with your own rom collection.
The big advantage this had over the RG350 at launch time was it’s got PPSSPP and Mupen64Plus FZ available, and could run PSP games decently and N64 games passably. I never got around to putting the time into really getting this set up; I don’t love RetroArch (it never auto-recognizes most of my rom collection and the UI doesn’t really work for me) and it just seemed too much effort when other devices worked well out of the box.
But then! They released the Retroid Pocket 2+, with the option that you could buy an upgrade kit (for $60, vs. another $100 for a new system) and swap out the guts of your old device with the new ones. This was appealing enough to be as a ridiculous project that I ordered one.
I'm glad I invited a friend who actually understands computer hardware to help. He brought a proper IFIXIT set, and we needed it--the screwdriver included in the upgrade kit was good, but the tweezers were shit and there was no pry-tool. Also, I don't actually know how to (for instance) remove and reattach a ribbon cable, which this requires you to do.
You need to replace the buttons. The upgrade kit comes with the buttons. The instructions don't tell you to replace the buttons.
They give you the materials to turn the old PCB into a standalone emulator you can plug into a TV. They didn't include instructions for this (we had to find a Youtube video), and we couldn't actually get it to turn on because we didn't have a manual for it, either. It turned out that when I ordered the upgrade kit, I should have ordered a touchscreen upgrade, too—that’s sold separately, and the standalone PCB won’t output video if there’s no screen attached.
So then I paid another $20 for a touchscreen upgrade and $10 for a carrying case while I was at it. If nothing else, that meant Ben and I spent another afternoon having a good time taking the device apart and using a hairdryer to melt the glue attaching the old screen. Then at the end I had a fully-functional Retroid Pocket 2+ and a fully-functional Retroid 1 PCB that I could hook up to my external monitor via HDMI. Was this a sensible use of money? Probably not. But it entertained Ben and I for two full afternoons and, as my wife noted, if we’d been hanging out in a sports bar or something we’d have spent the same amount of money and not had toys to show for it.
So now I have a Retroid Pocket 2+, which has a proper touchscreen and is running a faster set of hardware than the original.
As with the original, this runs fairly standard Android, which means that you really need that touchscreen to maneuver everything into place. I still ended up connecting a USB mouse and keyboard through the C to A adaptor the system originally came with.
A notable improvement over the original is that there are two options for front ends once you've got it set up, and you can eventually get it to boot up and just show you your games and emulators in big icons so you can jump right in. But this system is still far from being "pick up and play"--I spent an hour figuring out controller settings and downloading RetroArch cores and I still probably have another couple of hours getting settings just-so for every single emulator, fiddling with screen resolutions and refresh rates and getting it to recognize my roms. The RG350 just runs, y'know? This can ultimately produce better results--there's a lot of flexibility to what you can do with it and what you can install--but it is all about the DIY.
For example, I needed to access the Google Play store in order to install and update several emulators, and it hit me that there were a number of Android games that I could probably install and play. Adventures of Mana was the first one that came to mind, in that it was fun but the touchscreen controls annoyed me, and sure enough, it runs beautifully (if a little small in the 3.5” screen) and recognizes the keypad automatically. Adventure Bar Story didn’t recognize the keypad, unfortunately, and I’m certainly not going to use touchscreen keypad controls on a device like this. (And that bodes poorly for other KEMCO games.)
Another nice thing is that, because I’ve figured out the HDMI output and attaching other devices, I can plug in a second controller and put the whole thing on the big screen, and have a two-player retro experience that’s easy to carry around.
And finally: The PSP emulation is better and the N64 emulation is significantly better; and this can run PS2 games (though I haven’t tested it thoroughly) and supposedly can manage GameCube games using the Dolphin emulator. With the touchscreen, emulating DS games is a little weird (you need to assign the shoulder buttons to let you bounce between the two screens) but totally feasible. It also has the Steam Link app, though I couldn’t get it to recognize Steam on my PC. Because each emulator is different, they vary on how easy it is to access save states and whether they support cheats; that’s just another layer of things to figure out.
Overall: If you’re willing to put in the time and effort, this device is really flexible and can do a lot. Obviously, you want to jump straight to paying $100 for the 2+ rather than paying nearly twice that and dealing with the upgrading process. I suspect I’ll use this system a lot more when I want the sense of accomplishment from getting something to work or when I specifically want to play something that doesn’t run on my easier handhelds. (And though I have the standalone RP1 PCB and can make it work…I’ll probably never put in the time and effort to make it something I’ll use casually.)
For one thing, it runs Android, not OpenDingux. That has advantages, like letting it run RetroArch and other popular emulators and letting it install apps from the Play Store; but it also has disadvantages like having a lot of apps that use touchscreen controls but not having a touchscreen. Android also means it can connect to my PC, but at least with the original hardware, you still needed to pop the SD card to put files on that.
This is the biggest of the devices I’ve tried in this go-round, with a decent handgrip, two analog sticks and both sets of shoulder buttons. The screen size is 3.5”, the same as the RG350 (though the device is large enough and the screen has a big enough bezel that I’m annoyed it isn’t larger). It has properly-functioning micro-HDMI out port and a headphone jack. The battery life is a perfectly fine 4-5 hours. It has a dedicated Menu button, but depending on what app you’re using that can have different effects.
The big issue is this is a heavily DIY system. It comes with an assortment of emulators pre-installed and just thrown up on the app list—and you’ll probably want to clear out some of them and use the Play Store to upgrade others, though you’ll either have to maneuver the joystick mouse pointer or plug in a USB mouse (it comes with a USB-A to USB-C adaptor) to manage that. You might also want a splitter so you can plug in a keyboard and type passwords and search terms. And unlike most of these, when you buy directly from the manufacturer this didn’t come with any games on it, so you’ll need to fill up the SD card with your own rom collection.
The big advantage this had over the RG350 at launch time was it’s got PPSSPP and Mupen64Plus FZ available, and could run PSP games decently and N64 games passably. I never got around to putting the time into really getting this set up; I don’t love RetroArch (it never auto-recognizes most of my rom collection and the UI doesn’t really work for me) and it just seemed too much effort when other devices worked well out of the box.
But then! They released the Retroid Pocket 2+, with the option that you could buy an upgrade kit (for $60, vs. another $100 for a new system) and swap out the guts of your old device with the new ones. This was appealing enough to be as a ridiculous project that I ordered one.
I'm glad I invited a friend who actually understands computer hardware to help. He brought a proper IFIXIT set, and we needed it--the screwdriver included in the upgrade kit was good, but the tweezers were shit and there was no pry-tool. Also, I don't actually know how to (for instance) remove and reattach a ribbon cable, which this requires you to do.
You need to replace the buttons. The upgrade kit comes with the buttons. The instructions don't tell you to replace the buttons.
They give you the materials to turn the old PCB into a standalone emulator you can plug into a TV. They didn't include instructions for this (we had to find a Youtube video), and we couldn't actually get it to turn on because we didn't have a manual for it, either. It turned out that when I ordered the upgrade kit, I should have ordered a touchscreen upgrade, too—that’s sold separately, and the standalone PCB won’t output video if there’s no screen attached.
So then I paid another $20 for a touchscreen upgrade and $10 for a carrying case while I was at it. If nothing else, that meant Ben and I spent another afternoon having a good time taking the device apart and using a hairdryer to melt the glue attaching the old screen. Then at the end I had a fully-functional Retroid Pocket 2+ and a fully-functional Retroid 1 PCB that I could hook up to my external monitor via HDMI. Was this a sensible use of money? Probably not. But it entertained Ben and I for two full afternoons and, as my wife noted, if we’d been hanging out in a sports bar or something we’d have spent the same amount of money and not had toys to show for it.
So now I have a Retroid Pocket 2+, which has a proper touchscreen and is running a faster set of hardware than the original.
As with the original, this runs fairly standard Android, which means that you really need that touchscreen to maneuver everything into place. I still ended up connecting a USB mouse and keyboard through the C to A adaptor the system originally came with.
A notable improvement over the original is that there are two options for front ends once you've got it set up, and you can eventually get it to boot up and just show you your games and emulators in big icons so you can jump right in. But this system is still far from being "pick up and play"--I spent an hour figuring out controller settings and downloading RetroArch cores and I still probably have another couple of hours getting settings just-so for every single emulator, fiddling with screen resolutions and refresh rates and getting it to recognize my roms. The RG350 just runs, y'know? This can ultimately produce better results--there's a lot of flexibility to what you can do with it and what you can install--but it is all about the DIY.
For example, I needed to access the Google Play store in order to install and update several emulators, and it hit me that there were a number of Android games that I could probably install and play. Adventures of Mana was the first one that came to mind, in that it was fun but the touchscreen controls annoyed me, and sure enough, it runs beautifully (if a little small in the 3.5” screen) and recognizes the keypad automatically. Adventure Bar Story didn’t recognize the keypad, unfortunately, and I’m certainly not going to use touchscreen keypad controls on a device like this. (And that bodes poorly for other KEMCO games.)
Another nice thing is that, because I’ve figured out the HDMI output and attaching other devices, I can plug in a second controller and put the whole thing on the big screen, and have a two-player retro experience that’s easy to carry around.
And finally: The PSP emulation is better and the N64 emulation is significantly better; and this can run PS2 games (though I haven’t tested it thoroughly) and supposedly can manage GameCube games using the Dolphin emulator. With the touchscreen, emulating DS games is a little weird (you need to assign the shoulder buttons to let you bounce between the two screens) but totally feasible. It also has the Steam Link app, though I couldn’t get it to recognize Steam on my PC. Because each emulator is different, they vary on how easy it is to access save states and whether they support cheats; that’s just another layer of things to figure out.
Overall: If you’re willing to put in the time and effort, this device is really flexible and can do a lot. Obviously, you want to jump straight to paying $100 for the 2+ rather than paying nearly twice that and dealing with the upgrading process. I suspect I’ll use this system a lot more when I want the sense of accomplishment from getting something to work or when I specifically want to play something that doesn’t run on my easier handhelds. (And though I have the standalone RP1 PCB and can make it work…I’ll probably never put in the time and effort to make it something I’ll use casually.)
no subject
Date: 2022-03-10 09:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-10 10:25 pm (UTC)