Anbernic Retro Game 351P Handheld Review
Apr. 26th, 2022 10:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroThe RG351 is the successor to the RG350 Handheld, which I loved and got a ton of use out of. I never really got that experience out of the RG351P.
Physically, the RG351 is basically the same as the RG350. It’s got the same button setup and 3.5” screen, and similar battery life. The internals are stronger, allowing it to handle PSP, N64 and DS emulation…to a degree. (The DS emulation is particularly weird—it doesn’t have the screen size to show both screens and it doesn’t have a touchscreen, both of which severely limit your options for games.)
As a side note, there are clearly grouped generations of systems that are easier or harder to emulate:
1. NES, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, older arcade games. Even the 9X-S and the pre-handheld boom crappy devices could manage these nicely. A bottom-tier current system like the Powkiddy Q90 is great for these.
2. SNES, Genesis, PS1. The big leap the RG350 and its contemporaries managed was playing these well. I don’t know why SNES in particular is hard, but even a hacked PSP was still having trouble with it.
3. PSP, N64 and DS. There are a bunch of handhelds (the RG351 and the original Retroid Pocket included) that can run games from these, but often with a lot of frameskip and slowdown. The DS is particularly tricky because of the need for a touchscreen and either switching screens views or displaying both. The Retroid Pocket 2+ and the RG552 can do these well.
4. PS2, Gamecube, Wii. The current generation of affordable systems can attempt to run these with limited success. I get the impression that higher-end handhelds like the Odin Pro can actually play them.
Anyways, the biggest problem with the system is the stock firmware, something called EmuELEC. On the surface, it looks fairly idiot-proof, as it bundles your roms by system and runs RetroArch pretty much all of the emulators. That said, if you want to do anything other than just pick and game and play it, the system getting annoying really fast. You need to press L3+R3 to pull up a home menu (pressing down on both analog sticks, that is). It’s hard to find the settings menu and even harder to remap keys, when that’s an available option. The screen size and resolution isn’t always optimized, and it’s a pain to change it. I’ve never been the biggest fan of RetroArch in general; it’s harder to manage things like save states and cheats than most standalone emulators, in addition to the difficulty adjusting settings.
Because the system itself was so nice (and most people didn’t want to deal with OpenDingux, understandably), a big collection of custom fan-made firmware arose. With an afternoon of time and effort and a spare SD card, you can flash on a new OS that works better. The thing was, I had already figured out how to get the play experience I wanted from the tier 2 systems in my RG350 and I was used to it, so that sat on my to-do list for a year. Then I upgraded my Retroid Pocket, and though that’s still heavily dependent on RetroArch, it has a more flexible Android frontend and a more powerful chipset, and a touchscreen—which means that while it also requires some work, it’s overall a better choice for putting that work into. Meanwhile, the RG552 has the bigger screen (and a touchscreen) so it’s a really good platform for DS emulation, even if it’s a bit less portable. And that's also running Android and has a fantastic slate of pre-loaded emulators. So the poor RG351P is just out of the loop.
Overall: Like the Powkiddy Q80, this had some flaws that stopped me from really getting into it and it never found a good place in my gaming ecosystem. As of this writing I have it up on eBay to resell.
Physically, the RG351 is basically the same as the RG350. It’s got the same button setup and 3.5” screen, and similar battery life. The internals are stronger, allowing it to handle PSP, N64 and DS emulation…to a degree. (The DS emulation is particularly weird—it doesn’t have the screen size to show both screens and it doesn’t have a touchscreen, both of which severely limit your options for games.)
As a side note, there are clearly grouped generations of systems that are easier or harder to emulate:
1. NES, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, older arcade games. Even the 9X-S and the pre-handheld boom crappy devices could manage these nicely. A bottom-tier current system like the Powkiddy Q90 is great for these.
2. SNES, Genesis, PS1. The big leap the RG350 and its contemporaries managed was playing these well. I don’t know why SNES in particular is hard, but even a hacked PSP was still having trouble with it.
3. PSP, N64 and DS. There are a bunch of handhelds (the RG351 and the original Retroid Pocket included) that can run games from these, but often with a lot of frameskip and slowdown. The DS is particularly tricky because of the need for a touchscreen and either switching screens views or displaying both. The Retroid Pocket 2+ and the RG552 can do these well.
4. PS2, Gamecube, Wii. The current generation of affordable systems can attempt to run these with limited success. I get the impression that higher-end handhelds like the Odin Pro can actually play them.
Anyways, the biggest problem with the system is the stock firmware, something called EmuELEC. On the surface, it looks fairly idiot-proof, as it bundles your roms by system and runs RetroArch pretty much all of the emulators. That said, if you want to do anything other than just pick and game and play it, the system getting annoying really fast. You need to press L3+R3 to pull up a home menu (pressing down on both analog sticks, that is). It’s hard to find the settings menu and even harder to remap keys, when that’s an available option. The screen size and resolution isn’t always optimized, and it’s a pain to change it. I’ve never been the biggest fan of RetroArch in general; it’s harder to manage things like save states and cheats than most standalone emulators, in addition to the difficulty adjusting settings.
Because the system itself was so nice (and most people didn’t want to deal with OpenDingux, understandably), a big collection of custom fan-made firmware arose. With an afternoon of time and effort and a spare SD card, you can flash on a new OS that works better. The thing was, I had already figured out how to get the play experience I wanted from the tier 2 systems in my RG350 and I was used to it, so that sat on my to-do list for a year. Then I upgraded my Retroid Pocket, and though that’s still heavily dependent on RetroArch, it has a more flexible Android frontend and a more powerful chipset, and a touchscreen—which means that while it also requires some work, it’s overall a better choice for putting that work into. Meanwhile, the RG552 has the bigger screen (and a touchscreen) so it’s a really good platform for DS emulation, even if it’s a bit less portable. And that's also running Android and has a fantastic slate of pre-loaded emulators. So the poor RG351P is just out of the loop.
Overall: Like the Powkiddy Q80, this had some flaws that stopped me from really getting into it and it never found a good place in my gaming ecosystem. As of this writing I have it up on eBay to resell.
