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PowKiddy X39 Pro Review
This is a mid-sized handheld that I had mid-sized hopes for.
To start, this is a little bigger than many of the devices but still would fit in a cargo pants pocket. It has a 4.3” screen, which I believe is the screen size of the PS Vita, but this is slimmer and has a similar handfeel to the RG350. It’s running almost the same RetroArch frontend the X2 does, with some improvements: You can press the Menu button to bring up a proper menu, which gives you save state access but also the ability to remap keys, turn off the sound, and switch the screen from full to scaled. But it also has some issues: It does not save SRAM. The search function is hilariously terrible—I have to assume that it isn’t actually set up for English letters.
Like many such devices, you can’t directly connect it to your PC, or at least I couldn’t. I needed to pop the SD card and arrange files that way. I had some issues adding new content, but eventually figured out there was a “sync” button that added all of the new games to the end of each list. (And then I could assign them as favorites so they were easy to find. Woo!)
The SNES emulation clearly has some frameskip going on, and there’s a “scratchiness” to the sound particularly for SNES and PS1. It’s playable but not perfect, and unfortunately it doesn’t give you access to the settings that would let me optimize that. Oddly, Donkey Kong Country runs better than Super Mario World, when I would have expected the reverse. I’m going to guess it’s less about the device’s power and more about the software optimization.
It only comes with a USB-C charging cable, but it has a lot of ports: A headphone jack, a mini-HDMI port, and two full USB ports on the bottom, presumably for controllers. This was clearly designed for the “plug into the TV and play with your friends” mode. (A review I found online actually calls it a hybrid handheld and game box.)
Interestingly, while most of the PowKiddy handhelds are either clones of mainstream hardware or other retro handhelds (The X90 is the retromimi PocketGo and the X80 is the retromimi PocketGo 2; the X6 was a PSP shell and the X9-S was a Vita shell; the X2 is a Switch clone; and the X350 is a knockoff Anbernic RG350) I have no idea what this one is based on. It bears a mild resemblance to the PocketGo 2, but it’s bigger and wider with a slightly different button layout.
Overall: This is a decent compromise $40 device. It’s not as effortlessly portable as the Q90, but the tradeoff is the larger, nicer screen. It’s definitely no RG350, but it’s also less than half the price. Fortunately, I think it fits the bill for the person I had planned to give it to.
To start, this is a little bigger than many of the devices but still would fit in a cargo pants pocket. It has a 4.3” screen, which I believe is the screen size of the PS Vita, but this is slimmer and has a similar handfeel to the RG350. It’s running almost the same RetroArch frontend the X2 does, with some improvements: You can press the Menu button to bring up a proper menu, which gives you save state access but also the ability to remap keys, turn off the sound, and switch the screen from full to scaled. But it also has some issues: It does not save SRAM. The search function is hilariously terrible—I have to assume that it isn’t actually set up for English letters.
Like many such devices, you can’t directly connect it to your PC, or at least I couldn’t. I needed to pop the SD card and arrange files that way. I had some issues adding new content, but eventually figured out there was a “sync” button that added all of the new games to the end of each list. (And then I could assign them as favorites so they were easy to find. Woo!)
The SNES emulation clearly has some frameskip going on, and there’s a “scratchiness” to the sound particularly for SNES and PS1. It’s playable but not perfect, and unfortunately it doesn’t give you access to the settings that would let me optimize that. Oddly, Donkey Kong Country runs better than Super Mario World, when I would have expected the reverse. I’m going to guess it’s less about the device’s power and more about the software optimization.
It only comes with a USB-C charging cable, but it has a lot of ports: A headphone jack, a mini-HDMI port, and two full USB ports on the bottom, presumably for controllers. This was clearly designed for the “plug into the TV and play with your friends” mode. (A review I found online actually calls it a hybrid handheld and game box.)
Interestingly, while most of the PowKiddy handhelds are either clones of mainstream hardware or other retro handhelds (The X90 is the retromimi PocketGo and the X80 is the retromimi PocketGo 2; the X6 was a PSP shell and the X9-S was a Vita shell; the X2 is a Switch clone; and the X350 is a knockoff Anbernic RG350) I have no idea what this one is based on. It bears a mild resemblance to the PocketGo 2, but it’s bigger and wider with a slightly different button layout.
Overall: This is a decent compromise $40 device. It’s not as effortlessly portable as the Q90, but the tradeoff is the larger, nicer screen. It’s definitely no RG350, but it’s also less than half the price. Fortunately, I think it fits the bill for the person I had planned to give it to.