Anbernic Retro Game 552 Review
Oct. 28th, 2022 03:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroA bigger, meatier handheld working from the Anbernic sensibilities. It’s somewhere between the $100 retro handhelds and the $800 handheld gaming PCs, and for a lot of my purposes it’s pretty impressive.
One of the things touted for this was its ability to “dual boot” Linux and Android. If you put in the SD card with the Linux frontend on it, it runs that, which is a slightly fancier version of the 351P frontend (which I didn’t like). But that’s okay, because as I was trying to adjust the settings so that the screens stayed at the right aspect ratio and the menu keys weren’t mapped stupidly (you had to hold the menu button and press B to actually bring up the menu), I hit the “reset to default” option and apparently borked the setup completely—after that it wouldn’t load any games in any of the emulators.
So then I popped the SD card and let it boot into Android and that’s…shockingly better? RetroArch is available, but so are a grand collection of individual emulators with sensible controls and pre-set unstretched aspect ratios. Most of them also recognize that there’s a touchscreen so you can sneak in a small onscreen button or two. Drastic, the DS emulator, took some fiddling to make sure I had a menu button but the other onscreen controls we’re visible, but after that I really like it: There’s a ton of flexibility to the setup, but the default is the two screens side-by-side, and on this system’s 5.3 inch screen, that’s actually a perfectly pleasant size to play DS games. (Or you can flip it to a single screen with a button-press, and you can customize screen layouts on a per-game basis.)
The NES, SNES, GBA and Genesis emulators all have the quality-of-life improvements I’ve been hoping for: Easy access to cheats, a “recently played” list, fast-forward capability. The ability to just pop in a Game Genie code for a SNES action game is really a delight. L2 is mapped to the menu for most of them (which is a great use of an otherwise unnecessary button for these systems) but there’s also an unobtrusive onscreen menu button.
Duckstation (the same PXS emulator that’s on the Retroid Pocket) doesn’t recognize some of my iso files, but it does support cheat codes with minimal fuss. Actually, pretty much all of the emulators support cheat codes. Most of them also have fast-forward and they all have save-states (though how accessible they are varies). N64 runs great. PSP runs great. Dolphin is on here, so I can test GameCube. (At some point I should also test downloaded android and PS2 games. I’m reasonably certain it’ll be able to handle them. It also doesn’t have Steam Link pre-installed, but I suspect that could be made to work with time and tinkering.)
The HDMI output doesn’t work with my external monitor; it just drains the battery and makes the cord get hot, so clearly something isn’t communicating correctly. I’ve heard that there’s a firmware upgrade out there that fixes that and also addresses some other issues, but I’m concerned that installing it will “fix” things that I like about the existing setup and/or overwrite my setups so I’ll have to re-map all the buttons and settings to my liking again.
My biggest complaint, after the Linux frontend debacle, is that the system’s size is both a blessing and a curse. It’s too big to carry in your pocket, and the internals include a fan which occasionally gets noisy but more importantly eats the battery. The RG350 can get 6 hours of battery life; this averages four and half, depending on which emulators you’re using. And you can’t use a standard USB-C charger for it; it requires a high-power C-to-C charger cord. (And the AC adaptor for that cord doesn’t fit into the standard carrying case for the system.)
Overall: This is most of what I wanted in a retro handheld and I haven’t even started pushing its limits. It’s not perfect for every situation but it plays pretty much every system I’d want to emulate and since “going on vacation” became a thing again.
One of the things touted for this was its ability to “dual boot” Linux and Android. If you put in the SD card with the Linux frontend on it, it runs that, which is a slightly fancier version of the 351P frontend (which I didn’t like). But that’s okay, because as I was trying to adjust the settings so that the screens stayed at the right aspect ratio and the menu keys weren’t mapped stupidly (you had to hold the menu button and press B to actually bring up the menu), I hit the “reset to default” option and apparently borked the setup completely—after that it wouldn’t load any games in any of the emulators.
So then I popped the SD card and let it boot into Android and that’s…shockingly better? RetroArch is available, but so are a grand collection of individual emulators with sensible controls and pre-set unstretched aspect ratios. Most of them also recognize that there’s a touchscreen so you can sneak in a small onscreen button or two. Drastic, the DS emulator, took some fiddling to make sure I had a menu button but the other onscreen controls we’re visible, but after that I really like it: There’s a ton of flexibility to the setup, but the default is the two screens side-by-side, and on this system’s 5.3 inch screen, that’s actually a perfectly pleasant size to play DS games. (Or you can flip it to a single screen with a button-press, and you can customize screen layouts on a per-game basis.)
The NES, SNES, GBA and Genesis emulators all have the quality-of-life improvements I’ve been hoping for: Easy access to cheats, a “recently played” list, fast-forward capability. The ability to just pop in a Game Genie code for a SNES action game is really a delight. L2 is mapped to the menu for most of them (which is a great use of an otherwise unnecessary button for these systems) but there’s also an unobtrusive onscreen menu button.
Duckstation (the same PXS emulator that’s on the Retroid Pocket) doesn’t recognize some of my iso files, but it does support cheat codes with minimal fuss. Actually, pretty much all of the emulators support cheat codes. Most of them also have fast-forward and they all have save-states (though how accessible they are varies). N64 runs great. PSP runs great. Dolphin is on here, so I can test GameCube. (At some point I should also test downloaded android and PS2 games. I’m reasonably certain it’ll be able to handle them. It also doesn’t have Steam Link pre-installed, but I suspect that could be made to work with time and tinkering.)
The HDMI output doesn’t work with my external monitor; it just drains the battery and makes the cord get hot, so clearly something isn’t communicating correctly. I’ve heard that there’s a firmware upgrade out there that fixes that and also addresses some other issues, but I’m concerned that installing it will “fix” things that I like about the existing setup and/or overwrite my setups so I’ll have to re-map all the buttons and settings to my liking again.
My biggest complaint, after the Linux frontend debacle, is that the system’s size is both a blessing and a curse. It’s too big to carry in your pocket, and the internals include a fan which occasionally gets noisy but more importantly eats the battery. The RG350 can get 6 hours of battery life; this averages four and half, depending on which emulators you’re using. And you can’t use a standard USB-C charger for it; it requires a high-power C-to-C charger cord. (And the AC adaptor for that cord doesn’t fit into the standard carrying case for the system.)
Overall: This is most of what I wanted in a retro handheld and I haven’t even started pushing its limits. It’s not perfect for every situation but it plays pretty much every system I’d want to emulate and since “going on vacation” became a thing again.
