NEW ANBERNIC RG35XXSP

I love the SP form factor. Lemme get that out of the way first. The emulation for the devices it supports is snappy. Having a working sleep function is a wonderful thing. The built-in controller is just right - super responsive, a little clicky, and solid. Just like the GBA SP, shinespark puzzles can be precision executed.

Caveats:

Firmware delivery is chunky - you have to download an archive with the 16 and 64GB images together; the actual images are nested deep in their containers, which is a pain. The ROMS partition is first on the disk, making a flash-and-expand a slow process.

Despite the device having Wifi and being on Linux - Ubuntu, even - there's no OTA update. So next firmware update's gonna be the same - another chonky download. Anbernic should figure this out, if not for our sakes, for the sake of their bandwidth bill.

There's no official build environment recommendations for porting / writing your own games for the device. As a consequence, there's no PortMaster support right now. Just the basic compiler triple and some sample code for an SDL hello world would be enough.

Bluetooth supports controllers, but not audio, which seems like a waste.

The Game Rooms section is weird. For one, it's redundant with the retroarch area, and for another, it's oddly slower.

HDMI should support hotplugging, should disable lid sleep, and should switch the built-in controller off, setting a connected Bluetooth controller as the main control mechanism. The lack of these features make it difficult to use in a console configuration.

Do yourself a favor and get the 16GB image. The bigger image has a _lot_ of games it shouldn't, and that you're probably not gonna play. It's less time consuming to flash the smaller image, expand it, and copy your own collection over.

To be clear, none of this is stuff that any other emu handheld developer has gotten right - but you asked, and these are my pain points.

This is a great handheld for the price. It plays the games I want it to flawlessly and the OS is good enough to turn on and play without thought. I enjoy the clicky buttons though I know some don’t. The OS can be hit or miss sometimes but I’m also not on the update which fixes some of the little nitpicks. Overall I am very please to have something that feels like an SP again

At some point I found myself about to play with the RG35XXSP, holding it in my hand while still turned off.

I couldn't believe that what I had just imagined I wanted was now a reality and it was exceeding my expectations.

If you love the SP form factor and you want a powerful yet portable handheld device this is for you. It handles games I didn't even intend to play in it.

Pretty awesome and so far I would recommend it with my eyes closed. The Stock OS that comes with it is already great, and after installing muOS my user experience has significantly increased.

Pretty mind-blowing and incredible. Thank you Anbernic!

This unit is an amazing pocketable retro handheld, especially great for Game boy advance. I love it, and don't go anywhere without it.

Didnt work when it arrived but after some emails back and forth I got the help i needed to set it up. It works great, and looks really good.