Dirt cheap Chinese knock-off handhelds

[Famous Mortimer]

Powkiddy have just released the X39, which is going for under $50, and while it's not perfect, it's also about as expensive as a cheap night out for two people.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

Powkiddy have just released the X39, which is going for under $50, and while it's not perfect, it's also about as expensive as a cheap night out for two people.

Would this be easy for an idiot, ie me, to set up with some megadrive/snes/psone emulation? I'm in the market for one of these but it's all a bit vague, innit

[Famous Mortimer]

From a quick search, it looks like it plays some (mostly 2D) PS1 games fine, but definitely not all. And it looks like the screenshot I provided is all the emulators it has - this may change if it gets a decent sized community using it, though.

I'd check out the Retro Game Corp review of it on Youtube, see if it would be up your street. Also, they have videos about which handheld to get based on your level of experience / willingness to fiddle about in the back end, which may be a help.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

Nice, thank you!

[Beagle 2]

I think I've settled on the Retroid Pocket 3, once there's enough of them around for UK stores to be stocking them. Don't fancy risking the £60 customs charge some people have been lumbered with.

It's frustrating that it won't quite handle Game Cube and PS2 but for the price point that's obviously completely fair enough. It looks great for Cloud gaming in particular, which is one of the main reasons I like the look of it. I'm just too lazy to play games not lying on my back.

[Sonny_Jim]

Ended up buying a Powkiddy RGB20S on a whim thinking it would be what I wanted.

(random pic from Twitter to illustrate just how darn cute it is)


I wanted to buy something so me and my mate could play online multiplayer together that didn't require setting up of laptops, forwarding ports and what have you.  Read a couple of reviews and it seemed to be exactly what I wanted, a small device with a decent 4:3 screen that had Linux and WiFi.  Turns out the advert I saw for it was slightly misleading, as you have to use a USB WiFi dongle.  I've cracked the sucker open and there's an unpopulated footprint for a WiFi module on the board so I've made an educated guess and bought something off Aliexpress that maybe-kinda-might work.  At the moment it's no biggy and it's nice that it has separate power and OTG ports, so I don't have to remove the WiFi dongle when I want to charge it.  Speaking of which, whilst I had it open to look for the wifi module I noticed the battery compartment had loads of room, so replacing the battery when it carks it should be pretty easy as well.

It's pretty underpowered and it's too small for using longer than a couple of hours at most, but it came with a cute sticker so I like it.  Also very happy with the OS it uses, managed to get my SDL2 game compiled and running on it without too much hassle.

Been playing a lot of Power Shovel:

[Famous Mortimer]

How much was it?

Also, @Beagle 2 , did you ever get a Retroid Pocket 3?

[Memorex MP3]

How's the online multiplayer? I've been contemplating setting up a couple of things like that with RetroArch for some friends since 2020 but I've never found the multiplayer reliable enough to bother with across different devices (w/e of laptops) and didn't want to commit to buying several of the same device.

Steam Deck is absolutely killing off the more expensive chinese handheld market, I assume? I got (and returned) one a couple of weeks ago and I can't imagine much competing at the same price point or coming remotely close at less. Had Burnout Paradise on the PS3 almost at a playable level with no configuration, MK8 on Wii U was running fine w/e of gathering shaders. I gather you can play Wii U and Switch online too (not via NSO though).
Only returned because I don't see a scenario in the next 12 months where I'll get much use out of it and I had a limited window for a full refund. Will almost certainly buy again in the future.

[Beagle 2]

How much was it?

Also, @Beagle 2 , did you ever get a Retroid Pocket 3?

I'm waiting a while, I can't be arsed with the lottery of ordering from China and while they've hit the U.K. stores, there £170 or something at the moment. Hoping they go down a few quid.

[Sonny_Jim]

The RGB20S was ~70 quid or so, it's a budget device and it struggles with most N64 ROMs, but PS1 runs just fine.  It's probably better to spend a bit more and get something that's not RK3266 based (IE something with a bit more grunt).  The upside of having a RK3266 device is that Linux is very well supported on it.  For example, I'm currently using RG351MP firmware (ArkOS) and it just works, even with esoteric WiFi dongles

I've not tested online multiplayer fully yet (matey is still waiting for his to arrive), but we bought identical models for the exact same reasons the poster above described.  Both of us are busy dads now so we'd rather have something that 'just works' rather than having our valuable gaming time eaten up with config issues.  We only ever play NES/Mega drive stuff together so for us it's a nearly perfect device, it's just a real shame they don't ship with the internal WiFi.

Edit worth noting that not only is the PS1 emulation very good, it also has working dualshock  rumble which is a nice touch

[Memorex MP3]

If it doesn't work out you might be able to just do something with portable versions of emulators on a USB stick and copy it? I've never had big issues with Windows and netplay so if you're definitely using the same version of the emulator and rom it should all be fine

I refunded my Steam Deck but it has left me with a 256GB SD card and my plan is to roughly do that; fill that up with portable versions of emulators, bios folders and rom folders so I have a single source I can just use on whatever device I have access to. Not sure how well it'll go in actuality but if it works that'll absolutely rule; might even be worth making a tool for others to make the same.

[Memorex MP3]

RE: PS2 emulation on _everything_; iirc it had analogue buttons, how do emulators actually handle that? Is it worth reassigning accelerate on Burnout to the now standard trigger button instead?

[madhair60]

RE: PS2 emulation on _everything_; iirc it had analogue buttons, how do emulators actually handle that? Is it worth reassigning accelerate on Burnout to the now standard trigger button instead?

I don't think many games actually used it extensively (or even much at all); I know MGS2 and Mad Maestro/Bravo Music did, but nothing else jumps to mind. That said, the triggers on the Steam Deck seem to be analogue at least, so remapping could potentially work

[Magnum Valentino]

Wasn't there an Ape Escape game that was built around mandatory use of the sticks? I remember it was part of the promotion of the game but it might have been on PS1.

[Pink Gregory]

Wasn't there an Ape Escape game that was built around mandatory use of the sticks? I remember it was part of the promotion of the game but it might have been on PS1.

That'd be the first one

[bushwick]

I got an RG350 a couple of years ago but didn't use it for ages. Tried again recently and disappointed to report the battery has gone to absolute shit - never the best battery life but now I get about an hour gameplay tops off a full charge. Fully charged it the other day, unplugged then by the time I switched it on next day all the battery had drained. Basically have to play it plugged in now, annoying AF.

[Sonny_Jim]

I know MGS2 and Mad Maestro/Bravo Music did, but nothing else jumps to mind.

Gran Turismo 3+4 (and Tourist Trophy) being the obvious ones.   There's a list here, oddly TT isn't on it so maybe it didn't support it (which would be odd, seeing as it's the same engine as GT4).

Started messing around with DOSBox on the RGB20S, although it can only emulate ~486SX-ish.  Was hoping for a bit of X-Wing but it's a tiny bit too slow for that, ho hum.  Also spent far too long messing around trying to get various BBC B emulators to compile but haven't got anywhere yet.  Might try installing XOrg on it to see if that's worth bothering with.

Been playing a bit of the old Coronation Street arcade quiz game.  Not sure why because I've never watched it, but there's just something about playing old 90s arcade quiz machines.  Maybe it's just that I'm old and my pop culture knowledge slows to a crawl after about 2005.

[Famous Mortimer]

I got an RG350 a couple of years ago but didn't use it for ages. Tried again recently and disappointed to report the battery has gone to absolute shit - never the best battery life but now I get about an hour gameplay tops off a full charge. Fully charged it the other day, unplugged then by the time I switched it on next day all the battery had drained. Basically have to play it plugged in now, annoying AF.

Looks like replacement batteries are about 20 quid on Aliexpress?

[Beagle 2]

How much was it?

Also, @Beagle 2 , did you ever get a Retroid Pocket 3?

Inevitably, they're now taking preorders for the Retroid Pocket 3+, which boasts...

- Faster processor: A Unisoc Tiger T618
- Octa cores CPU: 2A75@2.0GHz + 6A55@2.0GHz
- 2x the GPU performance: Mali G52 MC2@850MHz
- 2x the RAM - a 40% increase in speed
- 4x the Storage (4G+128G eMCP)
- +50% faster charging speed
- larger capacity 4500mAh battery
- USB hub support

Okay, whatever, I guess all people will really care about it whether it can run Gamecube and PS2 games. I'm quite hopeful it will as the current version makes a pretty good stab at it.

What's the actual craic with ordering stuff from China? It was coming in at about £140 all in to preorder one last night which seems ridiculously good, but will I get hit with import charges and might it actually just go missing completely? I did it years ago when I got my GPD XD and I got it and all, but it was incredibly stressful waiting months for it to arrive.

[Sonny_Jim]

Did a bit of a netplay test with the RGB20S today and works just fine, remarkably easier to setup then the last time I tried.  Retroarch has a nice little menu now where you can host/join games, it's mostly just a matter of making sure both people have a copy of the exact same file with the exact same file name.

[Memorex MP3]

Think I actually got retroarch netplay working on the vita; just had to do the insanely big download (in terms of number of files, not size) from VitaDB Downloader. It's really unintuitive to set up still though; the ingame emulator menu needs to be accessed and you need to traverse back to the normal menu via clicking X repeatedly then you can't get back to the normal ingame menu again (at least you can't as far as I can see...).

Really cool if it does cos I think even most PS1 games will work then (although at a frustratingly crappier performance than the native emulation of them) [Update: the PS1 core does not support netplay]

Kinda working now on making my Vita into a really blunt utility device; tweaked the USB gamepad app to follow standard inputs and am looking into merging the mouse and keyboard ones so I can have it as a backup USB keyboard/mouse when required.


@Beagle 2 it's probably pre VAT? They usually don't display VAT until the very very end in my experience

[Sonny_Jim]

So that's a RGB20S running Dosbox-x running MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 with Netscape Navigator 2.03.  Took me 3 nights fiddling around to get it working and it's mostly unusable because it's horrifically slow plus it doesn't support https which is >99% of the internet these days.

Fuck me I need to get out more.....

[Beagle 2]

Haha, well I appreciate it!

Starting to think that if I'm planning to shell out what looks like £200 (by the time they reach these shores) on a Retroid Pocket 3+ I might as well just get a Steam Deck. Better start saving then.

[Sonny_Jim]

Had to do it for the lols, didn't bother trying to login as trying to render that page took the best part of 2 minutes

Spoiler alert

[close]

[Proactive]

I'm thinking about hacking my snes mini to be able to play more snes games but also run and play all the other various emulators and games (up to 16bit era and MAME is fine, not too bothered with PS1 and beyond), so just wondering if anyone had any experience of doing so and probably more importantly, can anyone point me in the direction of where I can safely acquire all the games from one place? Thanks.

[Consignia]

I did it so long ago, I couldn't point in the direction. But modding the SNES mini is exceedingly easy. There should be a few guides with a Google's reach away. Just plug the console in to a PC via a USB cable and run a program. Only put Mario All stars on it, but I can't imagine it's hard to the other things.

[madhair60]

Modding the SNES Mini is very simple and rewarding; check this out: https://www.reddit.com/r/miniSNESmods/comments/evmyih/read_me_first_before_posting/

There are videos showing every step here.

[Proactive]

Thanks guys 😊

[RetroRobot]

Modding the SNES Mini is very simple and rewarding; check this out: https://www.reddit.com/r/miniSNESmods/comments/evmyih/read_me_first_before_posting/

There are videos showing every step here.

Love my modded one, great rec

[Famous Mortimer]

Took the plunge and ordered a Retroid Pocket 3+, thanks to the boss at work giving me exactly enough to buy one for Christmas. Looking forward to it, although I assume I'll spend most of my time playing games that would work fine on a $40 thing.