Anbernic RG35XX Plus Review (ft/Garlic, MuOS & Batocera)

in 2022 everyone wanted a miu mini the problem was Miu couldn't keep up with the demand so the door was wide open for amberd to come in with a new small form factor handheld at launch the 35xx was unimpressive the build was solid as it usually is with Amber but the software was Bare Bones and clunky luckily in a matter of weeks we had a new custom operating system called garlic OS that took the 35xx from Dead on Arrival to community favor and what felt like overnight we did got the Mi Mini Plus offering the same size screen as the 35xx will the full onion ort for and Wi-Fi it quickly became the go-to for everyone looking for a pocket friendly handheld fast forward a few months and now amernick has a refresh called the 35xx plus but is the upgrade worth it if we already have a 35xx or even a m Mini Plus let's find [Music] out first as usual we have to talk about the price in the specs the 35xx plus retails for 6399 plus shipping and is available in three colors clear black white and gray it runs on Linux has an all- winner our 8700 quad core arm cortex a53 CPU clocked in at 1.5 GHz so it should outperform the arcade 3326 devices for the GPU we have a dual core g31 mp2 1 GB of lpddr 4 RAM for storage it comes with a 64 gab micro SD card with dual SD card support the screen is a 3.5 in 640x480 IPS the battery is 3300 milliamps and they're claiming about 8 hours but that's really going to depend on how hard you push it these estimations are always optimistic but I've noticed around 6 hours playing a mix of games on and off like I've said before battery life can be all over the place on these handhelds it also has C Toc charging and it supports Wi-Fi 2.4 5G and Bluetooth 4.2 unfortunately the Bluetooth doesn't support audio as of now so it's just for controllers true to its name that pluses an improvement across the board from its predecessor but specs are just one side of it and we still need to look at how it all comes together for a user experience and gameplay so let's take a look at the rest of the device now let's take a look at the hardware and at first glance not a lot has changed from the original 35xx but once you get a little closer you can see that the position and angle of the start select and menu buttons was moved a little I'm really not sure what the point of this was since it doesn't really make a difference for ergonomics and if you have a custom shell in your original 35xx you're not going to be able to use in thisne new revision another change is the d-pad it's slightly more rounded and feels tighter I haven't noticed any of The Accidental inputs that were an issue with the original but that's always going to be a factor when you're using a rubber member d-pad simply because of how they function that being said I haven't really had any issues in my day byday play and I think the d-pad was improved from what we had in the original the buttons also feel tighter than the originals but they're just as quiet they definitely feel different on the top a little bit more rounded but that's not a good or a bad thing it's just a difference that I've noticed they also feel a lot more responsive when you press them but they still seem to be the exact same size so if you have custom buttons this should still work start select and menu have that same rub remembering feel like I said this change in position is a little bit weird but it's not a bad thing we're still not sure if am's using the same screen but it looks like the bzel are slightly smaller in the new model the brightness and color is also slightly different but that could be due to the new software new screen or not for the most part games look great and while it's only a 3 and 1 half in screen the overall size of the device makes it feel like it's a larger display as far as the sides everything stayed about the same on the left side we have our volume rocker on the bottom we have our USB typ-c port our headphone jack and on the right side we have our two SD card slots our reset button and our power button on the top we have our mini HDMI out and we also have our LED indicators on the back we have some of the more visible changes the back buttons have been changed to resemble more of the better back buttons that were available for the 35xx and while I think those are a little bit better I don't feel like a mod is necessary with these it's nice to see amck improving the design they introduce with the 353 v a new addition is a battery cover that can be removed by taking off a fifit screwdriver it's nice to see that we have easy access to the battery now and that we don't have to take the whole thing apart I don't really think you're going to have to open this up a whole lot but if we do have let's say a battery upgrade or your battery goes bad for some reason it is nice that you don't have to take everything off just to be able to get into this one some of the small changes like the new position to the start and select buttons are strange choices but the change to the back buttons in the new battery cover are a very nice addition the original 35xx was already a solid so it's nice to see the formula get [Music] improved currently we have three options for custom firmware and development garlic OS bisera light and mustard OS unfortunately these are still being worked on and while you can get games working on them the experience just isn't there yet but let's still take a look at the current state of them and see where we're at GC is functional but missing some features it still needs to integrate an onscreen keyboard to enable the Wi-Fi the Bluetooth currently isn't working and it still needs to add higher end emulators among some other things batt sah is also missing some key features like brightness control HDMI output SD card expansion support for more cores and a few others but this will probably be the most feature Rich option when it comes out so I'm excited to see how it turns out and finally mustard OS it uses retro to create a simple interface this is great for a lot of users but you do miss out on stand onload emulators and you have to be comfortable with retroarch unfortunately it's also missing features like Bluetooth sleep Moe controller support and HDMI out I'm very comfortable with retroarch so this is one I'm definitely going to keep my eye on as you can see these are still being developed it's great to see the community come together and make something better and I know before long these are going to be the better option for every day use but we're just not there yet so be patient for now the stock OS is definitely the way to go the stock OS isn't bad but it's not as good as what we've seen from custom firmware Tock credit they've done two updates as of the time of this review Unfortunately they haven't made it easy to get them instead of doing the update over wi-fi you have to download it from a Google Drive linked under last update video you have they didn't flash it onto an card to make things worse you upd 60 GB because they didn't remove the games the image is broken up into five zip files that you have to extract together the problem is some of those files have a z00 and a number extension that you have to delete or the extraction won't work I can't link you to that because of the RS that come with it but it's not hard to find clearly this is an issue and I hope they fix because as of right now the process is convoluted and the file syst is ridiculous and when they do I'll go ahead and look it in this video all that being said let's take a look at the stock experience the menu looks about the same as it did on the original 35xx with the addition of retroarch and some connectivity settings you have Game Room retroarch favorites history search and settings in settings you'll find the majority of the configuration options like data and time language retroarch networks icons Etc the Retro option is where you access retro AR settings you're going to want to go in here and turn on retro achievements because for some reason amernick has them disabled out of the box to do that launch retroarch then go to settings user interface manual item visibility settings and scroll down to Show achievements after that head back to settings turn on achievements and log in if you change something you didn't want you can also reset configurations with a simple button press from the retroarch settings on the main menu you can also test inputs of the settings menu so let's take a look at the d-pad while over here as you can see I'm getting moving all the way around but if I hold it down and I wiggle it a little bit I'm not getting any accidental inputs if I go a little bit harder I can hit those diagonals without any problems and even if I start changing direction rapidly back and forth you'll see that I'm not getting any inputs that I'm not intending to have so like I was saying earlier it looks like abet fixed the d-pads issues so you're not really going to have to open this one up and do any type of tape mod or nothing like that in Game Room you'll find your St and emulators if you're using a second SD card the system will ask you every time time where you want your games to be read from Once you select the storage option you'll see a list of emulators they have a few options like save states display options sck selection for multi-is games but they're pretty limited PPS PP is the exception here since you have access to all the options the emulator has to offer unfortunately of the time of this review I haven't been able to get retro achievements working the option is there but the system doesn't have an on-screen keyboard I tried plugging one in to top my credentials but even then I couldn't get the system to recognize it so for now retro achievements are only available on retro moving on to retroarch the layout is different you have icons for each system and if you select sd1 as the stor option you'll see an icon for apps here you have a few options arcade core I really don't notice a difference when I talk with this bezels turns on bezels for the cores that support them night mode turns on a dark Shader it's very useful when you're playing at night quick shutdown removes the shutdown animation when powering down shaders turns on shaders and vertical rotation is pretty self-explanatory it rotates the screen for vertical arcade games back to the system selection once you pick one you can scroll the list of games by pressing up and down or jump to the next letter by placing your left or right also if the system supports it you can select what core you want to use by pressing y once you're in a game the hotkeys are the same as most Linux devices M plus L1 is safe State M plus R1 load State M plus R2 fast forward M plus L2 slow down M plus Y show FPS M plus X is pause M plus b is screenshot and M plus the d-pad left and right changes the safe slot and plus start closes the game strangely the stol and emulator for DS is listed on the retroarch but it uses drastic the core for melon DS is available but the performance is so bad it's unplayable the hot keys for DS are different L2 and R2 change the screens pressing the power button changes the d-pad to status control with a and the input button the menu buttons opens up the DraStic menu and from here you can use safe States or change the button mappings I would advise not changing a lot from here since it's easy to mess things up and if you do you'll have to use a keyboard to reset all the button bindings and that's about it for the software segment I think the stock OS is decent the problem is the updates haven't been handled well it currently has the most features and is more than fine for day-to-day use until we get a better option or for more casual users that don't want to bother with the bunch of settings or having to install custom [Music] firmware the original 35xx could already handle most games from the PS1 on down and in my opinion that's still what this handle is going to show the lower end systems run smooth and look great on a 4x3 screen with minimal compromises plus you usually don't need workarounds for the lack of analog sticks but because of the power boost we now have access to some higher end systems like Dreamcast and PSP so we have to talk about those starting with the DS the actual performance of DS games is solid but the screen size and lack of a touchcreen really limits the amount of games you can actually play If You focus more on turn-based games like Pokemon and Dragon Quest then you won't have any issues or games that either don't need a touchcreen or have patches like Mario Kart or Castlevania DS N64 is Hit or Miss is we can only use retroarch you have to play at a low resolution and even then you'll see slowdown you really have to adjust the settings to get the most out of it and even then you won't see harder to run games like conquer running at a playable frame rate now if you're okay with lower resolution and not having an anog stick games like Super myio 64 not green out of time run fine you can hold on R2 so that the face buttons act like n64c buttons and for the most part the d-pad works fine for movement I'm I'm sure performance will improve with custom firmware or even with the stol and emulator but as of right now N64 performance isn't great now if things change this could be a great option for playing N64 games on a TV Dreamcast has most of the same issues as the N64 as far as a lack of analog sticks and having to run games at a lower resolution but performance is actually better you do have to run games with an autof frame skip but that's not something that really hurts the gameplay a lot of games work with the d-pad right away but the ones that don't can be an issue every time I would try to remap my d-pad to work as analo sck the bance will get deleted after I saved on override this may play in games that don't work with the d-pad very frustrating to play and I'm sure this is a system that's going to see a lot of improvement once we get custom firware PSP surprised me because I enjoyed it more than I thought it would don't get me wrong this still isn't an ideal fit for PSP because of the screen size and the lack of a stick but a lot of PSP games just use a d-pad and for the ones that don't you can just press R2 or the power button depending on what version of the OS you're on to switch the d-pad to that like a stick also because this is a vertical handheld the smaller screen didn't bother me as much it just feels like I have less Dead Space since we actually have access to ppss PP performance on PSP is actually better than both Dreamcast and N64 you're still not going to play the most demanding PSP games like God of War or tiken 6 but if you want to play some more wholesome games like let's say doky DOI literature Club Persona 3 Portable or RPGs like E7 you're going to have a good time of course it can handle more intensive games but the more you push it the more tinkering you'll have to do all of these new systems need to be considered bonuses like I said the lower-end systems is where you'll really see it Shine since these new systems all come with compromises until we have custom firmware we won't really know how far we can push it but keep in mind This Is A $64 handheld that can still play a good amount of PSP DS and Dreamcast while being about the size of a wallet I hope this review doesn't come across as negative it's just a 35xx plus is in an interesting position right now it's more powerful and has more features in both the original 35xx and the Miu Mini Plus but the software is still not as good as those two I can't completely recommend it at this time since both the 35xx and the Mi Mini Plus have mature custom firmware but like I said work's already been done on that and in the very near future the plus is going to get a lot better so we have to keep that in mind if you want something that's ready to go day one go with the 35xx or the M Mini Plus but if you want something in that same price range that's going to offer a more it's hard not to consider the plus I can't fully recommend Things based on what could be I'll have to revisit this one in a few weeks to see where we're at but if it was me and I could only have one headphone in this category I would probably pick the plus things in this hobby move fast and the potential is higher than the other two more power Wi-Fi HDMI out a bigger battery and Bluetooth at this size and price is a tempting proposition well that's going to wrap it up I hope this video was informative and that you enjoyed it there's three of us on the channel so every video is a little bit different but we do our best to bring you quality content if you want to hang out with us you can always find us on Discord and we go live on here all the time if you haven't already don't forget to subscribe it really helps the channel grow and it helps us bring you more videos like this thanks for hanging out I'll see you on the next one

Channel: Retro Handhelds

Views: 43,764

Keywords: anbernic, powkiddy, aethersx2, pimax, miyoo mini plus, rg35xx, powkiddy v90, miyoo mini, eta prime, anbernic rg35xx, mr sujano, miyoo mini plus vs rg35xx, vita3k android, miyoo mini plus onion os, techdweeb, ps vita 2023, miyoo mini plus review, wicked gamer & collector, asus rog ally, ayn loki, anbernic rg35xx review, rg35xx batocera, rg35xx cfw, garlicos rg35xx, garlicos, garlic os install, anbernic rg405m, retroid pocket flip, rg405m, rg505, retro news roundup, retroid pocket 3

Id: 9S9E16miri0

Length: 14min 36sec (876 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 19 2023