Anbernic RG405V In-Depth Review

[Music] hey everybody this is rer Metro gamecore about a week ago I did a preview or First Impressions video of the amernick RG 45v and in that video I said I needed about a week to test it and try it out in different scenarios to make sure I knew whether or not it's going to be worth purchasing and this video here is going to be exactly that now in that first video I covered a lot of the topics that I will usually do in my reviews how the buttons feel you know just the ergonomics and performance all those kind of things are already well covered in that previous video in this video here I really want to focus on just a few different factors number one I want to talk about the software experience in case this is your very first handheld for example what happens if you buy one of those SD cards and put it inside how do you actually play those games next I want to do a comparison against similarly priced models that all have the same chipset so we'll be looking at four devices Al together just to kind of narrow it down in case Cas you're trying to decide between one of these and finally I'll give my own thoughts about whether or not I would personally purchase this device myself and whether I think it's going to be a good fit for you and so without any further delay let's go ahead and Dive Right [Music] In okay to start when I first made my preview video I didn't know what the price was going to be and I remember guessing that it was going to be between $150 and $200 well as you can see here it is listed at $138 retail before shipping so really it is going to be a little bit less than $150 depending on where you live and I do think that's a competitive price compared to other devices with the same chip set on the market now one thing about amberik devices is that they also will ship it with an additional SD card if you would like and these will come pre-loaded with games we'll talk about that here later in the video but it will also bring up the price as you can see and I'm hoping the experience that I show you in this video will help you make a decision of whether or not it's going to be worth that upgraded cost now in addition to the wood panel model that you saw in the preview video there are two other colors there's a gray one that kind of looks like a DMG Game Boy and they also have a transparent purple model that kind of looks like the atomic purple Game Boy Color now there's two places to buy the device right now you can get it from amber.com directly and you will pay that additional shipping however they also have it on alexpress which is a Chinese retailer this is also directly from amberik but the pricing is a little bit different here they'll charge a little bit more up front but the shipping is free and if you combine this with coupons that they sometimes have on the website you can actually get this for cheaper here on all EX Express either way I will leave links to all this down below in case you want to check out the pricing for you and your region now before we get too far into the weeds let's go into some of the basic specs of the rg45 V I'm going to break this off into three different chunks starting with those that we kind of expected with this device number one it's running a t618 chipset this is a household name at this point last time I checked I think there's about six of these devices on the market and they're all around the $150 price range this is an Android based device with Android 12 and this is the second device we've seen with a a 4 in 480p 4x3 aspect ratio screen in terms of other Hardware features we've got 4 gigs of lpddr4x RAM and 128 gigs of internal storage it also has a Micro SD card slot to expand that and then finally it does feature 5 GHz Wi-Fi as well as Bluetooth 5.0 now the next category are things that are unique to this device first we have a 5,500 milliamp hour battery that's bigger than the others and we'll give you an average about 8 or 9 hours of gameplay this one also features ergonomic grips built in we'll talk more about that here in a moment and then of course this is the only device within this chipset that has a vertical orientation so if you're looking for that game boy form factor this is it now I'm going to show off a lot of things in this video that are both good and bad but there are two bummers that stand out that I need to address the first is this device does not have an HDMI port now many others within this chipset do so it is kind of a bummer if you are looking to play this on a bigger screen your only option is to screencast it and that can cause some inherent delays and then finally I went into this in detail in my preview video but there is some over sharpening happening with this screen it is software related so if we get a software fixed down the line this could be fixed all the same those are two issues that I identified in my first video and they still remain here now in my preview video I did a whole unboxing experience but I got a second rg45 V in the mail this one's the gray model and so I'm going to go through the full experience again but this time around this one came with an SD card and so I want to go through that process in case you've never tried that before now a couple things I noticed about the gray model over the wood one that I showed in my preview video this one has a little bit different of a texture the plastic itself has a little bit of grit to it just like the previous model but has a more glossy finish and so while the wood one kind of had a soft matte feel this one's just a tiny bit slick I would still say that it's a very good plastic texture but it is a little bit different just a little bit shinier and honestly I think it's a great fit for this model so I have no complaints now like with the others this one has glossy buttons and they are monochromatic we'll talk more about the coloring here in a moment first I just want to re-emphasize here that this has been built with ergonomics in mind and that's not something that is often done with amernick products you can see on the back they've molded these new grips they're at a bit of an angle and they also have these little pinky indentations here at the bottom and the idea here is that you can grip them with your fingers instead of having that flat experience which is very typical with vertical handhelds and I got to say the ergonomics here work pretty well it definitely is more comfortable than most other vertical devices and because of the grips it certainly feels less cramped however I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that the design here just wasn't really complete it almost feels like the design team got about 75% of the way there you know they made these grips they kind of put them in an angle and then they said you know what that's good enough and so it's definitely an improvement here but I would not characterize it as being optimal now among this design there is one glaring flaw and that is the shoulder buttons I think the design here is good it's very easy to access and press those buttons but that kind of is the rub the L1 and R1 shoulder buttons are a little bit too easy to accidentally press with the sides of your fingers and as I demonstrated in my preview video there were many times when I was playing a game where all of a sudden I would accidentally press a button and it would messed up my gameplay this is not something that I've ever experienced in another vertical handheld which I think says something about this particular design so if anything I would say just be aware that that may happen and you may have to adjust the way that you hold it or play those certain games okay going back to the color thing here you know I only have two of the three models but all the same I did find that I had a preference between these two in particular and I found it kind of odd because I love wood model in fact the RG 351 V which is a previous vertical handheld that am bernick made it also had a wood color and that was my favorite and I still do like that idea of a wood device it just seems really odd however as soon as I unbox the gray one my opinion changed and that is I really like that clean look of the gray model it reminds me a lot obviously of a Game Boy DMG a lot of that has to do with the fact that the buttons are the same color and it just overall has a very clean look now the wood one is still really eye-catching you know if I just pull this out in a room people would be like like what are you doing with that wooden thing however there's just a couple things that make it odd number one are those colored buttons I actually prefer rainbow colored buttons in a lot of my different devices but it just doesn't make sense for me with a wooden one like this so if anything I think I would have preferred black buttons and I think it's going to be the same case with the transparent purple one this one also has rainbow colored buttons and it just looks a little bit odd so as much as I wanted to prefer the wood model over the gray one I think that the gray model here is the clear winner at least for me okay now let's talk about these software experience in case this is your very first handheld ever when you first turn it on it's going to have to go through a setup process and this is pretty easy you just basically have to choose your language and then let it run its course it's going to take a little bit less than 3 minutes altogether after that you'll be greeted with a typical Android environment where you see your apps on a front page now like I mentioned mine came with a Micro SD card this is 128 GB as you can see so what I'm going to do here is I'm going to put this card into the device and then just pretend like I've never used one of these before and see how far along I can can get and the process here is pretty simple after you put the card in there's a button on the left side just tap that and it'll bring up the Android Launcher or front end and after a moment you'll get a dialogue box that'll walk you through this setup process it's going to ask you to tap on the button that says confirm from there it's going to open up an app called retroarc it's going to ask for a few permissions to basically be able to access all of the games that are on your SD card so just go ahead and agree through all those prompts you'll see a bunch of text scrolling right here and after that stops you're good to go you can now navigate down to the bottom of the menu and S select the option that says quit retroarch and if all goes well it will now have recognized your card and all the games that are within from there you can navigate left or right between the different systems and then enter them by pressing the a button to start up a game I'm going to scroll through these different systems very quickly just so you get an idea of what you will find on board also bear in mind this is the 128 gig card there is a 256 model as well now at the most rudimentary level this is all you need to know you will press the a button to enter any of these systems then pick out a game and once you press a it'll start up that game from there once you're done playing that game you're going to press and hold that center button to bring you back to that home menu after that you can navigate to the next game you want to play and then start it right up you will get this little dialogue box asking you whether or not you want to go back to that game you were just playing or start up a new one but really that's basically it it is a pretty simple interface to get through and from a very basic standpoint if you want something pre-loaded with a bunch of games yes for the most part this is going to work many of your favorite classics will be available right there in the menu something like Sonic 2 and they've done a pretty good job with configuring everything for example with Game Boy you can see that they actually have it at the correct aspect ratio they also did a pretty good job with the various arcade systems so you will find all the Neo Geo games and then quite a few other fighting and beat them up games within both the Mame and final bur Neo catalogs and it does look like they're trying to improve their games list over time a great example is going to be Castlevania Symphony of the Night this is a game that used to ship with a Chinese version so it had Chinese text and then Japanese audio now it appears that they're shipping it with the English language version which is a great sign and there are a couple low-l features that they have within this front end for example they have three different styles this will change out the feel of the navigation system instead of scrolling through different pages of your consoles you can instead have a tile based setup in addition the front end has four different themes that you can choose from so if you want to have something with a little bit different of a design you can also choose that now in terms of customization there's not a lot going on here but if you have one design that you prefer over the other it's pretty easy to swap them out so when it comes down to it if this is your very first retro handheld you have no idea how to load up your own games and you just want to start playing from day one then yes buying a pre-loaded SD card will give you a pretty fair experience however I do have to warn you that the more you use it you're going to start seeing cracks in the overall design and build process let's walk you through some of those shortcomings to start when it comes to organizing their games list they are not in alphabetical order instead they've put a bunch of numbers in front of most of these systems and this can make it really hard to navigate instead of going to a specific letter to play a game that you want you'll have to memorize what number it is instead in addition many of these games list are incomplete for example the Super Nintendo catalog basically stops in the middle of the letter R for other systems the game's list is 100% incomplete for example with Nintendo 64 you have six different games to choose from and then same goes with like Sega Dreamcast you have four games here and Sega Saturn only has six so unless you only wanted to play some of the games you just saw you might be out of luck in addition some of the optimizations they've done with these emulators is not ideal a good example is going to be Sega Saturn for this one by default they set it up with a retroart core and it's not the most performant among them what that means is that no matter what game you play you're probably not going to be able to play it at full speed and that's a big bummer because if you use the Standalone Saturn emulator you would get many of these games to play at full speed no problem so the outof the-box experience will not be optimized for certain systems now thankfully this device does come with Google Play store so you can install your own apps and then run them that way we'll talk more about about that after we're done with this section when it comes to PlayStation 2 same thing here we have a very limited catalog and they have very much so cherry-picked the games that are going to run on the emulator and another thing they've done here is that they have tweaked and modified those settings to basically turn on all of the hacks so that the games appear to be playing at full speed for example they love showing off God of War II in their marketing materials they basically want to show how powerful the device is however they've turned on a bunch of hacks by default within the emulator options and as a result the game play itself is not going to feel feel very smooth at all and I think this kind of setup really takes away from the overall experience yes God of War II is playable but I wouldn't want to play it with the settings and finally when it comes to catalog they've also skimped very much so on the GameCube and Wii games and it makes sense this is only a 128 GB card so you can't put a ton of games on here they also have all these games set up to run the Dolphin mmgr 2 version by default and it's not a bad emulator but it uses a lot of hacks to try to get to full speed the thing is that the official Dolphin Emulator has gotten a lot of updates recently and so I prefer to use that one so what I'm trying to say about this catalog here is that yes there are a bunch of games pre-loaded on this card but it may not be the games that you actually want to play in addition the optimizations when it comes to the emulators are not as good as if you just did it yourself additionally once you do find a game that you want to play The Experience may not line up to what you expect for example with contra they're using a hacked version so as soon as your character dies he's actually going to start with the spread gun instead of the normal one and so this may not be great for you if you want a more authentic contra experience because you can't turn this off other games will come in a different language for example instead of Mega Man 2 you get Rockman 2 this is the Japanese version of the game and the gameplay here is identical to the English version but all the same if you want to read the text it's going to be a little bit hard in addition especially within the NES catalog there are a bunch of hacks in unlicensed games for example here this one is called Contra special 2 this looks like an NES Port version of contra 3 Alien Wars from the Super Nintendo but it looks pretty terrible if you ask me same thing with this one here here I'm pretty sure they never actually released Tekken 2 for the NES now another feature they've built into the amernick front end is a search function to bring this up you press the start button however you cannot do that within the global configuration you have to go into a specific system first so you can't just search for a Zelda game and then have every system show up you have to go specifically into a system and then search for the word Zelda however once you search for it within the system yeah it pops up just fine you can then choose the game and start it right off so this is a pretty easy way to mitigate the fact that they've numbered most of their games lists however one thing that's kind of funny about the Amber Nick system is that they always remove all the Mario games or at least any game that has the word Mario in it and I think it's their way of trying to avoid any sort of litigation from Nintendo but it's just kind of ironic so you're not going to be able to find Mario games on this device but you know you search for the other Nintendo properties like Kirby yeah those pop right up now the reason why I'm talking so much about this software experience is because it's one of the most common questions that I find in all these review videos people just want to buy a device and have a card and load load it all up and just be able to start up their games without having to do any extra work and as I showed yes at a very basic level that is going to work you put the card inside you will have some games to choose from however as I showed as well there are some flaws to this overall design and they really didn't Source these ROMs very well at the end of the day it's a very shady thing that amick has put all these pirated games on a card and are trying to upcharge that anyway the way I see it if they're going to be Shady like that the least they could do is actually get it right and unfortunately here they have not so long story short like with all my other videos I do recommend that you set this up yourself that includes finding your own ROM files obviously I'm not going to show you how to do that but it is pretty easy to do from there you need to find all your emulation apps and then tie it all together with a front-end experience luckily I have a bunch of written guides and videos that'll walk you through that process I'll leave the entire thing linked down below and I already went through and did that process on the wooden rg45 v as you can see right here I'm using a front end called daisho this is one of many that's available right now and essentially this will come combine all your systems together and then you can point it to your ROMs and then choose which emulator app you want to run them with from there it's just a matter of navigating through choosing your game and starting it right up the main difference here is that you get to choose and curate your own games yourself and you get to dictate which emulator opens them up so you have the most optimized experience and I'm not really going to show a lot of performance in this video here but if you watch my preview video you know that you can play up to GameCube and PS2 maybe about 50% of those games will play just fine if you want to get even better performance you can go in and start tweaking some settings then the number is going to creep up more to about 75% and that's pretty awesome now in addition to the emulation experience this is also an Android based device which means that you can play Android games however that experience is not as great as I was hoping it would be they have made some adjustments to the software so for example when trying to play game streaming the L2 and R2 buttons now work in a lot of their previous software it wouldn't work at all and that's really important when it comes to streaming a game that's going to be using those trigger buttons so I am happy to see that that experience has improved however there are still some issues with their initial software for example many games that do support controllers don't actually work with the controllers on the device and they do have a button mapping option within their software so that you can just kind of fake it but all the same I wish it just worked out of the box in addition there are some weird graphical things that are happening with certain games Diablo Immortal is a great example this one should work natively with the controls but they don't and then also you can see here the graphics are completely screwed so this is a game you should be able to run on this device but you cannot now thankfully there is a custom Android firmware available for a few of these devices it is called gamma OS I've made a couple videos about it already for example here is my RG 45m using the exact same chip in screen but with gamma OS and as you can see Diablo Immortal works just fine the controls and the screen look great so there are still some shortcomings when it comes to the Android software on the rg405 V thankfully the gamma wos developer has one of these devices so we may see gamma OS coming to this device here in the near future so that's my summary of the expected software experience now some other components things like performance Hardware ergonomics I covered all that in the preview video and so I don't want to beat it at horse instead I want to spend the rest of our time together here today talking about whether or not I think it's going to be worth buying this device compared to other ones on the market so we're going to start with a quick comparison of the four main contenders within this price point and chipset now these four devices are not the only ones that come with the same chipset and a similar price point there are other devices the RG 505 the paly x28 as well as the retroid pocket 3 plus metal Edition I've done videos on each of those and you can find them here on this channel but for now I want to focus really narrowly on these four devices because they're my favorite within this chipset and from a power perspective you can expect the exact same performance among all of these so we won't even touch upon it here in this review now before we get into the comparison one other thing I want to mention is that I do have a slight negative bias towards vertical handhelds as a primary device when it comes to smaller devices you know like a miu Mini Plus or an RG 35x XX I think those are just fine when it comes to a vertical form factor however if it's going to be your only handheld device for me personally I don't think a vertical is a very good fit however if you like vertical handhelds and you prefer them over the others then take a lot of this with a grain of salt because you might have a different opinion than me again I'm coming from a little bit of a negative bias especially when it comes to these vertical handhelds with that out of the way let's do our quick comparison it's kind of like a twoin two comparison because the RG 45m which is this smaller device right here has the exact same screen and controls as the rg45 V obviously it's also made by amernick meanwhile the retroid pocket 3 plus and the retroid pocket flip are a little bit similar as well they have the exact same screen and of course same performance now among all of these I think that the color and saturation of these panels is very good but a little bit better with the retroid products it's a little bit more saturated and I also like the color balance you can see that the purple here in Game Boy Advance is just a little bit more purple I would say that the Amber Nick products skew a little bit on the cool side that's why the purple looks a little a little bit more blue however if you only have these devices and you're not comparing them side by side it's going to look great no matter what so I don't think it's worth dwelling on the color balance right here I think it's just fine I think that the biggest difference between all of these is not going to be something like the color balance or the performance it's going to be the size and form factor and to start by looking at the RG 405m you can see it is a night and day difference when it comes to size to me the 405m size is a completely pocketable device it's one of my favorite devices to just kind of grab grab and go to me the 405 V is not even something that I would take out of the house it's so big that it's really more like a couch gaming or a bed gaming setup however there are some things that I like better on the 405 V than the 405m for example I prefer to have the d-pad up top with these systems in addition I'm not a huge fan of the inline shoulder buttons on this device I do appreciate the fact that they make the device very thin and pocketable and honestly with a device this small it's not like they're hard to press down on but all the same I do prefer stack shoulder buttons and the for 05 V gives me a closer experience than this one so the way I see it if size is a primary concern for you but you still want to have that 4-in display with a 4x3 aspect ratio I think it's a no-brainer between these two I would prefer the RG 405m I personally think that if you had both of these devices and you spent a lot of time on the go you're going to use the 405m a lot more it's just going to be something you can throw in your pocket which means you're going to have more opportunities to actually play it and it's also a pretty similar experience with the retroid pocket 3 plus this one is also really nice in thin and I also would consider it to be pocketable it is quite a bit wider than these other devices because it has a 16x9 aspect ratio display and this can actually be a pretty big Advantage depending on the type of games you want to play for example if you prefer PlayStation Portable games or you want to do some game streaming or Android games or maybe some light Nintendo switch emulation then the 3+ is going to be the best fit it also has the d-pad up top and stack shoulder button so if those factors are important to you this one might be a better fit than the 405 V now if you're looking for a vertical handheld and you might very well be if you clicked on this video then I think that the retroid pocket flip is going to be your closest approximation other than the rg45 V this one has a clam shell form factor which means it's going to close up pretty tightly compared to the amck device however the added benefit here is that when you open it up it's actually quite a bit bigger so it makes it both portable but then also kind of luxurious in the fact that you have plenty of space to work with so if you are looking for a more vertical orientation but want to have a roomier experience while still keeping it a little bit portable then the retroid pocket flip might actually be a great fit for you and I've done a couple different videos on that device and so I would recommend checking them out here on this channel so here's the way I see it there are a ton of different options within this chipset and these four here are my favorite although the others are still pretty good and if you already have any of these other devices I don't think it makes a lot of sense to spend about $150 to get the 45v in particular even if you prefer vertical handhelds that's a lot of money to spend just to have a different form factor however if this is your very first time buying a a device within this chipset I wouldn't recommend the RG 45v as your starter handheld instead I would probably say the retroid pocket 3 plus first than the RG 45m and those two I think are the best General starter devices among this chipset however if you have a form factor preference for example you prefer clamshells then obviously the retroid pocket flip is going to be a good fit and then same thing now with the rg405 V if you want to have a vertical handheld you want something very ergonomic and Powerful this is it right here and the overall EXP here is not bad there are some flaws here and there but all the same I think that if you do spend the money to get this device and you prefer to have a vertical handheld I think you're going to be pretty impressed and happy with your overall purchase as always when it comes down to it it's going to be up to you and your personal preference especially when it comes to form factor because other than this vertical kind of Game Boy aesthetic there's nothing really new about the rg45 V all the same I think there are a lot of people out there who have been waiting for something with this specific shape and size and so in that regard yeah this might be a great upgrade for me personally I don't think we found the perfect device within this chipset and price range if I was King for a Day what I would really like to have is a plastic version of the ambern RG 405m but of course if I'm King then I'm also going to make a couple tweaks number one I'm going to swap out that left analog stick with the d-pad and then of course instead of that heavy aluminum shell I would prefer lightweight plastic it would probably bring down the price as well additionally I would have them add an HDMI output unfortunately it's not here on this device or the 405 V additionally I would change out these shoulder buttons instead of having them in line like this I would rather have them stacked and it just so happens that there are designs that you can print yourself with a 3D printer that gives the RG 45m stack shoulder buttons so amberi if you're listening you should really download this file and see what you can do and as we start wrapping up things right here yes the 45v is an excellent device and if you don't have anything that's this powerful and you want to kind of upgrade to a larger and more comfortable handheld that's in a vertical orientation then yes this is going to be a great upgrade however if you already have a device with the t618 chipset I really don't see it being worth that $150 after shipping to get this one in your hands I think the best way to describe it is that over this past week I enjoyed using the rg45 V however as soon as this video is done I'm going to be putting this device up on a shelf and I'm probably not going to grab it very often other than when it comes to testing and size comparisons with other devices so let me know what you think in the comments down below is this the device to get at that $150 price point or are you going to wait for something better and as you know if you wait a month or two there's obviously going to be something else released as always thank you for watching and be sure to like And subscribe if you found this helpful and we will see you next time happy [Music] game

Channel: Retro Game Corps

Views: 231,586

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Id: TcsPADETfB0

Length: 25min 51sec (1551 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 08 2023