Miyoo Mini Plus review after 100 hours of gameplay - Best budget handheld?

let me tell you about why I got into the Retro handheld gaming Niche you see prior to this year I wasn't really playing any of the games that I grew up with which is odd to think about now because it's literally like all I do now don't get me wrong I was playing video games but I was mainly just playing Modern games and in fact I still do play Modern games I'm not saying there's anything wrong with them I still play Apex I still play a bunch of switch games but the thing is though these modern games that there's just something that they're missing that doesn't give me the same sense of adventure and excitement that I used to get from the games growing up I wanted to relive the days of playing the video games that I grew up with and also playing the games that came out around the time that I was growing up but I didn't get a chance to play now if you're like me you probably lost a lot of your physical collection in my case I lost almost all of it I could emulate these games on a computer but it just doesn't feel right that's where the Retro handheld comes in finally a way to play the classics in a form factor that makes sense which brings me to today's video the review of the Mayu Mini Plus in my first impressions and unboxing video of the Mayu Mini Plus I told you that I think I found my dream retro handheld mainly because of the strong nostalgic Vibes it provides compared to the other retro handles I owned at that point and after playing this device for about 100 hours at this point I can confidently say that this is still the case on top of it being a beautiful device for a great price point by the way it has a really strong Community backing it this is very evident in the the operating system it uses onion OS now I have a lot to say about the Mayu Mini Plus I'm really excited to get into this in-depth review so without further Ado let's get into the review of my 100 hours playing the Mayu Mini Plus and what I think about [Music] it on screen you'll see the specs for the Mayo Mini Plus one big upgrade from the original Mayu mini is the Wi-Fi if you like to play with retro achievements turn on like I do you'll be happy about that plus having the internal Wi-Fi makes updating the console much easier which I'll get more into later on in this video the 3.5 in IPS display looks great on this device I especially like how they maximize the screen size real estate the screen extends from edge to edge providing you a very nice screen size for a console that is still relatively small the abxy buttons a glossy finish which is not honestly my favorite but it still looks very nice I honestly prefer a more matte or rubbery kind of feel to face buttons but that's completely a personal preference I realize that most consoles and most controllers have a glossy finish so that is more of the norm I have a little bit of a hot take on the d-pad I'm honestly not a fan of it I think it protrudes a little bit too far out of the system and I find that changing directions on this d-pad is not very fluid when I talk about the gameplay I'll show you exactly what I mean also on the front you'll see a button in the center this is the game switcher Button as well as the hot key for the emulation controls I love the game switcher option which I'll talk more about later in this video on the back we have our stacked shoulder buttons I talk about this in the gameplay section of the video again and I'll admit the R1 and L1 shoulder buttons are not that comfortable to use it kind of reminds me of playing on the Game Boy advanced SP where you kind of have to claw your fingers to play it on the top we have the power button and on the side we have our up and down volume buttons I much prefer having buttons for volume instead of a slider on the bottom we have our headphone jack a USBC adapter for charging and a Micro SD slot that you'll use to install onion OS and your ROMs I'm a stickler for quality of builds for when it comes to my retro handhelds now I'm no expert on different kinds of plastics and what was the really the best quality but based on my own experience and overall feel of this console to me it feels like a very durable plastic for instance when I handle my retr pocket 3 plus I'm nervous that if I drop it I'm going to end up breaking it with the Mayu Mini Plus I don't have that concern at all especially when I put the screen protector on it I can be pretty rough with this console without worrying about damaging it I also like the texture of this particular plastic it's more grippy which makes the device even less likely to be damaged from me dropping as for the color obviously I went with the transparent purple which I think looks amazing I want to address the size real quick when I was purchasing the Mayu Mini Plus I was also looking at the original Mayu mini despite it being not available anywhere something that people really liked about the Mayu mini original is the Charming small size the size itself adds to an appeal it's almost like a novelty kind of thing I was nervous that the Mayu Mini Plus would be kind of too big putting it out of that may mini Charming appeal category but honestly I think the size is perfect in fact I don't think I would enjoy it that much if it was smaller this device is still very pocketable and portable the screen size in my opinion is perfect any smaller and I would be straining my eyes a bit just to look at those tiny Sprites I installed onion OS on my Mayu Mini Plus onion OS is the gold standard when it comes to operating systems for this device when your myom Mini Plus first arrives you'll see a theme that looks like onos but really it's just a theme that they put over the stock operating system what you want to do is install on OS and it's pretty simple just follow a guide online I recommend like always Retro Game cores guide FYI Mac users when installing onion OS you'll need a Micro SD card that is formatted to Fat 32 not ex fat Mac being the kind of computer that likes to Hold Your Hand will not format SD cards larger than 32 GB to Fat 32 because ex fat is more advanced for the speed of like writing and reading files and whatnot and honestly not many devices require a fat 32 format Mayu mini however does require it a PC will let you format the SD card however you want Mac will only let you format to Fat 32 for 32 GB cards or smaller however if you purchase a larger card like I did there is a workaround i scour the internet for a solution since I don't own a PC at the moment I know I know I need to get one but honestly the build is kind of expensive okay I found this Reddit post which had the answer I was looking for all you need to do is download Raspberry Pi imaging software and you can format those larger micro SD cards no problem the setup process was pretty straightforward as I said I put on some of my favorite games and it was time to start gaming before I tell you about the games I played and tested out on the Mayu Mini Plus I I did want to share a few things about onion OS first of all onion OS has my favorite UI as of today one thing that I find awesome is the fact that you can change the theme to all these different options I love how retro this theme in particular feels but as you can see there's a bunch more look even Tech twe made one second I'm a huge fan of the Simplicity of the UI one of the main complaints I had about the Retro pocket 3 plus was how it kind of reminded me of playing on a cell phone with a gam pad there are a lot of settings and different emulators you need to figure out how to download and use in order to get most out of the system the May Mini Plus with onion OS installed has everything set up for you right off the bat and again Simplicity look at the main menu when you boot it up it only has four options I can't stress enough how great this OS is I should also mention that recently onion OS rolled out an update updating onion is simply done through the device itself through this update they added a couple things like the ability to scrape box art for your games and DS gameplay through drastic as well as Pico 8 just another example of how onion OS truly is amazing one issue that I had with onion OS had to do with the Wi-Fi now this could be a hardware issue but I'm pretty confident it's a software issue basically sometimes when I turn on the device it wouldn't register that I had the Wii on it would sometimes take like 30 seconds all the way up to 5 minutes sometimes I would even turn it on and it wouldn't register the wi-fi at all until I reset the system I scoured the internet for an answer and I finally came across a Reddit post which said something along the lines of you can't have special characters in your password this screws something up well I did have special characters in my password so I changed the Wi-Fi password and actually haven't had that issue since then something I just wanted to point out talked about the specs we talked about onion now to the good part the game play again I put in like 100 or so hours of gameplay to this device bias which means that I've beaten several games I've played a bunch more and throughout all these game sessions I learned a lot about the little quirks of the system as well as how in general it controls so let's get into the game play the first game I played and beat on the Mayo Mini Plus was The Legend of Zelda Oracle of Seasons a classic Zelda Game Boy Color game that I really cherish to this day no surprise here it played perfectly fine without any issues following the Legend of Zelda Oracle of Seasons I played its counterpart Oracle of Ages another game I cherished greatly and possibly enjoyed even more than Oracle of Seasons what's interesting about these games which totally slipped my mind back in the day is that they follow very different play Styles Oracle of Seasons is more combat heavy and Oracle of Ages is more puzzle heavy combat and puzzles are a large part of the Zelda series so it makes sense that these games which are supposed to be different pieces of an overall puzzle focus on separate aspects of these Zelda series Staples one thing I should point out about halfway through these games the a button on my Mayu mini just started sticking ever so slightly this has not affected Gameplay at all at least yet but it's been a little bit annoying I generally keep my hands clean when I play on this device so I don't think has anything to do with oil or Grime getting trapped in there I just pressed the button too many times and now it sticks ever so slightly it's almost impossible to show on camera because again it's a very slight change and it's hardly noticeable but something I should still point out another thing I'll mention is the d-pad I'll be honest it's not the best d-pad I've used when inputting quick directional changes the d-pad controls are not as precise when compared to my other go-to handle at the moment the Retro pocket 3 plus this is evident when I need to quickly change directions and I have to sort of roll my finger from like an up direction to a right direction I'll need to be more purposeful with my thumb movements to get a true right direction instead of a diagonal up and right direction I think this has to do with how far the d-pad protrudes from the device next I decided to take on on another one of my childhood Treasures Golden Sun 2 holy cow I forgot how long this game was I'll be honest I didn't finish the game but I got pretty far about 31 hours in if you haven't played any of the Golden Sun series before aside from a great story this game has a really fun battle mechanic with their unique dingon system making for addicting gameplay not much to say here about performance on the May Mini Plus except for the fact that GBA looks really nice on this console next I tried out Castlevania Aros Saro a game which I've never played before while playing Castlevania Aros Saro I started to realize that I wasn't a huge fan of the placement of the R1 and L1 shoulder buttons the shoulder buttons are pretty important for this game and I felt like my fingers were straining when I had to press them quickly for combat this reminds me of what it's lik to have to claw your fingers in order to hit the shoulder buttons on the Game Boy Advance SP now I realize this is partly due to just the form factor of a vertical handheld there's not really much you can do here in between games I played some Kirby Superstar for the SNES as you can imagine SNES played perfectly fine finally it wouldn't be an 8bit Bongo review if I didn't play some good old Pokemon this time I decided to play through Pokemon Sapphire I even tried to do the self challenge Nuzlocke this was the first time I've ever tried a Nuzlocke and I got to say it really added a level of challenge that made the game really fun I tested out a couple other consoles here's the footage [Music] [Music] I [Music] what I got [Music] [Music] definely some graphical issues playing on the May mini I wasn't having this ISS while playing on the computer but that I'm supposed to be holding a present over my head right [Music] now there's a couple other features I'd also like to talk about the Mayo Mini Plus first off the game switcher this is actually a really handy tool all you do is press the middle button and a safe state will be created for the game then you enter into this game switcher menu so that you can quickly switch to another game next the sleep mode function I'm actually a huge fan of how the Mayo Mini Plus with onion OS uses the sleep function it creates a safe State before entering sleep mode this is great because with other retro handles I own sometimes I would put the device into sleep mode and then when re-entering the game it would crash on rare occasions causing me to lose data not only does the May Mini create that save backup but also I've never experienced a crash from their sleep mode function with the sleep function the way it is combined with the game switcher you end up with a device that is really simple to turn off and on Switching games as needed this makes the Mayu Mini Plus a very plug andplay kind of system which I know a lot of people care about you will need to install onion OS up front but once that's set up you're good to go I appreciate you getting this far into the video I hope that the hundred of hours that I put gaming into the myam Mini Plus really resonates in this review who is this console for well here's the thing if you want a Powerhouse system that can play stuff like GameCube and PS2 and more than that you're not going to get that from the my mini plus you're going to need something a little more powerful like for example the Retro poaka 3 plus but if you're looking to just play the true retro stuff like NES game boy Game Boy Advance SNES Sega Genesis this is a really great device for you it does all of that plus some more and honestly it's pretty cheap now there are a couple small things that you're going to have to deal with like having to claw your fingers to press the shoulder buttons but honestly every retro handheld has their small little problems it's really not that big of a deal this device is really my go-to companion for retro handels I just toss in my pocket it's very durable and I don't really have to worry about it you know breaking or whatever and I take it everywhere with me if I'm in a waiting room if I'm sitting at a bus in the car whatever it is I'm playing on this device because it's so simple to just pick up and start playing and it just looks great and it feels great in the hands also what really makes a shine is onion OS this is by far as of right now the best operating system that I've played on a retro handheld it's got so much like clever thought put into it it's a very simple system and every time I boot it up I just get such a great feeling playing this device now with that being said if you're looking for a retro handheld that can play non 3D retro games perfectly fine and for affordable price and have a strong backing from a community as well as an amazing onion OS then this is really the device for you I highly recommend it I think you'll enjoy playing it that being said I really appreciate you watching this video without further Ado that's it for it catch you on the flippy flop

Channel: 8Bit Bongo

Views: 36,273

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Id: JnT3nCVOmJo

Length: 17min 57sec (1077 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 23 2023