My Top 5 Retro Handhelds Right Now (under $150)

[Music] hey everybody this is russ from retro gamecore so yesterday i achieved a really significant milestone for myself and for this youtube channel we reached 50 000 subscribers now if anyone had asked me a year ago if i was going to start up a youtube channel let alone have 50 000 subscribers i would have told them they were crazy but here we are and you know it's kind of amazing that this retro handheld community exists in the first place and that we've all kind of congregated together here on youtube and other platforms and while i'd love to say that the growth of my channel is the result of hard work and dedication and a certain artistic flair somebody recently commented that the growth of my channel actually coincides with the amount of times that i show my cat chicken on the screen and honestly i can't argue with that that's right so really i want to thank everyone in this community for helping me and supporting me as we grow and move forward but also i've got to give mad props to chicken too so what are we gonna do in this video we're actually gonna do something new and i'm actually gonna rank out my top five retro handhelds as of right now and we're filming this here in mid-july of 2021 and always keep in mind that there's new devices coming out all the time and i reserve the right to change my mind and i think you'll find that this top 5 may surprise you if you've watched some of my previous videos because i've done a lot of reflection these past few days and realize that some of my favorite devices are not the ones i expected at all so we'll go over my top 5 retro handhelds and i'll also be hosting a giveaway near the end of this video as well so without any further delay let's jump into it now to start off let's go over some of the parameters that i decided on number one there were certain devices i decided not to feature as my top five for example i decided to not use first party devices like the sony ps vita and even though the vita is probably one of my favorite handhelds altogether this one needs to be hacked and there's a ton of different other workarounds you have to do to get it up and running and so for that reason i decided it doesn't really fit into this top five now another argument can be made that you can just take a phone and put a controller on it and all of a sudden you have a retro handheld and that's true to an extent but at the same time i do think there's something special about having a device that's dedicated to gaming so while i do think that using an android phone like this google pixel 3 is a great solution to be able to play all the way up through gamecube games we're going to stick with dedicated devices in this video and finally i tried to keep the price down to under 150 so a device like this one the gpd xd plus which somebody recently donated to me for a review it's a little too expensive this thing costs 250 and it's basically a cross between a nintendo ds and an android phone and i'll do a review of this later but for now it's not going to be considered in this top five okay let's get started number five on the list is the pow kitty v90 this device costs about 40 dollars has a clamshell design much like the game boy advance sp has a volume rocker usb c and headphone ports and a user replaceable battery the design itself is pretty bare bones but i appreciate that it has stereo speakers and the controls are pretty good a bit mushy but i like that now you can put a custom firmware on this that'll allow you to have easier navigation through your systems and games and in general this thing really shines with 16-bit and 8-bit systems but it can also play a little bit of ps1 as well i think in terms of talking about the value of 40 dollars here this is going to give you the most bang for your buck and it's super easy to throw in your pocket too all right number four on the list is the rgb 350m now this device is made out of aluminum has dual usb c ports and an hdmi out as well i really like the analog sticks and the face buttons stereo speakers dual micro sd cards and a wonderful 640x480 display that runs at a 4x3 aspect ratio this makes it a really nice system for ps1 and below gameplay and the premium feel of this aluminum shell is really impressive even though this is one of the more expensive devices on this list it's about 130 dollars you definitely feel like you're holding something that's premium now that being said the user interface on this is not quite as intuitive as something on the other devices we'll see later on this list but overall if you want to play classic systems this is going to be a really good bet okay so for number three on the list we need to actually talk about three different systems and that's because they all run the same chipset and they all have the same kind of horizontal layout so i'll talk about each of these real quick first is the pow kitty rgb10 this one is the smallest of the devices that use this chipset making it the most pocketable now this one only has a single analog stick and only one mono speaker and the device i'm actually showing here is a modded version it has a metal case and oca laminated screen that's not actually typical for this device and the modded one here cost 135 dollars so that's pretty pricey for what it can do but i do really love this one up next is the qi game force now this device has a 640 by 480 display which is really nice but it suffers from bad analog sticks as well as wobbly face buttons but it has a really nice chunky feel to it and a very unique design and like all the other devices in this range it runs emulation station which makes navigating games a breeze but the biggest downside of this device is it doesn't have a laminated panel which means there's a space between the glass screen protector and the display itself and it's really hard to revert back to this display after you're used to something that's been laminated so unfortunately this one is not my favorite of this category so which one is my favorite this one here the amberneck rg 351p now there's also metal version of this one it's about 40 more expensive but i really like these devices they're really well designed they have a volume wheel which the other ones don't stereo speakers and pretty good shoulder buttons unfortunately no hdmi now this one like the rgb 10 has a 3x2 aspect ratio running at 480x320 resolution that makes it absolutely perfect for game boy advanced gameplay and it also fits psp games fairly well now unfortunately if you're going to try to play classic systems like super nintendo which natively run at a 4x3 aspect ratio you either have to stretch things out to fill the screen or you have to pair it down and have bigger black bars on the side not the end of the world but this screen definitely is lower resolution than something like a 640 by 480 display speaking of which let's go to number two this is the amberneck rg351v now in previous assessments i never really considered this one better than the rg 351p part of that has to do with the corners they had to cut for this design for example a single analog stick mono speaker and then shoulder buttons in the back which are not very ergonomic unfortunately but all things considered this thing has won me over a lot of that has to do with the 4x3 aspect ratio and the 640x480 high-res resolution when it comes to playing games that natively run at that resolution like nintendo or super nintendo this thing is just a dream to play and obviously game boy and game boy color games just are very fitting on this but plenty of other systems look really great on this too for example the dreamcast and ps1 both had a 4x3 aspect ratio and so because of that these games just look incredible so despite its flaws this one has actually bumped up over the rg 351p in my favorites list when i first heard about this device i didn't think i was going to like it at all and slowly over the months it has creeped up to my number two spot so what's number one again we're going to need to talk about a specific category of devices and these are the five inch devices here now the first one to come out was the odroid ghost super and this is a pretty good device but it does have some flaws for example it has very big bezels around the screen and i've had to do a lot of mods to improve it for example i had to add new conductive rubbers to make the buttons feel better and i had to swap out the analog sticks with ps vita analog sticks and even then the controls on this just aren't that great as much as i love the screen and the fact that it has a full usb port on it the flaws are just too much for me which leads to my number one device here and this is the pow kitty rgb10 max it's basically a clone of the odroid go super with a bunch of improvements to it for example it got rid of those bezels around the screen it has much better controls and true analog sticks from the nintendo switch and while it doesn't have a full usb port it does have two usbc ports as well as built-in wi-fi now unfortunately even though it looks like it has stereo speakers it's actually still a mono speaker like the odroid go super but the screen on this device much like with the rg 351 v really won me over this is a 16 by nine resolution display which you wouldn't think is very good for retro gaming but it actually works really well all things considered for example psp is going to run at native aspect ratio because that's a 16 by 9 system and even something that's a little less wider like the game boy advance is still going to look really good on this device too and because it's widescreen you can play ds games with both screens side by side which is really handy and even when you're playing something that natively runs at 4x3 depending on the firmware you're using you actually can use these nice system bezels which fill up the blank space on the screen and makes everything come together very nicely on top of that this system can support widescreen hacks for example widescreen dreamcast games work wonderfully and a lot of this is thanks to the retro oz firmware which is the one i recommend for this device on top of that there are a bunch of ports that can work natively in widescreen for example you could play through the first diablo with a beautiful widescreen display you can play all sorts of doom mods for example here is call of duty brutal doom and while it's a mouthful it's a lot of fun to play a modded widescreen doom in a handheld device is something you have to see in real life in order to really experience this device can also run the super mario 64 port in widescreen at 60 frames per second in other words it actually runs better than the switch version which only runs at 30 frames per second you can also run ports of sonic 1 2 and sonic cd and they also run at 60 frames per second and in widescreen it's kind of amazing and i have to say the single game that won me over with this device is shovel knight this has also been ported over and it plays in widescreen natively and this has probably been one of my favorite platforming experiences of the past 20 years it's a lot of fun so one thing to be aware of with the rgb 10 max is that it has this soft rubber coating and with the black model in particular it picks up all the oils from your hands so every couple weeks or so i would recommend wiping it down but i wanted to show you how bad it can get if you don't wipe it down for a while so besides this and the mono speaker everything else on this device works wonderfully so yeah this one's my favorite the rgb10 max it finally beat out my favorite one for a long time which was the rg 351p and somehow along the way the rg 351v snuck up there as well okay let me show off the things i want to give away first is this one here is the palkitty a19 now unfortunately i never got around to actually doing a review video on this but it's basically a retro pocket one that doesn't boot into the android system it does have its own online game market if you're into that kind of thing and in general this is just basically the interface you're going to be using as you navigate through the games it's a fairly powerful system it can run all the way up through psp pretty well but honestly i just didn't really like how blocky it was and these six face buttons are really good for fighting games and not much else another device i want to give away is the gkd mini and i did a full review on this one and i liked it okay but honestly i think that other people are going to appreciate this more than me it has these nice shoulder buttons on the back and you can actually play it sideways if you want to play vertical games overall it's a neat little device that honestly looks a lot better than it feels so i also want to give away my gameser x2 bluetooth controller now this is a telescopic controller that will work with any smartphone that uses bluetooth you basically just put the phone inside connect it via bluetooth and away you go this will work for both apple and android now the reason i'm giving this one away is because i have one that has a usbc connection so i don't need the bluetooth one and i do want to note in my review i did detect some lag with this device so there may be some issues with it or it may have just been user error who knows and another telescopic controller that i'd like to give away is this razer kishi now this one has a usbc input so it's only made for android phones but it works the same way as the other one you basically just put the phone in between and then you can instantly start playing your games personally i just didn't like the feel of this one that much i definitely prefer the game sir controllers over this one but if you like it it's yours finally i also want to give away the super console x pro now this device is pre-loaded with a bunch of different games on it already you can run everything up through psp and dreamcast fairly well and even though i only see one controller here in the box i'll put in two controllers when i ship it out to you and i like this one a lot but i just have a lot of these boxes sitting at the house so i decided to give this one away so really that's it for the giveaway all you have to do is follow the link that i have in the video description and it'll show you how to sign up i'll leave the giveaway open for about a week all right everyone that's it for this video i really wanted to smash several things together into one video here number one i wanted to thank everyone for your support in reaching 50 000 subscribers number two i wanted to talk about my top five games in the retro handheld space right now in this summer of 2021 and i also wanted to give away a few of the things that were collecting dust here at the house as always thanks so much for watching let me know if you have any questions in the comments below and be sure to like and subscribe if you found this helpful and we will see you next time happy gaming

Channel: Retro Game Corps

Views: 98,548

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Id: P25GuqYjluM

Length: 13min 4sec (784 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 22 2021