Pocket 4 Pro One Month Review, Is It The Best $199 Handheld You Can Buy Right Now?

what's going on everybody it's ETA Prime back here again today we're going to be taking an updated look at the allnew retroid pocket 4 Pro so since my initial review it's been about 30 days at the time of this video going live so obviously I've had a lot of time to spend with this device and recently I noticed that a lot of people started getting their shipments in for their retroid pocket 4 or the 4 Pro so I figured I'd go ahead and do my full review here and so far it's been a great little handheld for Android gaming cloud gaming PC streaming and especially emulation first things first love the form factor not much has changed from the pocket 3 or the pocket 3 plus we've got a very small design it is pocketable hence the name retroid pocket but we've got a massively upgraded CPU and GPU combo here round back we do have analog linear triggers and uh the throw here is really nice comes in very handy for racing games the whole unit is constructed to plastic so obviously it feels like a plastic device but we do have Hall based analog sticks up here these are the the smaller analog sticks and really due to the size constraints of the handheld itself they had to go with these smaller ones but they work out really well buttons bit smaller than some other handhelds it hasn't bugged me at all and when it comes to the d-pad it actually works out quite well for this it's using Dome switches underneath it I kind of wish it was a bit larger now they do have a bit more room here to go with a larger d-pad it does feel a bit smaller to me but there's no doubt it's actually a pretty decent d-pad here for fighting games and Platformers and this does come with 128 GB of internal storage but we do have a micro SD card slot on the bottom along with USB type-c and on the 4pr version USB type-c down here does support video out plus we've got a 3.5 mm audio jack for plugging in your headphones and of course it definitely is a smaller handheld so if you've got larger hands it might feel a bit crammed but luckily it's very very light so you can actually kind of offset that by not holding it so tightly usually I like these handhelds when they rest in my palm but when we're working with something with more of a cramped controller layout it's a bit hard to do that with bigger hands when it comes to the screen here I think it looks really good for the type of handheld we have it's a 4.7 in IPS with up to 500 nits of brightness and a resolution of 1334 by 750 it is a 60 HZ panel but it's not a top-of-the-line IPS or AMOLED or anything like that either way for the price I think they did a good job choosing this display here and first and foremost this this is an Android handheld as you can see we've got a basic Android layout full access to Google Play right out of the box you can always disable this if you don't want a Google install but I personally like using a different launcher I've always used the uh TV pro launcher here just makes it really easy to get through all of my Standalone games and Standalone emulators but they've also included their own emulation front end buil in which is very very easy to set up it's a bit more basic than others on Google Play and you can always install a third party emulation front end if you wanted to but this will definitely get you by again very easy to set up kind of gives you a walk through once you boot it up for the first time you can install everything on the internal storage or a Micro SD card it'll scan download all of your box art metadata for the games you can set up Standalone emulators or retro Arch it's really up to you and to tell you the truth I really haven't even set up a second or a third party emulation front end on this I've personally just been using their built-in retroid launcher here so so basically if you're going to get into one of these handhelds here and you're used to Android you're going to be right at home it's basically an Android device with controllers attached and with this newer version we've got a much more powerful CPU and GPU now that's the next thing I wanted to talk about just overall performance here this is powered by the mediatech dimensity 1100 we've got an 8 core CPU here four a78 cores running at 2.6 GHz and four a55 cores running at 2 GHz plus the GPU is a Mali G b77 mc9 up to 836 MHz in terms of how much more power it has than the retroid pocket 3 plus I did run some benchmarks on both the devices plus I wanted to throw the Snapdragon 8 gen1 in here just to give you a little bit of reference because the 8 gen1 phones used or unlocked on eBay are getting pretty cheap and you can always build your own emulation or gaming device if you wanted to so what I did here was run and22 on all of these devices the pocket 3 plus coming in with a 2 31,43 and keep in mind that has the uniso t618 CPU when it comes to the pocket 4 Pro we got a 72738 and on the Snapdragon 8 gen 1 with sufficient cooling you can get over a million points with an 2u but this doesn't tell the whole story because we have individual scores to take a look at and I just went with overall CPU score and overall GPU score CPU score on the pocket 3 plus 7 3,939 pocket 4 Pro 26,586 and as you can see the Snapdragon 8 gen 1 is over 300,000 here and finally GPU this is really going to make her break a handheld device when it comes to gaming at higher resolutions or gaming in general with newer 3D games pocket 3 plus 42,900 pocket 4 Pro 225,000 one is beaten them both out by quite a bit so when it comes down to it I mean if you were looking to upgrade from the pocket 3 or the pocket 3 plus it's definitely an awesome upgrade when it comes to CPU and GPU performance for sure next thing I wanted to show off was some native Android gaming with this device and uh we do have some performance settings that we can utilize here from the drop- down we've got a balanced mode performance mode or high performance mode and in high performance mode obviously you're going to get the best out of this unit we've also got a couple different f modes that we can use Smart which will adjust it accordingly or sport which does get a bit louder but obviously it's going to keep it nice and cool and personally I leave it in auto mode or smart mode and they've also added some extra useful features like an onscreen key mapper we've got an onscreen FPS display we can clear the memory up from here everything you want in a little gaming handheld is in their performance menu swiping from the side while you're in any game so the first game we're testing out here is Asphalt 9 just one that I've always gone to we're maxed out here with the graphics I think we've got three different settings that we can do so we're in High Fidelity mode right now or the best looking mode and it's running at 60 FPS I know it might be a bit hard to see that frame counter on screen but all of the Native Android games that have tested so far run really well here's devil made Cry peak of combat we're at high settings not the highest there's actually a lot of graphic settings with this newer one 60 FPS and it's running at 60 another one I tested in my first look video was ginch and impact that one's more suited for low or lowest 60 or you could go to medium 30 if you wanted to I believe in that first video I also showed off Call of Duty mobile running and with something like inchin impact you will have to use that onscreen key mapper until they give us native Android controls for that game but there's still a lot of games on the market that will support this controller here's Diablo Immortal we're at medium settings 60fps not bad at all and again I mean everything that I've tested native Android games has run flawlessly on the pocket 4 [Laughter] Pro next thing I wanted to show off was a little bit of cloud gaming I've tested out GeForce now but I figured I'd go with Game Pass here so if you have a subscription to Game Pass you can always use their XBox cloud gaming I think that's what they're calling it the retroid pocket 4 Pro does have Wi-Fi 6 built in so streaming from your local PC is definitely a treat and it's kind of hit or miss with cloud gaming on any device some days it might work better than others but I mean we've got more than enough here with this device to handle it as long as their servers and your internet connection is going to allow you to stream properly so yeah retroid pocket 4 game streaming cloud gaming Android gaming awesome but one of the main reasons somebody's going to pick one of these up is for emulation in this video we're not going to be testing the lower-end stuff this is going to run all of your NES Neo Geo Game Boy Advance it's going to do DS it'll do N64 without an issue even upscale so what I wanted to show off was some GameCube Wii PSP and some PS2 here's GameCube using the Dolphin Emulator and with this you do get something known as dolphin handheld so it's a modified version of the Dolphin Emulator and in some cases the original or the official dolphin build may work better but I went through and tested a bunch of games with Dolphin handheld because this actually allows you to downscale a little more I'm actually at 0.6x resolution and with a lot of these games it does help out given that we've got a smaller lower resolution screen doesn't look too bad on here downscale just a bit under native but yeah so far I've actually had a pretty decent time with Gamecube using the Dolphin Emulator a lot of the Wii games that I like to play with a controller also function very well but it doesn't mean that it's going to run every single GameCube game at full speed real quick here's some Wii we've got Sonic Colors this natively ran at 30 FPS using the Vulcan back in with this one another one I tested was tatsunoko versus Capcom that's kind of one of my go-to fighting games always has been and it does run at full speed here 0.6x resolution using the Vulcan back in but when I moved over to F0 GX didn't have great luck so I went through and I tested this with Dolphin handheld and the official build it actually seemed like the official build worked a little better but I captured footage with the handheld version either way sometimes you're at full speed sometimes when there's lots of particles lots of characters on screen you'll see it kind of dip down it is a bit hit or miss when it comes to GameCube emulation on the dimensity 1100 but one thing this actually really shines at is PSP emulation given the foreign Factor here this definitely works out out really well buen back in 4X resolution using the Standalone version of pp SS Sega rally Revo originally ran at 30 FPS there are ways to unlock this but I just left it right there at 30 4X not a problem to run this even the harder to emulate games that struggle on Lower in handhelds and chip sets run at full speed here's chains of Olympus bulking back in I dropped it down to 3x resolution we're not using any kind of modifications in the background no frame skip or anything like that so if you're looking for a good PSP ham hel the pocket 4 Pro definitely has you covered and the final thing I wanted to take a look at was some PS2 emulation and this was really impressive I'm using a modified version of ether sx2 it's a patched version known as nether sx2 little bit of modifications here and there especially when it comes to controller configurations but for the most part A lot of the stuff that I've tested has run at 1X resolution using the buul and back end kind of just like GameCube and Wii it's still might be a bit Hit or Miss but the next one I tested was one of my favorite rally games of all time calling McCrae rally 3 for PS2 we're at 1X resolution running perfectly fine and it does look good even though we're at 1X on this display and finally God of War 2 now I got to say that retroid has pushed out a couple updates since my initial review one of them was kind of focused on performance and fixing a screen issue they had it was a little Green Tinted or blue tinted however you looked at it totally fixed here and I think performance was definitely up with the PS2 version of God of War 2 we can run this at full speed but I did have to drop that resolution down to 0.75 a another thing I've done some testing on with the pocket 4 Pro is battery life so this does have a 5,000 mAh battery and through all of my testing screen brightness was at 100% different performance profiles may have been used here and there but for NES emulation which doesn't require being in high performance mode I got 6 hours and 31 minutes they do claim that you can get up to 8 hours of battery life out of this and I could see that with the brightness basically all the way down doing some NES emulation but for me with that brightness all the way up about 6 and 1/2 hours next up moved over to some Android gaming 4 and 1/2 hours this is actually a mix between Shredder's revenge Devil May Cry and dead cells balanced performance profile and maxed out here with PS2 emulation high performance mode fan set to sport 2 hours and 8 minutes for PS2 and that's at 1X resolution really putting a strain on that CPU and GPU but overall this really isn't that bad and again like I mentioned they do claim up to 8 hours I could see it with low-end stuff on this low power mode and brightness all the way down so yeah I think retroid has knocked it out of the park with the 4 Pro and again I haven't been able to test the regular 4 model this is coming in at 1999 they do have several different colors to choose from but you know going into this you got to understand that it's going to be hit or miss with Gamecube Wii and PS2 it's not an IND all Beall device when it comes to emulation or even native Android gaming maxed out with everything but it's definitely a major upgrade when it comes to a lot of the other retro handhelds on the market right now I could definitely recommend the retroid pocket 4 plus to a lot of people out out there as long as you know exactly what you're getting into but then again you got to keep in mind if you've already got an Android phone in your pocket with let's say a Snapdragon 8 gen one or even higher you've got something that's really going to outperform this and you can always add a Bluetooth or a USB type-c controller to that set device so in the end it's really up to you but that's going to wrap it up for this video if you've got any questions or you want to see anything else running on the retroid pocket 4 Pro let me know down below and if you're interested in learning a little more I'll leave some links in the description but like always thanks for watching

Channel: ETA PRIME

Views: 60,237

Keywords: etaprime, eta prime, pocket 4 pro, retroid pocket 4 pro review, retroid pocket 4 pro switch, retroid pocket 4 pro ps2, retroid pocket 4 pro setup, retroid pocket 4 pro gamecube, retroid pocket 4 pro vs odin 2, retroid pocket 4 pro vs anbernic, retroid pocket 4 pro gameplay, retroid pocket 4 pro unboxing, retroid pocket 4 pro setup guide

Id: BFhSZnNE-zM

Length: 14min 33sec (873 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 15 2024