Retroid Pocket 2S in-depth REVIEW

hey everyone I'm Aiden walls and this is my in-depth review of the retroid pocket 2s [Music] I want to make a case today in my in-depth review that the Retro pocket 2s is the best retro emulator under a hundred dollars at the moment before I start I just want to mention the rg350m the ambanic I bought this when I started this was my first device and I got the metal device because I thought this will be the only device I ever buy little did I know that things were going to change I bought it because retroid weren't quite there yet it was between the rg350 or the 350m or the Retro pocket 2 plus at the time those were the two I was deciding on and I went for the Amber Nick because retro just weren't there yet but things have changed the Retro poker 2s really does change the game in term for retro it is a lot better than the Retro pocket 2 and the two plus and so I want to make a case today about the fact that this is the best retro handled under 100 dollars on the market today so let's get straight into it the standout features on this device when if you watch my unboxing video I had a look at it and when I was holding it I just thought this feels really nice in the hand that feeling has not dissipated I've now had this for about four or five days intensive playing because I'm testing it for a review and I've been using the grip and without the grip and it just is a lovely device to hold the difference is you know I've got the Retro Pockets three plus in the metal version it feels solid it's it's really nice in the hand but it is heavy and so it was just a delight going from the rg3405m though the Amber Nick and the the retroid metal version to this it's just it's as light as a feather and feels comfy in the hand the edges are not sharp so if you look at these edges they are not sharp they're nice and chamfered and it just feels got a lovely manifest it can feels delightful in the hand and I really enjoy that the other standard feature is the buttons you know the these action buttons I actually asked Richard and I said these action buttons are the same double injection molded buttons as the the Retro pocket flip and and I really like those buttons they really are nice action buttons and uh the rubber membrane they are using feels really good you know I don't know about the long-term quality of them but they really do feel great and they rival the Amber Nick and action buttons that I I enjoy so much and then also they've Incorporated the analog triggers of the flip plus they've Incorporated these new analog horse sensor joysticks which have got a better range of motion compared to our other devices you know all the other retro devices on the market are using these limited range of motion joysticks there whereas this you can see a considerable change look how wobbly those are like how much range of motion you get between those two these really are exceptional and we will get into more detail with those just now the other standard feature front facing speakers I can't stress this enough on um another device I reviews recently front-facing speakers make a massive difference in the experience of the device and so even though this device has this huge chin I appreciate the fact that it has front-facing speakers and they're quite good front-facing speakers and then you've got excellent performance versus Valiant and that's the thing that I want you to stick around to the info because the performance on this device is surprising maybe I've forgotten how the Retro pocket 3 plus performs but I'm getting pretty good GameCube performance on here so the next section of this video is usually critical flaws and I don't want to over stress the flaws of this device because I really do think they have perfected this little device so the the first thing that bugs me these start and select buttons so firstly well done for putting start and select buttons on the front of the device that's really nice so if you look there the device is almost in the body and it hasn't made a depression yet there now it clicks so if you use your finger it's just so in effect what you end up doing is squeezing the device to press this button so it is one of those things that you get used to so it's not a critical flaw but it is really annoying on a device that is near perfect these devices are very similar but there are you can feel they are slightly more these are slightly more recessed and the more I test these they're just they've got a bit more of a responsiveness because they are just like half a millimeter slightly more out the body the other thing I want to point out with my ominous blade is this bezel is huge now this is the same 3.5 inch size screen as you get on say the 3.35 rg353p you know those sort of devices which are getting old now you know and so for a device in 2023 that 99 that's still like affordable I I know they probably made a compromise here for a reason but if they could have stretched the screen just out to here it would have made the world of difference to not have this huge bezel it would have it would have taken this device from being maybe the best device of 20 to 23 under a hundred dollars to like skyrocketing rocketing it to be the best of one of the best devices of the year you know so yeah that is a little thing that I wish there had changed and then I did notice when I take the device out of sleep mode for some reason even if I set daija show to be the home screen so if I press home button it goes there but if I do this I know do that so now lately since I started doing the review it goes to this you know task manager screen but it usually would go to the home screen of Android and then I would have to press the home button again to get it into digishow which is just a strange threat thing and I hope they fixed that in a in an update because that's an Android issue so let's go through the buttons now as I mentioned retroid have told me that these are the same buttons as the flip these double injection molded buttons I do find that retroid buttons in general do have a sort of clackiness to them so how I figured this out was my kids sometimes play these devices while I'm doing Taekwondo and the one day they had an Amber Nick device or it might have been the x28 the Parker dx28 and my daughter was sitting there quietly in the corner playing games the whole time and I forgot because I kind of limit them on devices and then a couple of nights later I went with my wife and we gave the kids the Retro pocket flip to play with and all we heard in the corner when things went silent was that that brings me on to the next thing on on a retro device is these um the Dome switches on here if I get this close to the mic that's very slight but in a silent room um you know my studio is actually fairly noisy for a studio and um for a silent room you know this plaster clackiness of this and then the of the shoulder buttons also even though I say these are actually silent because you can if you're careful you can do the trigger button silently um it just all becomes very clackity clack you know so that's that moving on to these trigger buttons it does have silent motion from there to there but obviously you do have that which is obviously a thing but it's not something that I would complain about because these are just you know exceptional to use they're just lovely these shoulder buttons click throughout the range of motion of the button which is you know there's something to be said about that that is a very the clickiness obviously I mean everybody they're clicky the fact that it clicks all the way through is great now on the top here we've got our volume buttons just a normal dull press That's a slightly recess but being on the top of the body it's very easy to use I haven't had an issue with it without power as well I do find trying to find this and to get it out of sleep mode is not that's not perfect I think that actually I find the Retro pocket 3 plus the bigger button better to use so I just struggle to find that button sometimes and then as I mentioned previously uh these start and select buttons just don't depress soon enough and so using my nail now it feels like fine but it's because I'm actually pressing slightly into the body when I press to get that click but if you're playing and you just see I've Got A Squeeze here like my finger's got to get a grippier and squeeze so it's something you get used to and it's not a deal breaker that's why I don't want to say it's a critical flaw but it definitely is something that will bug you as you use the device and then moving on to these joysticks these are the best joysticks on a device at this price point and right up to the only device I don't test devices over sort of 250 dollars the Ayn Lurkey which is starting at like three hundred dollars has joysticks similar to this from what I've seen in reviews because it's got that sort of round mechanism inside the body and it kind of rolls this is the only budget device that has something similar it is a whole different housing inside it's a completely different system you can't switch this out with the joysticks of a retroid pocket 3 plus or the anbanic RG 405 and we just can't these really do change the game this really is exceptional for this price point so what retro would have done is they have lost so you can even see in the blurry background there that is where the trigger buttons are they've lost Pockets ability I don't unfortunately have the two plus or the the two to compare this to but I know from watching videos that this is definitely a thing you know the Retro pocket 2 plus had a slider here so that was right flat against the body but then it's a slider this is just a very very nice joystick to use but you lose a little bit of pocket's ability for it now I want to do something I've done in every single video since I've started doing this is the shake test so I want to take you to something that is particularly bad for a device that Kmarts would towards the end of last year the RG 353 vs now there's the RG 405m which is almost 200 which is not much better than this I'll take off audio processing so that you can hear that nicely sounds like a box of matches you know I used to I used to forgive these devices for this because we were in the beginning stages and that's all we had now I've got retroids so this is the Retro pocket 3 plus there's a little bit of a rattle with us Richard pocket 2 is it just doesn't rattle and you know I know it's I'm majoring on a minor here and I don't think a lot of people will care once they start using their devices but when you unbox a device so when I make a video and I say you should buy this device and then it arrives and the first thing you do is go whoa what is this piece of crap about you know I don't want that to be a thing and so I think the shake test is actually an important part of testing these devices and seeing that the manufacturers slowly but surely starting to put a bit more care into their devices and that is why I'm starting to get a little bit sold on retroid as a brand I must stress that I'm not paid by any of these companies I just after becoming Jaded by all these devices and starting to see more and more devices this 2s is really winning me over I've seen the other reviews and I haven't seen anyone compare this device to the andronic rg353p and in my mind this is the closest competitor because it is an Android device with a 3.5 inch screen its lowest spec but you know it's also it's got ergonomics over this this has got really exceptional ergonomics and so I feel like these two are pretty closely matched we've got better performance better ergonomics pretty close on everything else and that's Android and I said the same size screen so I want to compare these two what I am surprised to see is that this older device by animic you know I was expecting to go the Retro is way better because I have really been enjoying the retroid screen it's it's because the screen really pops but what you lose when you make a screen pop is you lose dynamic range now you'll see this screen seems to a bit of a little bit more dull but the reason why it seems more dull is because it's got a more even spread of all the colors you'll notice here Darkwing Duck the pink is brighter uh the whites are whiter um and but then so when you're watching the startup screen here um look at the Rocks these rocks almost look white whereas here you can see it's a light brown and so what happens when you make a screen pop is that you do over enhance the lighter colors and sometimes lose the detail now on 16-bit games and stuff it's not a huge deal and I mean I've been playing Dreamcast and all sorts of things on the Retro pocket 2s and the screen is really nice but then here is the other thing so now I already have it fairly low for the camera the the brightness and this might not show very well on the screen so I'll just explain to you what I'm seeing but oh hang on so this is actually interesting so the the 2s I found a little bit bright in dark situations and the Amber Nick is even brighter so that's I thought I'm totally wrong in everything I thought yet so actually the the Amber neck is too bright um and so this is a little bit dark in dark situations the device I really enjoy for low light situations is my parkity x28 it goes really dark in dark situation so it's not bright and bright situation so if you want a device that could play Outdoors a bit the Retro pocket 2s is definitely going to be able to do that so if we go brighter this is going to blow up blow out this exposure on my screen see yeah you'll see it's getting blown out but I'll tell you yeah so it's brighter so it's dimmer in the dark situations and brighter and the bright situation so that is a very big plus for the Retro pocket 2s so that little test actually was pretty much off the cuffer I was expecting a different result that'll though maybe the the Amber Nick has better color rendition in low lights and high bright light situations it's not really doing the trick a device that's much more expensive is the RG 405m that I enjoyed in low light situations and it's quite bright so you know this is way more expensive Syrian lies one of my big problems with this device in 2023 I just feel like a 3.5 inch 4x3 display is just too small I am enjoying it and 4x3 aspect Grand will get into that just now we'll get into the performance of higher performance 4x3 aspect ratio systems that actually work quite well in this device but like I said if they could have done away with the bezel this would have been my favorite device of 2023 like hands down like I mentioned I'm wearing my I might be uh smart on the top but I'm casual at the bottom so these are tracksuit pants so obviously anything's going to really feel comfy in these but they are a bit bulky let's do the Retro pocket two three plus although it's longer it's a little bit more Compact and then obviously you've got a 405m which is even better also a little bit chunky uh let's look at Mio Mini Plus that's obviously going to be way better um yeah so and then let's go back now we've tried one of the most compact devices on the markets it's not too bad it's pretty good I would say I think that is fairly pocketable [Music] thank you foreign [Music] that audio firstly I'm just reminded what an exceptional device the Retro pocket 3 plus is but other than that the Retro pocket 3 plus is louder but the front-facing speakers make it more usable because you know when you're putting the Retro pocket 3 plus up at full volume and you maybe have a few people around you it's firing out there and so you're getting audio firing out at other people whereas this I can put it really softly just one notch up and so I can just get a bit of the vibe of the audio and no one will really know so front-facing speakers is a huge win for me and I must like I always think in the future it'll be a crying shame if retroid go for a a two whatever the next version of this and go go do away with the front-facing speakers because they just are really great and now I I kind of hope that the Retro Puck would fall will have front-facing speakers because it really does make a big difference and then in terms of audio quality um you you probably noticed that the Amber Nick was quite behind in terms of audio quality the Retro pocket 3 probably has better speakers but this sounds the best you get a nice full spread of audio because it's just blasting Apache and then I'll quickly mention the Android um you know it's well documented with the retroid devices now but it does have the best Android build out of you know power Kitty and Amber ink and all these people it has handheld settings so you can set certain things for the handle so for instance I set the sleep mode and we'll talk about the sleep mode in a minute but I changed some settings in the handheld settings so that my sleep mode would work better um you know if the drop down menu I've got balance performance and extreme for for my performance so when I do GameCube I make sure it's on Extreme eye Comfort which makes it yellowy for a nighttime viewing you can switch the the floating icon which is on the side which is quite nice in game you use that and you swipe it across and you can actually remove things out of your RAM and there are various other handheld settings that you can tweak and change within the Android build and so this Android build really is set up for gaming and that is really nice and retroid really have optimized a lot on the emulator side as well but that's not really an Android thing but yeah the Android build on you is good okay that you can tweak the the sleep mode in the handheld settings now I'll show a clip from our 405m video where I did it for the RG um for the the Retro pocket 3 plus to improve the sleep mode but for whatever reason retro just can't nail the sleep mode um like my my I think it's my x28 that can just be in sleep forever and it just stays alive you know whereas if I don't tweak it it will go down from 100 to 60 percent within a few hours which is quite bad but since I fixed that since I did that little tweak it shuts down background processes when you press the power button and so now you know where am I um I'm at 60 and I've been using the device for two days um I had to put it on charge for a little bit before the review and so the sleep mode is working much better you know I if I switch sweep mode on at night and I had 80 I'll wake up in the morning with 74 which is not great but it's it's not awful either and then I haven't done a batch like a gaming battery test I'll put that information on the screen now so this is my steam link test this is The Walking Dead and my connection is not very good so that's not the thing we're focusing on here uh what we're focusing on are the controls and this is a stage that I've been trying out literally for months because I never get to play on my PC and you can really just get past this by playing it with a mouse to focus on the zombies and to shoot them and I did it because there's a big smile on my face um I finally finished it because those joysticks are just so good okay and then I want to talk about the Aesthetics because now people have said this is dated but I chose the clear Black Version and the reason I did that is because I got the black grip and I'm really glad I did because this color if you look on the top down you know it really looks good um it shows the parts really nicely it's clear it's really beautiful it's got a nice matte finish I think the matte black really masks the fact that this is an aging design but you know there's nothing wrong with just a nice straight edge to design I don't think this is going to date too badly like I said the only thing that I think it dates is once you switch that screen on and you see that massive bezel it's kind of disappointing and yeah so I mean if I had to give this a rating out of 10 in terms of Aesthetics I've all rated quite highly I mean let's compare it to something that's really stunning let's look at the RG 405m which is just a beautiful device you know this matte black this matte black clear black black plastic it looks pretty good yeah so I think it holds its own so if I had to give it a rating I'd say I'd give it a seven and a half eight out of ten okay so let's talk about the ergonomics in relation to the grip so I had the grip for the flip and it was pretty good but it like Twisted off you know what they've done with this design is firstly as I mentioned this feels really good in the hand it's nice and light it's got a beautiful matte finish and your fingers wrap around those um analog triggers really nicely now how the script works is it slides in the bottom into the thing there it's got these two little teeth like these are very rigid and they push up against the body so that already gives it some rigidity now the top lips on here not Clips on but wraps around so once that's wrapped around there's very little wiggle there like that it that feels like a unified body it feels like it's part of the system it feels like it's part of the device and because I chose the matte black with the black grip it actually looks quite good my red one with the I think I've got the white grip looks kind of bizarre um with my retro pocket flip but this looks very good and so you know if you want a recommendation of what's the nicest looking combination with a grip I haven't got all the colors but this to me I haven't seen anything that looks better than this and it feels great like this is how I will play GameCube and dream course games because it just feels excellent obviously your screen is tiny but it really feels good so the thing well actually the thing that I thought about the grip is it does kind of double as a case it's protecting the device put the screen guard on there and your device is pretty well protected maybe just put a cloth on it when you put it in your bag or whatever but it doesn't protect it fully let's have a look at the case this case has got a lovely finished it does pick up dust a little bit but it does have a nice finish to it it's got the rich red logo on it this little tag thingy has got a nice grip in it it's really sort of Premium feeling um the zip seems pretty good um I wouldn't say it's the best grip the zip that you'll ever find on anything but it seems pretty good I like the fact that it's got these like little shapes to it this is a little fluffy thingy to protect your screen goes in here there's a little Gap here but I don't know I really know what that's for and that's it and it's it doesn't shake in it it really is fitted to the device really nice so I did see a few like bigger channels saying that this is so easy to set up it isn't it just is like it isn't like I don't know where they got that from um you know I've been doing this a while now and the device does not come with games or anything like that so it's not readily set up the rg-405m is sketchy as it might be comes and it's pretty easy to set up this does not come with that and so you need to set up the SD card retro it currently don't have a guide on setting up their retro launcher and so even though there are elements to it that are easy it just isn't an easy setup but there are a lot of written guides and video guides like by myself I've got the Retro pocket flip and three plus setup guide which will work for this and it'll help you set up Android it's very long but you only need to use the bits that work for you and so it's set up your emulators set up Dodger show connect the emulators to digest show connect I just show to the folders where your ROMs are held make sure your bios files are in place and then everything should work so it is a bit of a process it is what it is if you want something that's easy to set up I would recommend the animatic rg505 or the Android ambinik rg405m so to reiterate you could use the retroid launcher and use all that there are a few little features that I find quite handy but it's kind of the same sets up time setting up Dodger show which is infinitely better so you know just use Digger show so if you're going to the apps and you have a look at the Dolphin build when I opened this up I realized it's a a port of the mmjr 2 emulator which is a good thing it's specifically set up for smaller devices now they have tweaked this for retroid and I I think they've tweaked them a little bit more since the last time I used them or whatever but the performance is exceptional and you only get this on retroid so if you really are into Dreamcast and Wii emulation not that this is going to play We very well but if you are into Dreamcast emulation and you want it on a budget this isn't going to play every game but it is going to do fairly well with a lot of them and then I did see a little bit of confusion so when you're in Dodger show let's just show you this when it when you first set it up it's not going to scroll through you I'm pressing out to an R2 it's not going to scroll through your menus the way I am what you need to do is you need to go into the settings need to go to handheld settings and you need to go into input L2 R2 mode analog digital or both and I just chose both and that's where you get best of both tools I'm hoping that works properly that's why I want to do a separate video on getting the best out of those analog triggers because you know this does perform well enough to utilize analog triggers so let's see what we can get out of it in a future video and then you might have seen now uh going into settings go back to handle settings there inputs and then M1 key mapping so that is your M1 key map you can use it as a back button you've already got a back button mode I'm not sure what that'll do the the home button you've already got a home button so I've just set it to app switch which you know I don't really see any other button you'd want so they're the sort of task manager that's what I use it for and so I've mapped that to that so if you've got the three gigabyte version the three gig ram version I would recommend like a 256 gigabyte card because you're only going to have a 32 gig memory onboard and so you want a lot of memory and so just pop that in there and go crazy and put as many games as you like on there you'll be able to you know if you set a two internal memory you can download your Android games onto the external memory all that sort of thing and then one little setup tweak if you have been setting it up and things aren't syncing just go to library sync entirely and if something hasn't been syncing like album art or you know the this image that comes for the system just do sync entirely in it it'll do that for you okay so I want to make a few performance notes as I mentioned in the previous section the dolphin for handhold is particularly interesting and intriguing because this is a lower end chipset than the t618 like the rpe 3 plus and the ambanic rg405m and I'm getting pretty good GameCube experience on here obviously the graphically it's been reduced because you know to to improve performance but I can play GameCube games it's great I would recommend if you know if you've got the three gig version like mine sometimes I find it's just taking a while to load things keep this little side menu going and you say speed up and it will kill any you know behind the scenes processes and then if you do decide that you are playing whatever Gamecube or whatever and you want to go to the Extreme Performance mode you will notice that it's going to warm up a little bit at the back here it's just part of the deal so I just wanted to mention that games I'm really never really gotten into Game Gear but Game Gear and Game Boy Color really do really do look quite nice on the system so I focus mostly on higher end systems just to show you that this device does perform fairly well um the dolphin four-handled emulator is compiled by retrod and they set it to a 0.5 resolution so some of the games don't look great Luigi's Mansion actually looked perfect and played really well so that was good but I would say with Gamecube you're looking at about 40 percent like perfect playability 60 where you're gonna start running into problems and then the other 40 is going to be nearly not playable or just have lots of issues Mario Kart 7 is always difficult to emulate no difference here you know there's lots of slow down and stutter if you turn the audio or if you really notice if you really want to play the game then Metroid Prime is one of my favorite games it doesn't play well I just want to say that but it does play and on a device like this you know the the retroid pocket three plus with the t618 chipset more powerful also struggles with this game um and you know this isn't far behind the Retro pocket 3 plus in that regard with that game Need for Speed underground I can play this on my retro poker 3 plus can't play it on here I tried Need for Speed Underground 2 also didn't play very well Paper Mario someone requested this a few graphical anomalies and intro sequences and that's but gameplay as you can see I'm doing a challenge here and it's played very fluid good gameplay on Paper Mario Simpsons Hit and Run almost perfect a few little glitches when it's like loading from one place to the next from one scene to the next but overall very nice gameplay so this is the Sonic 4 GameCube I can't remember what is it exactly it's called but it played really well this and this is a really nice version of Sonic to play Star Fox Adventure is a game that I actually discovered in testing and I I thought it would be it wouldn't emulate it it's an action role player game and it's emulator it perfectly Super Mario Sunshine another game that I didn't expect to emulate on this device and it played fine so here we've got God of War here's to running with a little bit of audio stutter but uh you know it plays it plays quite well actually you know I'm probably gonna play through this game on this device like just crazy and then Half-Life I wanted to show this off because it plays fun but also these joysticks are perfect for a game like this that needs two joysticks because this game was originally a PC game you need that second joystick to move around new Super Mario NDS so all your NDS games are going to play I just do full screen and I switch the screen with my left joystick there you see I just pressed it and and it switches the screen and then moving on to 3DS you aren't going to be able to play all 3DS games but here's Super Mario 2 working perfectly I'm gonna play this game on this device it is a very good marriage of the two you know performance versus just the screen and everything I love it and uh new Yoshi's Island also 3DS working perfectly you're not going to be able to play all 3DS games on this device but I just wanted to show off these games that are playing really well and I will link this the community spreadsheet that I'm also going to be contributing to um for the performance as it comes out on this device Sega Saturn is a difficult thing to emulate I hope I bought the abasan Shiro Pro to emulator and I've got you know Daytona which is usually difficult to emulate I've got Sega rally usually difficult to emulate and they're playing well on this device Sonic R not particularly my favorite Sonic but it played and it played perfectly so I I need a little bit more testing on on Sega Saturn but you know it is quite impressive that this little device is emulating that and this X-Men versus Street Fighter played the best it was the nicest gameplay I had out of the Sega setting games that I tested and lastly Android um you know because it is an Android chipset it plays these Android games pretty flawlessly Real Racing my favorite little sort of like brainless racing games I really enjoyed it then Asphalt 8 I couldn't get Asphalt 9 I said the device was updated so Asphalt 8 playing flawlessly so this is the device worth it at 99 100 yes I think at 99 this is the best deal you can get on the planet right now I really believe that however the problem is that this is not just 99 and as you've seen in this review three gigabytes Ram is more than plenty so you can save money on that maybe by a case or something like that or use that money towards shipping because if you are in my country shipping for this device is sixty dollars and then on top of that it was about fifty dollars import tax it was just ridiculous so for anyone in my country who asks me about this device I tell them it's not worth it so I recommended someone recently by the three the rg353 V on banggood because the shipping is cheaper and it's still fairly quick I mean the shipping on this is lightning fast it takes five days from China which is just ridiculous to where I live but 60 shipping is just ridiculous so there is one of the big issues now is it worth maybe getting something like the three five three V again at face value no this is a better device in almost every single respect but you need to consider your shipping so just check the shipping in your country so that's the kind of two things you need to consider with this device but as it stands this is one of the best devices of 2023 and definitely the best device under a hundred dollars

Channel: Adin Walls

Views: 21,721

Keywords: retroid, retroid pocket 2s, retroid pocket 3+, anbernic rg353p, retro gaming, retro handhelds, retro devices, retro emulation, retro emualtion handheld, retro handhelds 2023

Id: cKVlUGSlOIU

Length: 35min 51sec (2151 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 15 2023