RG35XXSP Review: King Clamshell

[Music] hey everybody this is Russ Metro gamecore today we're going to review the amernick rg35 xxsp now this is a handheld emulation device that is obviously modeled after the gbasp and I think that ambern nailed it in many ways now while it does have some shortcomings which we'll talk about in this video I'm overall very positive about this handheld now this review is going to build upon the Impressions video I made a few days ago where I talked about things like the screen and the size the weight the ergonomics and the buttons all those things that you can kind of make a snap judgment about now it's been a few days and I've done a bunch of testing I've also tried out custom firmwares and most importantly we also know the price of the device at this point so I'm going to put all this together my impressions as well as all the testing that I've done to give you a better assessment of whether not this is going to be a good match for you and I have to say that if you are a fan of clamshell devices and you don't mind clicky buttons then I think this is going to be a perfect match anyway we got a lot to talk about in this video and I'm pretty excited to show it off so without any further delay let's go ahead and dive [Music] in okay jumping into this video I'm going to assume you've already watched my Impressions video or at least other videos about this handheld but even then I bet you would appreciate a recap so this is the fourth in a line of other devices that amernick have released with this exact same chipset and each of these is unique we started with a vertical version then the horizontal one and then finally a mini version with a 2.8 in screen and so the SP model that we're looking at today has the exact same chipset and performance as the other models with very similar features as well if you purchase one of these devices it'll already come with a 64 gbyte card with a stock operating system inside it'll be loaded up with games some of those are not going to be the most organized in the world but it's very easy to add your own just via the micro SD card and so that's one of the things things I've done over the past few days I've loaded up with my own games that way I have the perfect library to play from now the RG 35xx SP is going to come in four different color options there are two transparent models both black and blue and then two solid options there is a more metallic looking silver and then a DMG gray and I was sent both a silver and transparent blue model and they each have their own characteristics the silver model is very reminiscent of an original Game Boy SP and has a bit of a slick feel to it the transparent model has a cool kind of Neo retro look to it and also a grittier texture on the plastic and I'm still torn between which one I prefer over the other but I've been leaning more towards the silver one than the transparent model now when these review units first arrived I didn't know the price and I assumed it was going to be relatively High just because the manufacturing costs of a clamshell after all it takes a lot of engineering to get this just right well I'm happy to report that the price is about the same as it is with the other devices within this line the retail price is going to be $65 plus shipping but for the first few days they actually knock down the price down to 59 and I think the amount of value that you get for this price is pretty incredible if you think about it it's about the cost of a modern AAA game but you're going to be able to play thousands of retro games on it and you'll be able to do it in a really neat clamshell form factor in addition it's got a ton of features that are standard nowadays that used to be Top ofthe Line so for example 5 GHz Wi-Fi Bluetooth as well as HDMI out now one note of caution even though it is on sale during the first few days that doesn't mean that it's only going to be $65 once this period ends in fact this is a pretty common situation with ambern devices if we look at the first version of the RG 35xx plus this one is still retailing for $64 so about the same price and this one also had that same thing where it had a sale period for the first few days however one thing to keep in mind is about a month after release a bunch of thirdparty drop shippers will get their hands on this device and they often like to compete with one another and it drives down the price for everybody so even though yes if you were to go on the Nick website right now it would cost you $64 plus shipping for the RG 35xx plus but if we go over to AliExpress and check out one of those retailers you can see it's nearly $20 cheaper and with free shipping and I'm bringing this up for two different reasons the first is that I think this is a good value even when it's not on sale $65 plus shipping is still a really great price for the amount of handheld that you'll be getting if you compare this to other handhelds that were on the market for over $100 a couple years ago this thing is still a home run and the second point is that if you were on the fence about this device maybe you're a little bit hesitant about those clicky buttons then it might be in your best interest to wait I think that once more people get the device in their hands and start testing things like the buttons and the hinge we'll probably get a better idea of just how good or bad this device really is some of these aspects do take time to really assess and I think that the longer you wait the better the price is going to be anyway that's my whole spiel about the price I think it's a good value even when it's not on sale but it's going to get better from here now I think it's no secret that this device is modeled after the original GBP I wouldn't go as far as calling it a clone because it doesn't actually play Game Boy advanced games natively but it is very very close in terms of design the main difference between the two is going to be the size it's about 10 to 20% larger depending on what angle you're looking at and after a few days of testing I've come to a conclusion and that is if you haven't played a Game Boy Advance in a long time I bet when you picked up the amernick version you would think oh yeah this is just like the old one and so the additional size may not be something that you really notice however if you are intimately familiar with the gbasp like you've been using it for the past 20 years then I think you will notice that difference right off the bat and so in general I think the size is actually fairly Compact and pretty decent in fact it makes it more comfortable than the original but I do want to acknowledge that there will be some people out there who find this to be too big especially if they've been using a gbasp for quite some time now another main difference between the amck and the GBP are the buttons in some ways they are very familiar the design themselves actually looks a lot like the original version just with the additional X and Y buttons and these also have a dome switch and clicky connection to them much like the original Game Boy Advance SP but there is one significant difference between them and that is if you directly compare the two yes they're both clicky but the Amber Nick one is much click louder and harder to press down on now this is one of those polarizing topics where I found that some people don't really mind the amount of actuation force here but for me personally I have found it to be a little bit more fatiguing than would like in addition I wish these buttons were a little bit quieter let's do another sound test just to remind ourselves of how loud these can actually be now let's do a comparison with The Game Boy Advance SP so yes no bones about it these are loud and clicky buttons now if you're playing them like on a bus or in a louder environment I don't think it's going to matter at all but this is definitely not something I could play next to my sleeping wife now among the community there have been a lot of people trying to figure out how they could improve the hard clickiness of the d-pad and the buttons and to be honest I'm not really sure this is something that a thirdparty Community member could actually solve if we do a tear down you can see that we have a a dome switch connection on the bottom now you could solder off these Dome switches and put on softer ones but I'm not really sure how many people would actually want to do that I think the main solution will come down to the rubber pads that are between the Dome buttons and the case itself I think if they wanted amernick could make some softer rubber connections and maybe make a revision of this device or even sell some of those rubber connections for existing customers and that might make the entire experience softer and quieter but I've never seen ambern actually offer thirdparty accessories like that to customers and so it would be a bit of a stretch and so among all the different considerations of buying this handheld I think this is probably the single most important one if you're not a fan of clicky buttons or you want to make sure that your gaming experience is rather quiet then this may not be an excellent match for you now after making my Impressions video I got quite a few requests of various different aspects and one of them was the sound of the lid when it snaps shut so let's do a couple tests right here starting with the Amber neck next we'll do the Game Boy Advance and then finally the paly b90 so yeah I think it's a pretty solid snap it's pretty satisfying to close go down and the magnets are just strong enough to make sure that it stays shut now another question I got was about the durability of the hinge and it's really hard to test something like this just within a week I will say that the hinge itself feels tight and sturdy not overly tight but definitely solid and given the way that I kind of baby my devices I would expect this to last for years to come however one thing I noticed after about 2 days of testing is that I got a little bit of a squeak in my silver model just at a certain angle this really only happens at about 45° but let me give you a listen right here and so yes this is something that took me a while to notice and honestly when you're just opening up the device all the way to actually play it you don't actually hear the squeak it's only when you're putting it at 45° and just kind of moving it up and down given the fact that this is not really something that I would do while playing the device in the first place the squeakiness has not bothered me but I did want to bring it up and to me it might be an indication that the lids here are a little bit tight on the solid models if we look at my aftermarket GBP you will see that this one also does not have any squeaking and same thing with the transparent model this one is also super quiet so this might be related to the type of plastic use in the silver model or maybe the fact that I've been using it more than the other ones but yeah this one definitely has a squeak it's not the worst thing in the world but something that might bother you while we're on the subject of things that might bother you another thing I noticed is that the device can get warm when you play high-end games in particular you will feel the heat around the center of the device on the front and then all across the back basically everywhere the battery is now in terms of temperature I would say that it's something that is noticeable but not to the point of getting hot or uncomfortable it's actually a very similar experience to the other XX models released by amberi and so if you've used one of those before and you've noticed the warmth it's about the same now part of this has to do with the fact that the battery is right on top of the CPU they're not actually touching there's a couple millimeters difference between the two but still the fact that the CPU is so close it must be radiating heat directly into the battery so it does give me some pause about this device as well as others that have a battery so close to the CPU and that this might affect battery life over time and given the fact that all these devices are so relatively new who knows how many years this will actually last but it is a concern worth noting thankfully it's still pretty easy to find other battery Replacements on AliExpress and so it might not be a huge deal in the long run in the way I see it yes the device does get warm when playing things like dream cast Nintendo 64 and PSP but again I would say that it's not to the point of preventing me from wanting to play those systems at all in fact this is a really excellent device for Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast provided they will work with these controls and we'll talk more about the controls here later in the video but before that let's move on and talk about the screen now this display is 3.5 in with a resolution of 640x480 that's going to give you a 4x3 aspect ratio which will scale really well for most retro systems in fact for many of them including including PlayStation and Dreamcast and Nintendo 64 all these will be a 1x integer scale because you can play those games at 640 by 480p for the most part and so these games will be a perfect match for this screen and they're a lot of fun now for other retro systems it gets a little bit more complicated for example with Super Nintendo and NES they are not a perfect 2x integer scale they're just a little bit higher it's 2.1x and you've got one of two options you could either just blow it up to full screen like this and it'll give you a little bit of imbalanced pixels but not much or you could drop it down to a 2X integer scale and increase the black borders around the side and so that's really just a matter of preference whether or not you would like to have a full screen experience or you want to make sure that you have nice chunky pixels another example of a system that has imbalanced pixels is going to be Game Boy Advance and this is kind of ironic considering the fact that this thing looks so much like a Game Boy Advance SP when it comes down to it it is a 2.7x integer scale you can blow this up and it actually looks really nice in fact with these stocks for from where they even have a Game Boy advanced SP logo here in the overlay but just bear in mind that when blown up like this it's not going to be a perfect integer scale and so there may be some pixel Distortion if you wanted to make sure that you did have crispy pixels you would need to go down to a 2X integer scale which is quite small in this screen and I'm not sure how many people are going to want to go and scale it down to a 2X integer scale but that is always an option for me I don't mind blowing it up to full screen because I think it still looks pretty darn good now some systems that do work well with an integer scale include Game Boy and Game Boy Color these at a 3X integer scale are still pretty close to full screen in fact amberik did account for this with their overlays and so these are integer scaled with a nice little border around the front that actually gives you a nostalgic look now you could always blow it up to full screen and get a 3.3x integer scale but for me personally I think that a 3X integer scale looks the best and I really like those borders too so when it comes down to it I would say that it's a little ironic that among all the systems that this can emulate Game Boy Advance is one of the worst if you are looking for specific integer scaling in that regard I would not say this is a perfect Game Boy Advance however when you take into account the fact that this can play thousands of retro games across multiple systems I don't think it's a huge deal for me in particular if anything I would say the emulation on this device is good enough but not perfect and I wouldn't expect it to be perfect on a device that costs around $65 okay one last comment that I got a lot in my Impressions video were that many people said that the Game Boy advanced SP was origin not very comfortable and so they expected this one to be uncomfortable as well and I would say that's true in some ways but not necessarily in others to give you an idea I've never been a huge fan of vertical handhelds or clamshells I always find them to be a little bit more crampy than something that's more horizontal but given the fact that the amberik RG 35xx SP is a little bit bigger than the GBA it also makes it quite a bit more comfortable so yes I agree that this is not a perfect solution especially if you have larger hands however in my week or so of testing I never had a moment where I thought man this is an uncomfortable device and so I think it comes down to this if you didn't like the Game Boy Advance SP you thought it was too small and crampy then chances are you probably won't like this one either however if you ever felt that the Game Boy advanced SP was comfortable enough then I think this is probably going to be right along those same lines now another thing I noticed after making my Impressions video is that am bernick is promoting the fact that you can actually put a sticker inside of the transparent models to customize them yourself and I I think that's a pretty clever idea but I think they also oversold it a little bit in their video I think a lot of people expected that they could just slide these stickers in and out and it would be a super seamless experience but it will require you to tear down the screen a little bit now thankfully it's not too hard all you have to do is get some tweezers and remove the rubber stoppers and then from there just use a Phillips head screwdriver to unscrew everything after that if you wedge your fingernail into the back of the hinge and then also do the same around the sides of it to uncp it you can then take the lid off and then from there you can now take off that piece of paper you've got a few options here you could either just make a new piece of paper with these exact dimensions and those Dimensions by the way are about 3 in by 2 and 1/2 now another thing you could do is take a small decaler logo and then put that directly on this blue piece of paper and then snap it all shut so you do have a few different ways of customizing it but it's not going to be a slide in andout experience one thing of note when you're reassembling one of the pads is a little bit thicker than the other this one goes at the very top and I assume this is here to give you a little extra padding when you close the device shut either way yes you can totally customize this and I'm not a very artistic person so I didn't do it myself but I bet others like Tech wee are totally going to do that one thing I didn't get a chance to test in my Impressions video is the HDMI and Bluetooth so let's go and do that next in terms of HDMI it's super simple this is a mini HDMI plug so plug that into a monitor or TV and it should work out of the box the nice thing is is that the user interface will actually scale to 16 by9 so everything will look scaled correctly as you navigate through through the menu however it also will blow up the image with certain systems including PlayStation 1 so instead of showing it at 4x3 it's going to be a full 16 by9 if you run into a system that does this I've got a couple tips what I would do is press the menu button to get into the Retro artqu menu and then back out into the setting section then go into video and scaling within there I would adjust the aspect ratio to something a little bit more Square in fact I think maybe the best one to choose might be just a square 1X one because the image is already being stretched out this is going to get it very close to 4x3 I think it's a little bit more narrow than 4x3 but this is the closest that I could find and so yes personally if I was going to be playing retro games on this device hooked in with HDMI this is probably what I would choose and I think it looks pretty good another aspect ratio to consider would be 8x7 this is also relatively squarish and this will also make it a little bit more shrunk now this is a little bit wider than 4x3 so it's kind of the opposite but you have a little bit of room to work with now if you want to set up a Bluetooth controller with this that's also Al pretty easy you would want to go down into the network settings then open up Bluetooth settings and from there enable the Bluetooth and then select search for device from there press the x button to refresh and scan for new controllers and I would recommend putting your controller in xinput pairing mode and it should pick it right up now one thing of note the stock firmware does not support Bluetooth audio so if you wanted to pair it with Bluetooth headphones that does not work and so really this is only going to be for Bluetooth controllers and Bluetooth audio might be something they could Implement later in a firmware update or maybe through custom firmware now one thing of note once you pair a controller that Bluetooth controller is going to function as player two and that'll be fine if you're trying to do a two-player setup while using the device at the same time but let me also show you how to configure this if you'd like again you want to go back into the retroart quick menu and then go back into settings and then input from there navigate down to Port One controls and then under device index you want to swap these out you'll find that on the console itself it'll say dplay keys that's going to be the am bernick what you can do is just change this out to be your Bluetooth controller and now that's going to be player one just bear in mind that you'll also want to go down into Port two controls and then disable or change out the other one that way your Bluetooth controller is not going to control both characters and really yes it's as simple as that if you wanted to play one player games with the Bluetooth controller just make sure that your Port One controls are set to the Bluetooth controller and also be sure to change it back once youve unplug the device and want to play it in handheld mode okay next I want to talk about firmware options we're going to start with the stock firmware whereare and some of my favorite aspects of it the first is a feature I showed in my Impressions video which is the quick shutdown function within here you can enable or disable the quick shutdown but the most important part is the next screen this will allow you to choose what's going to happen when you close the device shut and here you can choose between putting the device to sleep or fully shutting it down and personally over the past week of testing I found that I prefer to do a shutdown over sleep I did some battery testing while on sleep and I found that I lost about 4% every hour and for me that's way too much power drain for a sleep mode so I'd rather just turn it off altogether and it turns out it's a pretty seamless experience once you have that set up so think of it like this way you've been playing a game and you just want to close it down for a moment you just will snap the device shut at that point it's going to save your progress and then turn the device off now the next time that you're ready to start playing all you have to do is open it up and then push the power button for a second or two it will take a little bit of time to actually start up it's about 20 seconds altogether but when it does start up it's going to remember exactly where you were in your game and start you from there so it's almost like a sleep function other than the fact that it's not very instantaneous but I love the fact that it saves your progress and then boots you right back to where you were and the best part about it is that you won't get any battery drain by doing this method because when you shut it down it's going to fully shut it down and so that's how I've been playing over the past week or so yes it's a minor inconvenience and that it takes about 20 seconds to boot up but I love the fact that it saves my game and then takes me right back to where I was when I started up it's not a perfect pickup and play solution solution but I think it's good enough for the most part now a couple other features worth mentioning about the stock firmware is that while you're in a game you can press the menu button and then volume up and down and that'll adjust the brightness there are five different brightness settings and I found that I mostly will play in three or four the five gets plenty bright but it's a little bit brighter than I need indoors speaking of which Let's do an outdoor test so when playing in the shade I think that at Max brightness it is still fully playable however when going into direct sunlight even in a cloudy day like this it's still gets pretty hard to see so I would say this is a device you could probably play like while in a car or maybe close to a window but maybe not something you would want to play like at the park now here's another feature I just recently learned about and I think this is pretty awesome if you're playing a game that requires analog input for example Sonic Adventure 2 on the Dreamcast all you have to do is tap the power button and it'll switch between d-pad and analog mode previously I had actually been going into the retroarch settings and remapping the controls manually but it turns out that Amber neck actually already thought of this and so this has been really convenient depending on the game that you're playing with those higher end systems you can still play just about everything with an analog stick in particular this is going to work with both Dreamcast and Nintendo 64 as well as PSP however bear in mind it's not going to be a perfect solution for example sometimes playing a game with a d-pad instead of an analog stick is a little bit odd but then also with Nintendo 64 you know many games Rel light on those C buttons and that might be a little bit harder to actually control so if anything I would say it's a compromised EXP experience with those systems in particular when it comes to the controls not every single game is going to play perfectly but the ones that do are pretty awesome now another note when it comes to PSP is that this one is a standalone emulator on the stock firmware and as a result the quick shutdown doesn't actually work when you close the lid instead it's just going to put the device to sleep and so it's nice that the sleep function works but there's no quick shutdown and so you will have to manually turn this one off anyway that's what I wanted to show off when it comes to stock firmware now we're going to talk a little bit about customer some firmware options the first is going to be moo OSS now this one just had a recent release called beans and I've been testing it for the past few days and it's actually working pretty well now this operating system is very trim and simple it just really lets you get in and out of your games very quickly and the setup is very simple you just create your own folders and put them in the SD card and then the operating system will either detect what system you're trying to emulate or you can assign it yourself they made a lot of updates since the last time I tested this operating system as well for example I now have the ability to easily add boxart and it looks pretty Snappy and speaking of Snappy that's one of my favorite things about muos and that it will start up pretty quickly but then also when you launch a game it happens super fast same thing with closing out of a game it's almost instantaneous and so I really like that in terms of pickup and play this operating system also has some pretty top-of-the-line features for this chipset including native pico8 support and it's really simple to set this up it's just a matter of taking your Raspberry Pi files and then dropping them in the appropriate folder and they have all the instructions on their website it really really took me just a couple minutes to get this set up in addition it now has full portm support including 64-bit games and so just about every game in portmaster can be launched on this system and thankfully the whole setup process is very simple portmaster will be pre-installed on mu OS so you just have to navigate through choose your game and install it depending on the game that you install you may have to add your own game data files but after that they'll actually show up in the port section and you can launch them from there and so this is easily one of the neatest factors about the RG 35xx SP is being able to play these PC ports directly on a device that really doesn't feel like it has any business playing them you can even play stardew Valley or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and even batro although the latter I wouldn't really recommend because the text is basically illegible now in terms of high-end performance it does look like mu OS is very similar to stock firmware for Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast in particular it's about neck and neck and that means that most games are going to be perfectly playable other than like the top 10% things like golden ey Cruis and USA are going to struggle when it comes to PSP performance I did find it to be a little bit worse than the stock operating system but not by much and I do think that the muos developer has been on a tear lately and so I would expect to see a lot of improvements in the future now one thing to bear in mind there's not an SP version of muos out yet after all this is a brand new device and so some functionalities like the ability to sleep when closing the screen are just not there yet in fact that's another thing I couldn't find with mu West at all if you tap the power button it doesn't put it to sleep and so the only way I could find to turn off the device was to go to the main menu and then select shutdown next we're going to take a look at newly so this is a fork of bacera that's been in the works for quite some time now and I've been testing it for the past couple weeks now much like with mu OS this one hasn't had time to develop specifically for the RG 35xx SP but the other builds for the 35xx plus and H still work and so same thing here if you try to close the device down it's not going to put it to sleep or anything it's just going to leave everything running but it does have a working sleep function by just tapping the power button although the battery drains about the same as un stock firmware so about 4% per hour however one of my favorite things about newly is that it has an emulation station front end and it just looks really nice of course you can customize this by changing out the themes and then scraping your box art and media all that's going to work perfectly in addition emulation station supports a screen saver function which I really love all you have to do is just press the select button and a while in the main menu from there it's going to cycle through all the videos of the games that you have on the device already and if you come upon a game that you want to try all you have to do is press the start button and it's going to actually launch that specific game and this feature has been around for years at this point but man I love it I love the idea of just being able to cycle through these games and just choosing one from there it's kind of like playing all of your favorite songs and Shuffle play and then an unexpected song comes up that's just a perfect match for that moment now newly also does support a quick shutdown but it doesn't function in the same way what you do is you press the menu and power button at any time and it'll immediately close the device down down however it will not save your progress while you're playing a game and when you boot it back up it's just going to go back to the main menu so it's kind of halfway convenient in the sense that you don't have to go into the main menu to shut the device down but it's not going to save your progress or boot back up now another great feature of newly is that it also now has portm support not every single game is supported it seems to be less games than on muos but all the same it's pretty awesome to able to have this Choice both of these operating systems are still in development and so it's pretty cool to see that even as of right now with a brand new device it's still pretty mature okay and finally our last firmware that I wanted to Showcase is minu y again this is a build made for the other 35xx devices but it does work now minui is purposely very simple it's all text based and you will just go into your system pick your game and then launch it but the great thing about minui is that it's very simple and intuitive now once you have a game running you can press the menu button to bring up their quick menu within here you can do things like save and load estate and even go into the opt and adjust your emulation parameters so there is quite a lot of customization within here but you don't have to use it if you don't want to which is one of the great things about minui another great aspect about this one is that it does have an auto shutdown if you press the power button while in a game it'll do a quick save and then when you power it back up it'll go right back to where you were so this does function a lot like the stock operating system in that regard but just in a more simple interface now at this point the main drawback of minui is that it is limited in what systems it'll actually support support and essentially you'll be able to play all the major handheld and Home console systems up through PS1 however there are quite a few emissions especially on a device like this which has a lot more power so for example you won't be able to play Arcade games or Nintendo 64 or Dreamcast or PSP in addition this also doesn't have support for Wi-Fi or Bluetooth so you're not going to be able to earn retro achievements or do any sort of two-player gaming so really I would recommend minui if you only want to focus on the very retro systems with a clamshell form factor like this this because if you keep it to just those systems it is a really nice experience however for me I'd love to use the full potential of this chipset and so as a result I've been using the other firmwares more often now we've already talked a lot about performance throughout the video as well as in my Impressions video and then also all the videos that are made with the same chipset and so I don't want to delve too much into this but I do want to make a couple notes in case you are thinking about picking this up the first is that in terms of arcade systems with all the operating systems other than menu WI you're going to be able to play basically everything out of the 80s and 90s up to a certain point one system I got a couple questions about is Nintendo DS and these games will play just fine on this system but bear in mind that there is no touchscreen here and you'll have to toggle between the two screens so really it's going to be best suited for games that can use the d-pad for their main controls and when you only need to see one screen at a time and if those conditions are good for you then yes I think that Nintendo DS is fully playable here when it comes to PS1 all these games are going to play fine even if you upsc scale it to a full 480p even the harder to run games like Tekken 3 yeah these are going to play at full speed when it comes to Dreamcast and Nintendo 64 most games are going to play fine other than those that are really hard to run for Dreamcast in particular these games are going to run with a frame Skip and so it's not going to be a perfect emulation experience but I think for a$ 60-ish doll handheld it's going to be perfectly playable just bear in mind that for both of those systems there are going to be games in the catalog that just will not run correctly and it's going to be similar with PSP although most of the will run a little bit worse than those other systems and so I would recommend considering Nintendo 64 Dreamcast and PSP as being bonus systems and that not every game will play but maybe some of your favorites will okay we've talked a lot about this device in all the good and bad so let's start summarizing and talk about whether or not I think this might be a good choice for you we're going to put this in two different categories I'm going to call them heck yes and maybe not we're going to start with heck yes this is going to be all the things that might persuade you to actually pick it up the first is the fact that it's a clamshell I think there are many people who love this form factor and if you're one of them then yeah this thing is pretty awesome all the things that make a clamshell great are the same things that make this handheld great as well including the fact that you can close it up and protect your screen and that it's pretty compact but then also gets big when you open it I also think this is a very decent price for what you're going to get it's basically the price of a AAA game here in the modern times and you're getting so much more out of it I think the performance here is pretty decent as well you're going to be able to play most Nintendo 64 in and Dreamcast which is really fun on this little handheld I also love the fact that we have lots of custom firmware options we actually have four different firmwares we can choose from right now and the device hasn't even started shipping I also think the battery life is very good I've gotten an average of about 8 hours with mixed gameplay you'll get a little bit less if you really try to push it but not by much and if you want to play really lightweight stuff like Game Boy Game Boy Advance I bet you can get somewhere around 12 hours if not more and then finally if portability is a concern for you then I think that this is one of the best options on the market the fact that this doesn't really need a case but you can still throw it around in your backpack is pretty great now of course this device is not perfect like with anything and so there are a few reasons why I wouldn't recommend picking it up and if any of these apply then I think it's worth considering that maybe it's not a good fit the first is that we have some clicky and rather loud buttons now the Game Boy Advance SP also was clicky but not clicky in the same way and there may be other clicky devices that you don't really mind for example a Nintendo switch or maybe a trimi smart Pro I would say that this device here the amernick one is more clicky than any of those it's almost to the point where I dislike using them but it's one of those things that I just kind of got used to and I do find myself not using it in certain situations where I'm trying to play quietly another consideration is that the device does get warm under extended play or when trying to push it really hard now I'm one of those people that does not like playing with a hot device and I never really felt it got to that point but it is something that I noticed another thing to keep keep in mind is that this hinge is somewhat untested you know one of mine does squeak but other than that I haven't found any problems but it is really hard to determine how well a hinge is going to work in the long run over only a week of testing and then finally even though this device is quite portable and I love the fact that it's a clamshell it is a little bit bulky and so it's one of those things that when you throw it in your pocket you're definitely going to notice that it's there and if you were expecting it to be the exact same size as a Game Boy advanced SP it is quite a bit bigger in the end like with any other device this has both good and bad qualities but I can say here that the good qualities really outweigh the bad even though there are some things that I wish were better I wouldn't consider any of these to be a deal-breaker at least for me now among all the other devices with the same chipset from amernick it does make it a little bit hard to choose which one will be the best fit for you if I had to choose myself the first one I would eliminate would be the RG 35xx plus and that's mostly because I'm not a huge fan of vertical handhelds and if we're only talking about primary handhelds then I I think that the RG 28xx is probably not going to be a good fit either the screen on this one is pretty small compared to the others and it also has small buttons and it lacks Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and so I think this one's a pretty easy elimination for me as well if we are talking about a primary small handheld and so that leaves us with my two favorites which are the rg35 xxh and then the SP and I got to say I'm pretty torn between the two although there are some features on the H I really appreciate like the analog sticks and the stereo sound and that's one of the things I really love about this device is that when playing systems like Nintendo 64 or Dreamcast is just a seamless experience and so between the two I think I would personally choose the H over the SP but that's also because I have quite a bias towards horizontal handhelds if anything the best compliment I can give the amberik RG 35xx SP is that it really gave me a run for my money when it came to the H and the fact that it was such a close call between the two really says a lot about the SP when it comes down to it if only one of the these two devices existed I would be happy with either of them for years to come the fact that we even have the choice between these two excellent options makes me feel like we're in a really lucky place right now because it's never really been a better time to play retro games on a handheld for under 100 bucks so in summary I think when it comes to any of the RG 35xx or even 28xx line there is no wrong answer it's really going to come down to personal preference and form factor and I think that if the SP is the one that you're considering you're going to have a great time with it anyway let me know what you think in the comments down below are you picking this one up or do you already have something that you'd rather use 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 gaming [Music]

Channel: Retro Game Corps

Views: 113,586

Keywords:

Id: 0M1fYSOhwZ4

Length: 35min 55sec (2155 seconds)

Published: Sat May 18 2024