THE Best Handheld of 2024 (Anbernic RG556 Review)

the amck RG 351p RG 280v and M RG 353m and PS RG 35xx and the RG 405m do you know what these all have in common they're some of the best handhelds that Amber Nick has ever made and now we have a new addition the am bernick RG 556 which might top them [Music] all hey everyone and welcome back to Joey's retro handhelds today we're going to be reviewing the am bernick RG 556 and what's special about this device is it actually has a 5 1/2 in OLED 1080p screen and yeah I said OLED and 1080p which is completely abnormal for a retro handheld in this space especially one at under $200 so it's a really good value and it has enough power to play GameCube PlayStation 2 3DS uh PSP and all of that so it's actually pretty powerful as well let's start this off strong this is by far and way probably the best handheld that you can buy for under $200 and I don't think there's anything else really close to it in my personal opinion and what I value and we'll talk about that but this is just one of those top devices and it's it's a combination of so many different things and let's just get into it anybody familiar with my channel knows that I don't get impressed that easily so when a device comes along that actually does impress me which has been probably only a handful in the last year it's surprising and so for this review we're going to shuffle things around and I'm going to start with the great the good and then we'll talk about the bad and let's just start with the great the very first thing that stood out to me when I was holding this device for the very first time is how absolutely comfortable it is to hold now I have the blue model here and I don't know about the black model I from what I understand it might be using a different plastic and all of that but this blue model is probably and actually not even probably it is the most comfortable handheld that I've ever held this is just Peak comfort and ergonomics in so many different ways the plastic itself has um TPU shell feel so when I say TPU anybody familiar with the case on a phone those TPU Plastics that's exactly what this feels like that kind of rubbery sort of feel and it just it makes it so good to hold that you could hold this for hours and hours and hours and you won't get tired it's one of those and it is just absolutely fantastic with how they did it especially the finger holds on the back that just curved to your hands this is a spectacular device when it comes to ergonomics and comfort and one of my favorites or if not my favorite at this point for complete reference my previous top devices for Comfort would have been the trim UI smart Pro and the amck RG 353 PS or P those two in my mind are really comfortable devices but this just takes it up a notch to a whole different level and it is completely comfortable once again this is all my opinion on the blue model from what I know the black model has a different texture but I've praised amberi in the past for their designs and for their ability to just prioritize comfort in ergonomics and this is kind of like another culmination of that and I've said that before but it just keeps going they did it with the RG Arc that is a very comfortable device they're doing it here and it's awesome to see that they actually put the thought into Comfort when it comes to designing these handhelds it's something that a lot of other companies just don't do but that's all fine and well as soon as you turn on the device it gets even better because there is an old OLED 5 1/2 in 1080P screen greeting you this is one of those really good OLED screens and it's fantastic to see that it's not a compromise in any way this is the best screen out of any device in the under $200 category that you'll find and actually I might even take that up a little bit higher because until you get to a switch OLED or a deck OLED nothing really beats the screen and just how good it is now we could stop here and we have the Comfort we have have the ergonomics and we have the OLED but it keeps going from there the device keeps getting better performance-wise we're running a uniso t820 chip and it has a Mali GPU it's fancy words but what this basically means is this device can do GameCube it can do PlayStation 2 it can do 3DS PSP and of course everything under I wouldn't buy this for any Nintendo switch emulation it's not good for that and you won't have custom drivers because it's a Mali GPU but for everything else I think the sweet spot is kind of the native to 2x resolution for GameCube PS2 3DS PSP you can go a lot higher but that's kind of the top end of where you expect this device to go now obviously knowing that PS2 emulation is kind of non-existent on Android so you're kind of stuck with what performance is available to you by the emulator and we've had issues now with 3DS so just know what you're getting into with Android emulation but if you want to play GameCube PS2 PSP 3DS and everything under you can't go wrong with this device it is fantastic it is great for that purpose for PSP it's one that you can basically just set and forget and I basically just set it to a 4X resolution for full 1080p support and the catalog of PSP games just played great I didn't really run into any issues and it was perfect for PSP so if that's what you're looking for then it's fantastic for GameCube and Wii it was a different story I had to run a 2X resolution out of the box so 720p and there are some games that you might have to drop down to a 1x or might not play and things like that same as any normal GameCube PS2 all of that because emulation just isn't there for every single game but if you switch to Vulcan you can get really good performance for a lot of games might have to go open G for some either way just get it into your head that if you are buying this device it isn't a pick up and play out of the box everything will run you will have to fiddle around with settings change from openg to Vulcan maybe turn on vbi Skip and some other hacks to get some games to run but other than that most GameCube Wii games are going to run just great at a 2X resolution and just on that tweaking note we come to PS2 emulation and that's where things become a little bit more hazy when it comes to tweaking this is going to be scenario where like GameCube you could just go 2X and most games will run for the most part you're going to have to do a per game tweak for a lot of PS2 games just because that's how PS2 emulation is so you're going to run into Vulcan you're going to run into having to do cycle Skip underclocking and all of that sort of thing and if you aren't familiar enough with it on the PS2 end then you're going to have to learn a little bit about how to tweak things on PS2 but either way once you do all of that you can get a lot of the PS2 Library running really well and as long as you're okay with a 1x or 2x resolution this device is more than capable and more than fine to do all of that for 3DS and I used a combination of Citra Canary and Citra MMJ throughout my testing citric Canary for me just comes out a little bit ahead in my performance testing and just I prefer using it you can basically do a 2 to 3x resolution for 3DS games and get away with it 2x for the whole catalog if you want to just leave it 3x you can stretch on some games and just have a good time there but for the most part 3DS emulation is a little still hid and Miss in a lot of ways you still get those compilation stutters you still get some games that just aren't going to run well and all that sort of thing but the majority of 3DS games you're not going to have a problem with but generally after following my setup guide for this device and getting it all ready to go you won't have any issues just booting up a game and playing for the most part you can just do that for majority of titles and it's only going to be a handful that you have to just go in and maybe play with some settings just to get it to run a little bit better last on my list for what's great about this device is and it's going to be surprising but it's the software look I I know I personally would never have thought that I would praise am bernick on software and I guess they just did something special here because the actual Android build that's available to you here is actually really good and it's really well done and it's surprising for amernick to just get that right on the first try there's no oversharpening L2 and R2 Mode work for Xbox streaming for COD mobile and the entire experience has just been smooth and fast and you also have control over the fan and the LED lights there is actually nothing else that I could think of that needs to be added to this besides maybe a per game override so that you can have Xbox mode for certain apps and NS mode for other apps and that way you don't have to swap between them other than that it kind of has everything else and so the scenario ends up becoming that we're not going to get gamma OS on here it doesn't look likely so we're stuck with Amber Nick's Android build but from what I can tell it's not a loss at all the Android build is great now let's talk about the good and I'm going to start with the buttons and the d-pad on the button side I'm a really big fan of these they're nice and big they stick out quite a bit and they have a great feel and travel to them now there is one big knock to them and there's a bit of a grading sound that you can hear if you push them from side to side and just play around with the buttons and I'm going to have you listen to it now it's a weird sound I actually haven't heard this on any other device so I'm not not sure what's going on here I wouldn't say it's a big issue while you're playing but if you go ahead and look for it it becomes something that you notice all the time the d-pad on the other end is kind of slippery and it's still prone to false diagonals as most am bernick devices are I'm not a big fighting game person but I am a Pokemon guy and you can see here how the character Moves In other directions besides the one that you're pushing down on personally I find this d-pad to be pretty much the same as every other Amber d-pad it's just fine it's not great it's not good it's not bad it's fine it's usable in every way that that word means but you're not going to be sitting there praising the d-pad at the end of the day saying this is awesome so put it that way moving on to the L1 and R1 and the triggers and we have actual analog triggers here for once and you can see it in the game pad tester that we have each percentage covered for using them I've had no issues with the triggers they feel great and they have a really strong resistance they're well made and they're actually really good triggers same goes with the L1 and R1 buttons with my only complaint being that the L1 and R1 can be a little bit on the loud side but otherwise I have no concerns last on my list of good and I wouldn't say this is good this is more average or fine same as the d-pad but it's the speakers now they're down firing speakers and everybody knows I do not like down firing speakers so that's a knock against it but they're fine sounding they're not exactly terrible they're good enough for down firing that it's just fine but I'm not going to give it any points for it they could have done a lot better there's a lot of space to work with on this device that we could have had front firing speakers but we don't so let's just have a quick listen compared to the retroid pocket 2s and you can get an idea of how they sound compared to a device that's about half the price [Music] [Applause] [Music] hopefully that gives you an idea of what I mean like I said they're fine and they're serviceable but they could be better also I would get in trouble by a particular Discord user number 27 if I didn't mention that this device actually has stereo rumble or whatever stereo Rumble means to him basically means that there's rumble on both sides of the device so you can feel it on both sides of the device and I've never really looked into Rumble for most devices I don't turn it on I don't keep it but apparently that's an abnormal thing and so just be aware if you're somebody or one of the five people that care about Rumble it has stereo Rumble and I guess that's pretty cool and then we come to the bad and there's two two things on my list this was always going to be my complaint even if they were good switch sticks which they aren't I don't like the fact that we're still using switch sticks on a full-size device like this amberi really needs to move to fullsize sticks and move away from switch sticks especially on bigger devices like this but they stuck with switch sticks and they stuck with sticks that actually have quite a bit of issues even after replacing them with gly kit sticks it's still not perfect it gives you a better range of motion compared to the original sticks but they're still having issues with just snapping to different directions in the four cardinal directions they're better than the review units were from what I understand so they did make a change at some point between review units and Retail units but they still haven't gone the full way from my understanding the rest of it needs to be a software fix and I don't know if they're going to do that I don't know when it might happen I have no idea what their plans are I didn't have a reviewing unit this is an actual retail unit that was sent to me by gogeek and we'll talk about them later so I don't know what that looked like from review to retail to gly kit but from what I understand the next step on is on them and they have to do a software update for us to get the full range of motion from these sticks to be a little bit better but more importantly and more towards something that I care about because I could live with these sticks they're not great but I could live with them the Wi-Fi performance in this device is atrocious it's I have no easy way or good way to put this but the Wi-Fi chip in this or the antenna or both are on the very low to cheap end and something happened here that I don't know what but it's not a good device for streaming it reminds me of the Miu Mini Plus in that way anybody that has a miu Mini Plus they know that the Wi-Fi chip in that device is bad the range is bad you can actually see how performant it gets for Wi-Fi As you move that device closer to your access point and as you move it away you can see it just die especially if you're only 8 six feet away from your access point sometimes you have to put it right up next to it this device is in many ways very similar to that I actually wasted my entire weekend testing streaming on this device for anybody that knows me they know that streaming for me is a big thing I stream on multiple different devices I love streaming from Moonlight to XP play PS play local streaming remote streaming all of it I'm very familiar and very in tune with streaming I do setup guides for it that's how far I get with streaming and so when I get a device that doesn't perform well in streaming it's a bit of a weird thing because I'm like what exactly is going on here especially when this device compared to every other one is the only one having issues and so I checked it I pulled out my Odin 2 pulled out a phone pulled out tablet pulled out the retroid pocket flip the RG 45m the retroid pocket 2s pulled out every device that I could find that I could do speed tests on and just compared them and I went different distances from my access point and all that sort of thing and the one constant was that the RG 556 struggled in every single situation it was a struggle and it was a scenario where the speed might look great so you're going to see a 180 megabytes per second 100 megabytes per second and you might be thinking well that's good I don't know what he's complaining about but when it's 100 megabytes per second and the Odin 2 is getting 400 something is wrong and it's a scenario too where if you get that 100 megabytes per second and you're walking closer to the access point and you put it up next to it and it's still only getting 130 140 and you're seeing devices like the retroid pocket flip or the RG 45m get double or triple that something's wrong with it and it even came through while playing games I was streaming a lot of moonlight I was streaming a lot of PS play XP play and the one constant was this device the RG 556 had a lot of issues with streaming and the performance the stuttering the lagging all of that was existing on this device where it doesn't exist on any other of my devices so it's something weird and specific to this and I can only point to the Wi-Fi chip so from my perspective I can't really recommend it for streaming I don't know if your mileage might vary and your network might be better and all that sort of thing but I know it's not a network issue my network is Wi-Fi 6E with 5 GHz access points everywhere I'm full covered I'm a perfect Network situation and all of my other devices are perfect for all of the streaming that I do it is this one specific device that just doesn't seem to like it and after all of my testing the only thing I can conclude is that the Wi-Fi chip is not very good and so from my perspective for a review I just can't recommend it for streaming as much as I want to because a 1080p 5 1 12 in OLED would be perfect for streaming even with the crappy sticks but I can't and so I'm not even going to be using it for streaming personally and that's unfortunate because I would love to now before we get into the next section I want to talk about price and the main reason is because this device has had so many different prices from pre-order to what it is right now you could have been looking at anything from $1 through some Tik Tock stuff all the way up to $260 so it's a huge range and there isn't a good constant when it comes to pricing on this device now a lot of people were able to get it at the $160 pre-order price that I shared so many different times from Go Game Geek as well as eBay and other avenues it was $160 for a long time and by the way special thanks to go Game Geek for sending me this device for review as usual they have no input in what I say they haven't seen this review ahead of time but they're an awesome store for reselling these kind of devices and so I suggest that you check them out and a link in the description to where you can buy this if you want it but after release the device pricing shot up and we knew that because amberi said that there was going to be a discount for pre-order and then it raised up as of right now the pricing from Go Game Geek is $195 with the pb44 coupon not sure how long that'll last but that seems to be the best price that you can purchase this from any retailer from what I can understand so check that out but I have to say $160 is an absolute steal for this $195 is a really good price but obviously $160 is going to be better so that's my rundown of this device and if you can't tell I obviously love it this is a keeper device to me the best under $200 in my mind but people are going to start asking questions how does it compared to the Odin 2 I've had that question a lot and how does it compar to to the retr pocket 4 and 4 Pro so instead of me doing that off camera let's talk it through now the elephant in the room is obviously the retr pocket 4 and 4 Pro out of every device in the sub $200 category those are the only two comparables to the RG 556 right now and in the absolute nicest way possible neither of those two devices in my mind hold the candle to the RG 556 this is obviously my personal opinion and what I personally value but for me Comfort ergonomics the screen all of that are top priorities to me and this is a night and day difference compared to something like the retroid pocket 4 and four Pro as you know the Comfort on this I consider as probably the best that I've ever held the screen is an OLED screen it is absolutely fantastic and so when you combine both of those over the retroid pocket 4 and 4 Pro it is a big difference and for me that comes out ahead but there are some differences for the Retro pocket 4 Pro it's obviously going to be a lot more pocketable it's smaller than this is and on top of that there's a lot more power in the Retro pocket 4 Pro it has better d-pad and it has better sticks so if those things matter to you if all of those matter to you and comfort and ergonomics and Screen don't then you should go for the Retro pocket 4 Pro instead but for me the comfort in ergonomics and the screen matter a lot more and then we come to the big guy the head honcho the number one the Ayn Odin 2 the base Odin 2 is $321 shipped the ambern RG 556 as we talked about is $195 shipped that's a difference of $126 between the two of them so let's tackle it from two different sides if you're somebody that doesn't own an Odin 2 right now and you're considering it versus the RG 556 which one should you buy well as somebody who owns both of the devices the RG 556 wins over the Odin 2 in screen Comfort ergonomics and weight it's 331 G and the Odin 2 is 420 G plus the price obviously but the Odin 2 isn't a slouch in those departments either this isn't a scenario where the 5.56 is uh 10 out of 10 and the Odin 2 is a 1 out of 10 this is a scenario where the Odin 2 is a 9 out of 10 and the 5.56 is a 10 out of 10 in those categories that I mentioned the Odin 2 doesn't have a bad screen it doesn't have bad comfort and the weight isn't it's not a heavy device so it's just a scenario where this comes out ahead by being kind of a master in OLED and a master in comfort and a master in all of those sort of things but the Odin 2 isn't far behind however the Odin 2 does win on every other metric and so performance the sticks the d-pad the battery life and more out of the two the Odin 2 also has a better out of the box experience because you can just brute force a lot of games that you can't on the 5.56 and so you have a better experience of just not having to fool around with so many different games to get them to run because they just run on the Odin 2 the performance difference between the two devices shouldn't be understated this is kind of a Corolla 556 versus a Ferrari Odin 2 so it's not something that's even anywhere close in the same realm or same possibilities it's a very big difference the Odin 2 can play switch games and all the sort of things that add up that a lot more of the performance starts to come out ahead plus there's the whole game streaming aspect and the Odin 2 has been fantastic for game streaming on my end so the obvious answer if you're looking at both of these is all of that worth the $126 difference in my mind it would be but it all depends on what your budget is but if you're considering both of these devices then I'm going to assume that you don't have a budget in which case the Odin 2 would come out ahead now on the other side of the fence if you have an Odin 2 is the am bernick 556 worth purchasing and my personal answer is no there isn't a good reason why you would buy this if you have an Odin 2 unless unless for some reason you're like I really don't like the comfort and ergonomics of the Odin 2 and I don't like the screen of the Odin 2 in which case this comes out ahead but then look back at what I just talked about for all of the other positives the Odin 2 has and I don't see a reason why you would use both devices at the same time if anything you would probably get this and play with it for two weeks look at both of them and then be like why do I have both of these devices I'm just going to sell one and at that point it's probably going to be the 5.56 that you sell so that's my answer on all of those different situations and that's going to be it for this video a very long review video I think at the end of this year I'm going to look back and the 556 is either going to be a top three device for me or it might be the best device of 2024 because that's how I feel about it it is fantastic and I love it and I'm glad that Amber came out with it let me know in the comments below if this is on your radar at all I don't know if a lot of people are even looking at this I haven't seen a lot of hype around it but I think as people start to get it more the kind of ground swell will start building up and we'll start seeing a lot more people vying for this device I think that's happening I think everybody knows that I wasn't really interested in this device at all before I got it but obviously since getting it my tune has changed quite a bit don't forget to like and sub to help the channel grow and hope you all have a good [Music] one

Channel: Joey's Retro Handhelds

Views: 25,606

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Id: M70tX7IfZwQ

Length: 27min 1sec (1621 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 27 2024