The Best Retro Handheld Under $90 Right Now [PowKiddy X55]

[Music] hey everybody this is Russ from Metro game core today we're going to review the pow Kitty x55 now you may have actually already heard of this this has been out for a couple months already in fact I bought it when it first came out and it just kind of sat on a shelf for a couple months because I had so many other big ticket items to review and so this one kind of flew under my radar but to be honest now that I've been spending the past week with it I kind of regret taking so long because this is one of my biggest surprises of 2023. number one this is a great price it's ninety dollars with free shipping and even then there's a five dollar off coupon I'll leave it down below so really 85 dollars shipped to your door that's kind of amazing for a handheld that has this many components inside and truth be told the amount of features here are pretty excellent we have a big old screen as you can see that's nice and bright but then in addition we have some pretty good controls and nice ergonomics plus it has Wi-Fi plus it has blue Bluetooth and it has custom firmware working officially from day one and so all of a sudden we have a device that just basically does everything right and doesn't have any sort of big glaring red flags now this is really surprising to me because this is made by pal Kitty and pal Kitty is a company that usually tends to screw up their devices in one or two really big ways and so that makes it all the more surprising that there are no real deal breakers with the pal Kitty x55 and when I first started this channel back in 2020 these were the kind of devices that I always hoped for I reviewed basically every major release over the past three years and I have a huge collection and I'm here to say that for under a hundred dollars I've never seen a device that can get so many things right all in one and so in this video here I want to show you all the things I love about the pal Kitty x55 as well as a few minor nitpicks that I have here and there in the end I think you'll find that this one is rising really quickly to the top of my list of favorite handhelds of 2023 and so without any further delay let's go ahead and jump in [Music] foreign let's get started with the specs number one this is using a rock chip rk3366 CPU inside and this is a pretty common chip in other retro handhelds like the rg353 line from ambernik as well as the recent pow Kitty RK 2023 in a nutshell that means it's going to cap out at being able to play systems like Nintendo 64 Dreamcast and PlayStation Portable we have 2 gigs of RAM inside as well as two micro SD card slots for storage in terms of display we have a five and a half inch 720p IPS LCD panel with an aspect ratio of 16x9 the battery inside is 4 000 milliamp hours which has gotten me an average of about six hours of gameplay time every charge as far as ports we have a mini HDMI port on the top as well as two USBC ports as well as a three and a half millimeter Jack for connectivity we have 5 gigahertz Wi-Fi and I'm not sure what type of Bluetooth it has but it definitely does have Bluetooth within and this runs off of a Linux operating system for this one here we're going to be using one called jealous other than that a couple other notes it has stereo speakers as well as it's able to charge with a USBC to USBC Port now on their website it says it's capable of fast charging that's not quite correct it's still going to charge pretty slowly but you can use a fast charging brick which is something that's kind of rare in these cheaper handhelds okay let's move on to the unboxing now this is a retail unit that I purchased myself but if you do click on my affiliate link down below I will make a portion off this sale and it's of no extra cost to you and I do appreciate that support anyway inside you will get a quick start guide right here but I'll walk you through most of this process and then other than that you'll get a USBC cable for charging and that's about it now First Impressions here despite being a pretty large device it's fairly lightweight it comes out at 293 grams or about two-thirds of a pound next thing I noticed I like the metallic paint that they're using here on this plastic device it gives the device a little bit of a Sheen but all the same it also feels like it's going to pick up on some smudging and sure enough after a couple hours of gameplay time as you can see here on the back yeah it was picking up my fingerprint smudges pretty significantly so unfortunately this will be a device that you may have to wipe down every once in a while now let's move onto the controls and ergonomics of the x55 to start let's talk about the shoulders and triggers number one I appreciate the fact that they are stacked I just love this layout and they're using a micro switch connection and unfortunately they are very clicky let me give you a listen right here so I would say these are a little bit too loud to for example play in bed at night next to your significant other but they do feel pretty good and it's actually kind of satisfying to press down on them and have that nice clicky thunk now let's take a look at the controls on the face of the device starting with the left and we'll start here with the analog sticks now these are Nintendo switch style joy-cons which means they are going to be relatively small in addition they're fairly low set into the device itself which is going to help with its pocket ability but all the same it does have a pretty low profile in terms of just overall design and layout you can see the analog stick is above the d-pad and it is relatively easy to reach the shoulders and triggers while pressing on the analog sticks that means if you do want to play a first person shooter like something like Quake 3 Arena it's definitely possible however these small and low profile sticks are not perfect when it comes to these type of games I think the best way to describe it is that it feels just a little bit flicky and so it's not going to be the same as like using a full on Xbox controller but all the same I think they work well in a pinch and if you have some caps that will raise the height of the analog sticks I think that'll help us as well moving along let's talk about the d-pad now this one is a pretty typical output from pal kitty it's using a rubber membrane contact and has a nice classic feel to it the amount of travel and bounce that we have right here feels really good in addition it does pivot fairly well my only complaint here is that the edges are just a little bit sharper than I would like I wish they were a little bit more rounded but all the same that's a very minor complaint now it's a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to functionality of the d-pad for example it does not pass the Contra test this is where I try to push down and then pivot left to right without moving my character and unfortunately the character will move when I pivot that means that you will get some accidental diagonals depending on your play style however at the end of the day when actually playing Contra I actually found it to be just fine and so yes some players may have some issues with this game and others like it but for me personally it worked out great and it was the same experience for me when it came to Precision style Platformers like Celeste this is a game where I could control my character how I wanted so if I wanted to go straight it would if I wanted to go up it would as well so in my case even though yes it did fail the country a test I think the diagonals here are just fine especially at this price point also when it came to fighting games it passed with flying colors so this was completely hadoukenable as well as sure you can Ebola overall I would say this is a good but not perfect d-pad maybe a 7 or 8 out of 10. next up we have the function button so our select and start buttons are on the outside and then inside are the volume buttons the strange thing here is that the volume up is on the left side these are also very clicky buttons next we'll take a look at the face buttons these have a rubber membrane connection much like the d-pad and they also have a good amount of Bounce to them as well the buttons themselves are a little bit on the small side but that's typical with a lot of these retro handhelds overall I think these are good buttons one of my favorite things is that they don't bottom out although they do get fairly close to the Shell this is a good combination right here it means the buttons aren't going to fatigue your fingers over time finally let's take a look at the top and bottom starting with the top here we have the power button on the right and then the reset button on the left I'm not sure why these are so darn big in the center we have two USB ports one of them that's named host but I think it's just an OTG port in addition we have our mini HDMI port here in the center then our charging USB port as well as our headphone jack finally on the bottom we have our stereo speakers and micro SD card slots overall when it comes to design and ergonomics I think they got a lot right with the x55 number one we have these nice chunky grips here on the back which actually do provide a good amount of comfort and a lot of that has to do with the fact that they've been combined with a teardrop style shape of the device itself this is very reminiscent of something like the Logitech Cloud which is one of the more comfortable handhelds on the market and so overall this one is just kind of a joy to hold in the hands this is something that I could hold for hours at a time I do have a minor ergonomic complaint in that the d-pad is below the analog stick just because I think this device is better suited for d-pad gaming now thankfully the d-pad is not super low and because of those grips and the overall shape of the device it's not much of a stretch to actually reach it anyway so when I'm actually playing a game it's not like I actively am thinking to myself man I wish the d-pad was higher but I do think that overall it would have made it even more comfortable of a handheld overall I would say this is one of the best ergonomic devices from pal Kitty altogether we've got stacked shoulders and triggers plus some nice chunky grips and a good overall design of the handheld itself and in my week of testing there was never a moment where I felt like the device was not comfortable and so I think that's a great sign next let's talk a little bit about size and portability I think when it comes to size the best comparison here is actually going to be a much smaller device and that's because that they sub 100 price point the majority of the devices you will find will have three and a half inch displays and the ambernik rg353ps is a great example right here this is a recent release from the company and it has a three and a half inch display in addition it retails for 88 dollars but you do also have to pay for shipping so it really does come in at about 100 altogether and as you can see here the screen size is night and day between these two but of course the x55 is going to be a larger device altogether another example is going to be the ambernik rg353vs this one also has the same chip as the pal Kitty x55 and really it's basically the exact same thing as the one we were just looking at but in a vertical orientation and so while these devices are somewhat similar when it comes to Performance and price point when it comes to actual size and feel it's a night and day difference I would say the amarnik devices have a little bit more of a Nostalgia going for them just because of their form factors but if you're looking for something that's comfortable and with a big screen I think the pow Kitty x55 is just a better choice overall however with that larger size there are going to be some drawbacks for example it's not going to be a very pocketable device instead I would categorize this as a device that's probably best suited for playing around the house or then maybe throwing it into a backpack if you're going on a trip and probably the best size analogy for the x55 is going to be the Nintendo switch light this one also has a five and a half inch display with the same 720p resolution in addition they have just about the same size and the same d-pad and analog stick layout too and so if you've ever had a Nintendo switch light or you've at least carried one around it's going to be a very similar experience right here the switch light is a little bit thinner than the pow Kitty but if you factor in those trigger buttons that flare out a little bit it's actually kind of about the same experience so in summary carrying around a pal Kitty x55 is going to be very similar to how it is when you're carrying around a Nintendo switch light in fact these both weigh about the same as well so it's a very similar experience okay next up we're going to talk about the screen and the sound and I think in order to really capture this we need to bring in another device this is the rg552 too and I made a bunch of videos about this device over the past couple years because up until getting the pal Kitty x55 this was my favorite retro gaming system and a lot of that had to do with the screen this is a five inch display but with a 5x3 aspect ratio that means that showing something like 4x3 content looks very good on the screen however as you can see here thanks to the fact that the x55 has a slightly larger screen and also thinner bezels 4x3 content is basically the exact same size between the two despite the fact that the pow Kitty x55 is a 16x9 aspect ratio now overall I would still say the rg552 is a better screen just because it has a higher resolution and can scale retro games better but there are so many other factors to the x55 that beat out the rg552 number one is going to be battery life but then also this device doesn't get hot like the 552 either in the end the only major advantage that the 552 has for me at this point is the fact that the d-pad is above the analog stick on the left and so d-pad gaming is still a little bit better on the rg552 but this one goes for 200 compared to the ninety dollars with the x55 and so I think it's a no-brainer between these two and so at this point I'm comfortable in saying that the x55 has beat out the rg552 as my favorite Linux based handheld for Retro Gaming now going back to the screen I think another good comparison is going to be the rg353vs and it's three and a half inch display even though this one natively will show 4x3 content you can see that it's going to be a lot smaller than on the x55 and so if you've ever used a three and a half inch display and thought to yourself that it's just a little bit too small for your taste then the x55 might be a nice upgrade and it only gets better when you start playing wider systems for example Game Boy Advance you'll see a huge size difference between the two right here and then if we go even wider to a full 16x9 layout it's just a night and day difference between the two so I think overall when it comes to screen size yes this is a perfect size for me it's not that big of a device but all the same the screen is very impressively large now let's talk a little bit about scaling because this is a 720p display it's a actually not half bad here are with an unfiltered full scale of Mega Man X on the Super Nintendo and you can see the life bar right here is fairly well balanced with the pixels it's definitely not perfect but it's a lot closer than other low resolution displays now we have a couple fixes if you do want to have perfectly balanced pixels number one is going to be integer scaling that's going to make the screen just a little bit smaller but thanks to the 720p display it's actually not too bad so this is going to be an easy way to get perfectly balanced pixels with a little bit of sacrifice in screen size another solution would be to use a Shader that has interpolation that's going to balance out the pixels but then also allow you to have a full screen now really quickly let me show you how to set that up when you're in the main system menu here like in Super Nintendo press the select button to bring up the quick menu and then go down to the bottom and select Advanced system options and within here you're going to find the options we just discussed so for example your integer scaling is right here you just turn that on and every Super Nintendo game will now be integer scaled or if you'd rather use a Shader then you can go up to the Shader set right here and then choose the one that you want and I recommend using the ones that are in the interpolation category so you'll have to go about halfway down the menu to find them there's a couple here that are really good like the sharp bilinear 2X prescale and then also I really like this one here called pixelate so let's choose that one right now and like I mentioned anytime we open up any Super Nintendo game from here on out it's going to use that Shader so let's go back into Mega Man X and then reload my Save State and sure enough here we are the Mega Man life bar is now balanced but we're also at full screen so in the end when it comes to scaling I think that you have a lot of options right here thanks to having a 720p resolution and my final test regarding the screen is going to be the overall brightness and dimness to start let's go all the way down to the lowest dimness possible and then also turn off the studio lights and as you can see here it is relatively low here in a dark environment and so I do think this will be a great device to play in like a low light evening time frame now if we max out the brightness in a dark environment you can see we're getting a little bit of light bleed at the top and bottom this is something that you could probably fix if you opened up the device and put a little tape inside but all all the same I did want to make note of it and to be honest when you're actually in a lit environment you won't see the light bleeding at all and so I think it's perfectly acceptable overall and I've also found that 100 brightness in a brightly lit environment like this studio here is just a little bit too much I actually prefer about 50 brightness so the dynamic range here is not super high but all the same I think it's pretty good for a 90 device next up I want to test the audio but first I want to open it up just to verify that we do have stereo speakers a couple years ago Hello Kitty was releasing devices with two stereo holes but only one speaker and so ever since then I always tried to check any of these devices myself anyway getting inside the device is pretty easy you just have to remove some screws and then undo the clips and just to verify while we're inside here yes it is a 4 000 milliamp hour battery and sure enough yeah we have stereo speakers right here they are down firing and look pretty solid also of note these are just using generic Nintendo switch joy-cons so if you wanted you could go all out and actually replace these with Hall sensor analog sticks or if these ever develop stick drift it's can be pretty easy to swap these out with just regular joy-cons as well okay now that we've taken a look inside let's go ahead and actually test the audio we'll start with these speakers here at 100 volume [Music] [Applause] it's a supersonic fight and I would say the audio quality here is pretty good it's not super loud but it's loud enough and the audio quality itself is nice and crisp so I'm definitely satisfied with this sound especially at this price point next up we're going to test the headphone jack in case you do plan on using this with headphones [Applause] [Music] and yeah I think this is really good and it is playing in Stereo okay next up we're going to talk about the operating system now first off this actually ships with a fork of the jealous operating system here but as you can see here they forked it before they actually had official permission from jealous and the developers of this operating system have a neat little trick inside basically if you try to use their operating system on an unsupported device what they do is they extend the boot Time by a bunch and I'm not sure how they're actually achieving this but it looks like pow Kitty themselves weren't able to figure it out either and so out of the box if you plan on using the stock operating system that comes with this device you will get an extended boot time as you can see here it takes about a minute and 13 seconds all together from start to finish now I didn't get a second SD card with this device so I do have to set it up myself but at least in just a quick glance right here it does look like yes everything's fully functional here with Angelus however the great thing here is that after launch jealous decided to officially support the pal Kitty x55 and so putting the official jealous firmware on here is very simple and they're updating in every couple days so it's definitely worth it to start we're going to go to the jealous GitHub page and then navigate to their releases page after that just scroll down you'll actually see installation instructions but then also a specific package right here for the pal Kitty x55 all you have to do is just click on this to download that file and while it's downloading I recommend getting a flashing software the one we're going to use here today is called belena etcher because this one works with Windows Mac as well as Linux anyway just go ahead and download this app and install it and once the jealous image is done downloading you can now flash it to an SD card inside the belena at your app you're going to select the flash from a file and then navigate to wherever the jealous image was downloaded from there under select Target you're going to pick out your microSD card and then finally just press the flash button it's going to give you a prompt right here asking do you really want to do this and you say yeah man I want to do it after that it's going to start flashing your card it's going to take a few minutes to go through this process once it's done you can adjust check the SD card put it into your device as well as a second SD card to hold all your ROMs my rule of thumb is to use a 16 gigabyte micro SD card for my operating system and then 128 gigs or larger for my games either way once you have both of those cards inside just start up the device it's going to do all the partitioning and setup and once it's done you can turn off the device eject that second SD card and put it back into your computer now on that card you're going to see a bunch of different folders this is where you're going to put all of your games as well as a bios folder for your bios files and really that's about it when it comes to setting up jealous on their Wiki page they actually have an entire section that's devoted to where to put your game files and what types are accepted anyway now that we're all set up let's go ahead and boot up the official and proper version of jealous now and as you can see the boot up time is much faster about 21 seconds altogether so now we're ready to rock let's talk about the overall experience of using the pal Kitty x55 and why I enjoy it so much to start if you're wondering there is a fully working sleep function right here all you have to do is tap on the power power button to put it to sleep and then tap to bring it back up so if you do want to put a game on standby for a little bit if you want to jump back into it later you can totally do that now the overall navigation experience within jealous is very seamless you basically will just navigate through to your system then pick your game within there and this is one of my favorite things about using a Linux based operating system if you've ever tried to set up a retro gaming system on an Android or Windows device you know that you basically are just putting layers on top of the operating system the wonderful thing about a custom Linux operating system like jealous is the fact that it really is a console-like experience another feature I love about Linux custom firmware is that they have a screen saver slideshow function after you set this up you can press the select button in the main menu and then choose launch screensaver from there it's going to play video clips of the games that you have installed on the system and the beauty of it here is that if you come upon a game that you do want to play all you have to do is press the start button and it'll launch it right up this is one of my most used features on any of these retro handhelds because if I can't choose a game to play I I can just roll the dice and play one of these screensaver games instead anyway that's a really neat function that you can do with Angelus and other custom Linux firmwares now if you do want to make any sort of adjustments the operating system itself you're going to find those under the main menu by pressing start for example under the game settings this is where you're going to find things like the ability to change your screen size and aspect ratio and all that other kind of stuff so I do recommend going through here at least once just to make sure you have everything set the way you'd like additionally within here you can find the per system Advanced configuration so if you want to set up certain shaders or whatever for a certain system you can do that all within here now under system settings we have some really great options for example we can adjust the contrast and saturation of the screen right here so if you want the colors to pop just a little bit more you can make those adjustments within this firmware additionally within the system settings we can change the default CPU Governor this is kind of a fancy way of setting up an overclock and I'll show you how to use this here in a minute now within the network settings there's some other great options in addition to connecting to your Wi-Fi you can actually set up cloud services as well and all this is explained on their wiki page in fact you can even set up a VPN if you'd like on their device too it's kind of crazy now in addition to the options menu there's also going to be a tools section here they have a secondary cloud service you want to use that or if you want to boot directly into retrowork you can do that from here too another important tool is going to be one called portmaster and I've made an entire video about this one before but in a nutshell this is basically a tool that will allow you to download and install certain ports directly onto your device now some of these games are commercial so you'll have to provide your own game data files but after that yeah you'll be able to play a bunch of ports on this system and this is where that CPU Governor that I just mentioned will come into play because a lot of these games will get some slowdown on a 720p screen so what you want to do is hover over the game then press the x button and then select Advanced game options from there change the default CPU Governor to the one that's called performance and really that's it that's going to turn on higher performance and most of these games will no longer have slow down however it's not going to be perfect for example I found with Super Mario 64 it does get slow down here and there either way there are a ton of different ports that you can access through portmaster so I highly recommend checking these out and for many of these games I have full on written and video guides in case you need help setting them up long story short this is one of my favorite aspects of these Linux games is that we can play many PC ports that you wouldn't expect to be able to play next we're going to talk a little bit about some other features for example this is capable of HDMI out however unfortunately on the most recent version of jealous they haven't got it working quite yet and I did talk to the developers this is something they do plan on fixing here in the future but as it stands right now navigating through the actual emulation Station menu is kind of a mess however if you do boot up a game they work just fine so it's really just a matter of getting the main menu to work after that yes this is going to be a great system to be able to plug into a TV and play and thanks to the fact that we have Bluetooth functionality you can hook up a Bluetooth controller within the menu as well and this is a super easy setup and as you can see right here it works really well out of the gate not only that it supports multiple controllers so if you wanted to have a gaming party on one of these devices you could definitely do that finally another great feature within jealous is the ability to use Moonlight game streaming and you may have already guessed but yes I have made a full video and guide about this one as well essentially what you want to do here is connect this to your computer and then from there you can stream from your computer onto this device and so if you want to play some games that normally would not be possible on the pal Kitty x55 you can actually achieve this through game streaming and I would say overall the streaming experience here is mostly decent I'm not really sure if this has to do with the streaming speeds within my house but I was getting quite a bit of lag when I was trying to play some of these games all told I would say this is going to be really good when it comes to say for example role-playing games but I definitely wouldn't want to play competitive shooter via the streaming method however it is pretty neat to stream directly from your computer in addition to playing PC games you can also just stream onto your computer and then stream that stream onto the x55 for example right here I'm using Game Pass Cloud streaming on my computer through Moonlight onto the x55 and yeah it's working fairly well now the truth is I I probably wouldn't want to play Hi-Fi rush in this particular instance because this is kind of a rhythm game and so having two layers of streaming between Xbox cloud and Moonlight is probably not the best idea but as you see right here as I'm showing from one screen to the next you can see that the lag between the x55 and my monitor is very very slight like I said it's not going to be great when it comes to Rhythm games or competitive Shooters but most other games should be pretty good okay next I want to go fairly quickly through some performance testing this chip has been around for a while and I've tested it with a bunch of other devices but all the same I was pretty thorough in my testing so I want to show off that footage here when it comes to handheld systems like Game Boy and Game Boy Color yeah everything's going to play great you will get some pretty large black bars on the left and right just by virtue of the 10x9 aspect ratio of the original system however when moving over to Game Boy Advance this has a much wider aspect ratio and so because of that these games look particularly good in fact Game Boy Advance is one of the best systems to play on the pal Kitty x55 just because it fills up the screen so nicely and looks really nice too moving over to home consoles and 4 by three systems these are all going to play fine you can see right here with NES it is playing at a 4x3 and you do have some black bars on the left and right but because this screen itself has fairly thin bezels I don't think it's that bad at all so when it comes to playing retro Nintendo games I think this is going to be a great fit right here it's going to be a similar story with your 16-bit systems things like Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis this chipset is easily powerful enough to be able to play all these systems with absolutely no issue and so if you want to plow through your favorite Super Nintendo or Genesis game you can definitely do that right here in addition the jealous operating system does have the wide version of The Genesis core so if you want to enable that Within These settings you can actually get some widescreen Genesis with the games that support it and of course the other Sega systems like Sega cd32x those are all going to play fine too when it comes to Arcane all of your 80s and 90s Classics are going to play just fine this is basically going to cap out at cps3 and Neo Geo so you're not going to be able to play like for example Killer Instinct but everything below that yeah definitely no problem PlayStation one is also really good on this machine you can actually play Everything At a 2X resolution and absolutely no problem here so if you want to play through your favorite PS1 role-playing game or fighting game those are all definitely going to be options however every system after that will have some sacrifices for everything I'm showing after this I'm turning on the CPU Governor to the performance like I showed during the port section however once making that change you'll find that many of these games are going to play fine Sega Center is a great example now the abasan Shiro Standalone emulator I recommend actually does use an auto frame Skip and so because that it's not going to be perfectly authentic but all the same I would say that most games are going to be completely playable on Sega Saturn on this machine it's a similar story with Sega Dreamcast this one also uses an auto frame Skip and so because that it's not going to be a full 60 frames and not quite an authentic experience but all the same I would consider each of these games that I tried to be completely playable on top of that within the retroarch settings you can turn on widescreen cheats which is going to blow everything up to that full 16x9 and so I think when it comes to Dreamcast this is a pretty great experience not only will most games play pretty well but there will be many games that support widescreen functionality too when it comes to Nintendo 64 I would say that most games are going to play at full speed and this is just using the default emulator in fact you have about eight different options to choose from if there's a certain game that works better with others than not I do think there will be some higher end games like Conker's Bad for day that won't play at full speed but overall I would say most Nintendo 64 is going to be perfectly playable here the system that's probably the most hidden mess is going to be PlayStation Portable when it comes to lightweight games you know things like puzzle games absolutely no problem and many other lightweight games especially lightweight racing games like crash tag team racing actually play pretty well at a 2X resolution but I did find that for the majority of the games they played the best at a native resolution in particular the games that worked the best were role-playing games and fighting games and thankfully there's a bunch of these different games on this system and so if that's what you want to focus on you're going to have a great time I did find that some of the heavier weight games something like Ridge Racer actually did not play at full speed I would get a stutter here and there and then of course the really high-end games things like outrun 2006 or God of War these ones definitely struggled you'll have to mess around with the settings a bunch or maybe consider frame skip like I'm showing right here without run 2006. so you're definitely not going to be able to play every PSP game at full speed but I would say that the majority will okay this review is going on a lot longer than I first thought and so because of that let's go ahead and start wrapping up we're going to start by talking about the things I like about the pal Kitty x55 and then we'll talk about what I don't to start I really like the big screen on this device not only is five and a half inches just about perfect but the screen itself is high quality it has a nice brightness to it and I think the color balance is just about perfect too and I also appreciate that the bezels are nice and thin when it comes to controls they're definitely not perfect we'll talk about that a little bit more later in the segment however overall I think they're decent I like the layout altogether it's a very comfortable device to hold and the ergonomics are pretty good too another big factor for me is the fact that this is running on Linux custom firmware and it's a officially supported by jealous after spending so much time working on Android and Windows devices this year it's been a breath of fresh air to try out a Linux firmware again I just love the fact that this feels much more like a console experience than those other options additionally I love the functionality we have in the pal Kitty x55 not only does it have five gigahertz Wi-Fi but it also has Bluetooth and HDMI at this price point it's kind of rare to get all three at once especially coming from pal Kitty in the end what I think attracts me the most to this handheld is the fact that it hits in all the right spots for me when it comes to using a handheld the most important factors are going to be the screen the controls in the operating system experience and thankfully all of those things work in tandem on the pal Kitty x55 now of course like with any other handheld this one is not perfect so let's talk about some of the things I don't like about it number one are the allowed buttons in particular I'm talking about the shoulders and triggers as well as the select and start buttons I think when you're actually just playing it during the daytime absolutely no problem here but if you wanted to try the play this in bed quietly you definitely they can't do that if you press on those buttons they're pretty loud I also think it's a little bit weird the way that they've placed the volume button so I don't mind the fact that they're down on the bottom near the start and select but the fact that the volume up button is on the left just throws me off every time I also think the d-pad on this device is imperfect not only do I wish that it was above the analog stick but I think the diagonals are just a little bit too sensitive and finally this is a pet peeve of mine but the plastic on the back in particular is a little bit smudgy and this is easily fixed by wiping down the device every couple days but I do wish that they had a better texture on the plastic overall and in the end these little nitpicks are not enough to keep me from actually loving the pal Kitty x55 even though I play around with these devices almost every single day it's very rare that one of them will surprise me and kind of make me fall in love with it and that has definitely happened with the pal Kitty x55 when it comes down to it it's this perfect combination of good controls and pretty nice ergonomics but then also a big screen and a great operating system experience and the sad truth is is that under a hundred dollars this is a very rare feet and the way I see it this one device right here is replaced about 75 percent of the devices that I own that are under a hundred dollars and it's been a long time since I've gotten a device that is such a good fit that it makes me forget about the other devices that I already own so here's the way I see it if you want something small and nostalgic and at a lower price point then probably something like the ambernik rg35xx or the Miu Mini Plus will be your best bet these have a great form factor and a smaller size and so if you want to just play some retro games on the go this might be your best bet right here at about 65 bucks however if you're willing to spend a little bit more at about 90 dollars with free shipping then the pow Kitty x55 is my number one recommendation right now it's definitely not a perfect device it has some limitations particularly when it comes to Performance but if you're just going to be focusing on classic and Retro Gaming I think this one's a great fit not only can It play all those classic systems on a really nice and big screen but you can also get some pretty good performance with things like Nintendo 64 Dreamcast and Sega Saturn 2. and of course wrapping up that entire experience in a console like Linux firmware is just really icing on the cake so let me know what you think in the comments below are you in the market for something under 100 and you want something with a bigger screen or do you got something else in mind I'd love to hear about it down below 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] foreign foreign [Music]

Channel: Retro Game Corps

Views: 240,145

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Id: GRWvXiwTn-w

Length: 33min 12sec (1992 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 02 2023