Miyoo Mini Plus 2026: 28,000 Games, PS1 Is the Ceiling

There is a specific kind of retro-handheld search that returns ten thousand answers and not one of them official. Miyoo Mini Plus game list is the purest example. You want a manifest — a document that says here is exactly what this thing plays — and no such document exists, has ever existed, or will ever exist, because Miyoo does not sell you games. Miyoo sells you a plastic brick with a screen. The games arrive, when they arrive at all, on a microSD card that some reseller in Shenzhen filled up before shipping, and the number stamped on the listing — 28,000, 8,740, 6,041, take your pick — is that reseller counting files, not Miyoo publishing a catalogue.

So this review does something slightly unusual. It reviews a library that has no author, running on hardware that was never designed to be honest about its own limits. We will tell you what the 28,000-game card actually contains, what fraction of it will ever run at full speed, and why the single most useful number for buyers is not any of the marketing figures but a boring one: PlayStation 1, the ceiling above which this two-core, 128MB machine starts making excuses.

No Official List Exists — And That Is the Whole Story

Every honest conversation about the Miyoo Mini Plus 'game list' has to begin by admitting the premise is broken. You are searching for a catalogue that the manufacturer never wrote. What you find instead is a market of resellers, each of whom loaded a card, counted the files on it, and printed the biggest number that fit on the product photo.

Why there is no master list

The Miyoo Mini Plus is a bare device. It boots to Miyoo's stock firmware or, far more commonly, to the community OnionOS — properly the OnionUI project on GitHub, whose stable line has sat at v4.3.1-1 since mid-2024 with a v4.4.0-beta tag (January 2026) that made gpSP the default Game Boy Advance core and added netplay. Neither Miyoo nor OnionUI ships games. They ship a launcher and a set of emulator cores. The ROMs are somebody else's decision. That is why the 'list' is unstable across every seller you check: there is no canonical set, only whatever a given vendor dumped onto a given card on a given day.

The 28,000 number, decoded

The headline figure for the 128GB bundle is roughly 28,000 built-in games, and it is worth taking that number apart with arithmetic rather than outrage. A 128GB card offers maybe 120GB of usable space after firmware and BIOS files. Divide 120,000MB by 28,000 titles and you get an average of about 4.3MB per game. A single-disc PlayStation image runs 200-700MB; a three-disc Final Fantasy VII is closer to 1.4GB. It is therefore mathematically impossible for the 28,000 to be dominated by the PS1 titles the listings love to show off. The catalogue is overwhelmingly sub-megabyte NES, Game Boy, and arcade ROMs — and, critically, their regional duplicates, revisions, translation hacks, and outright bootlegs. Dedupe the thing and you are in the low thousands. GameCove's aggregation lands near 6,041 distinct titles; a widely-cited Reddit tally of a 64GB card came to 25,966 files; other sellers advertise 8,740. Five sources, five numbers, one lesson: you are counting files, not games.

What 'game list' actually means when you search it

So the useful reframing is this. When you search 'Miyoo Mini Plus game list' you are really asking three separate questions wearing one coat: What can this hardware run? What did the reseller happen to load? And which of those two sets overlap? The overlap — playable, non-duplicate, actually-good — is the only list that matters, and it is a fraction of the number on the box. The rest of this review is an attempt to draw that overlap honestly.

What the Hardware Runs Before It Starts Apologising

You cannot evaluate a game list without evaluating the silicon underneath it, because the silicon is what turns 28,000 advertised ROMs into a few thousand playable ones. The Miyoo Mini Plus is a modest machine that punches at exactly its weight and not one gram over.

The SoC that sets the ceiling

Inside is a SigmaStar SSD202D: a dual-core ARM Cortex-A7 clocked at 1.2GHz, paired with a Mali-400 MP2 and — this is the number that governs everything — just 128MB of RAM. XDA's Adam Conway, in his 9/10 review, names the part exactly ('a Sigmastar SSD202D SoC with dual Arm Cortex A7 cores and 128MB of RAM') and then delivers the sentence that should be printed on every product page: the chip is 'not going to be setting benchmark records, but that's more than good enough for most retro titles.' That is the entire device in one line. It is not fast. It does not need to be, for the job it is good at.

The comfortable tiers: 8-bit through PS1

Where the Mini Plus is genuinely excellent is everything up to and including the fifth console generation. Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, NES/Famicom, SNES/Super Famicom, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, Master System, PC Engine, Neo Geo and the CPS arcade boards all run at full speed with room to spare. Conway's verdict is blunt and correct: 'Game Boy Advance titles run flawlessly, PlayStation 1 games are a treat to play.' The 640x480 IPS panel — which Retro Game Corps called 'crisp' in the original Miyoo v2 guide — integer-scales 8- and 16-bit output cleanly, and at roughly 229 pixels per inch it is, as PropelRC put it, 'sharper than the original Nintendo 3DS.'

The stretch tiers: N64, DS, and the Dreamcast fantasy

Above PS1, the apologies begin. XDA frames the practical ceiling as 'any console or handheld up until the Sega Dreamcast,' and that word until is doing load-bearing work. Nintendo 64 is a light-titles-only affair: GBAtemp's testing puts easygoing games near full speed and the demanding ones at 70-85%. Some 2026 buying guides — the same ones feeding the search results — cheerfully list Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64 and GoldenEye 007 as playable while flagging Majora's Mask, Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64 as more demanding. That split is real; if you want N64 done properly, that is a different and more expensive machine, and we have written about the Analogue 3D's twelve firmware builds of N64 upscaling for exactly that reader. Dreamcast is the fantasy tier. Those same guides claim Sonic Adventure, Crazy Taxi and Power Stone 'can run,' and technically a core exists — but 128MB of RAM and two 1.2GHz A7 cores make Dreamcast the single most compromised thing this device attempts. Treat it as a party trick, not a reason to buy. And PSP, despite what a certain card's file list implies, is simply not viable.

Specs, Tiers & Details: The Table You Actually Wanted

Since no official spec-and-library sheet exists, here is one, built from verified hardware data and per-platform performance testing. Read it as the map between what the reseller loaded and what your thumbs will actually experience.

Device hardware at a glance

Attribute	Miyoo Mini Plus
SoC	SigmaStar SSD202D, dual-core Cortex-A7 @ 1.2GHz
GPU	Mali-400 MP2
RAM	128MB
Display	3.5in IPS, 640x480, ~229 PPI, ~450 nits
Battery	3000mAh (some units 3200mAh)
Battery life	~7.5h Game Boy, 6-7h SNES, ~5h PS1
Charging	USB-C, 5W (slow)
Wireless	Wi-Fi b/g/n; NO Bluetooth
Video out	None (no HDMI)
Storage	1x microSD (32 / 64 / 128GB cards sold pre-loaded)
Firmware	Stock Miyoo or community OnionOS (OnionUI v4.3.1-1 stable)
Weight / size	165g; 108 x 78 x 22mm
Bare device price	~$53.99 US / £60-70 UK

Platform tiers: era, size, license, controls, saves

Platform	Era	Typical ROM size	License note	Controls fit	Save support	Runs on Mini Plus?
Game Boy / Color	1989-2001	32KB-1MB	Copyrighted; dump-your-own	Perfect (2-button)	Battery + save states	Flawless
Game Boy Advance	2001-2008	4-32MB	Copyrighted; homebrew clean	Perfect (needs L/R)	Save states	Flawless (gpSP/mGBA)
NES / Famicom	1983-1994	16KB-1MB	Copyrighted	Perfect	Save states	Flawless
SNES / Super Famicom	1990-1998	0.5-6MB	Copyrighted	Excellent	Save states	Flawless (SA-1 games OK)
Genesis / Mega Drive	1988-1997	0.5-4MB	Copyrighted	Excellent (6-button remap)	Save states	Flawless
Master System / GG	1985-1996	32KB-1MB	Copyrighted	Perfect	Save states	Flawless
PC Engine / TG-16	1987-1994	0.1-4MB	Copyrighted	Excellent	Save states	Flawless
Neo Geo / CPS-1/2	1990-1999	2-90MB	Copyrighted; BIOS needed	Excellent	Save states	Full speed
PlayStation 1	1994-2003	200-700MB/disc	Copyrighted; BIOS needed	Good (no analog nubs)	Memcard + states	The ceiling — mostly full speed
Nintendo 64	1996-2002	4-64MB	Copyrighted	Poor (no analog stick)	Save states	Light titles only (70-85% on heavy)
Nintendo DS	2004-2013	16-256MB	Copyrighted	Awkward (single screen)	Save states	Marginal; out of practical scope
Sega Dreamcast	1998-2001	0.5-1.2GB	Copyrighted; BIOS needed	Poor	VMU + states	Fantasy tier — do not buy for this
Sony PSP	2004-2014	200MB-1.8GB	Copyrighted	Poor (no analog)	Save states	Not viable
Arcade (MAME/FBNeo)	1980s-1990s	0.1-100MB	Copyrighted; romset-locked	Excellent	Save states	Full speed (era-appropriate sets)

The OnionOS layer: saves, achievements, and the SD tree

Whatever the reseller loaded, the software layer that makes it usable is OnionOS. It adds per-game save states, a Game Switcher quick-launch overlay, RetroAchievements support, and — the reason PropelRC ranks it so highly — 'vastly improved battery life (4 hours to 7 hours)' over stock. If you buy a pre-loaded card and it feels chaotic, that is because most of the 28,000 files are junk; PropelRC's advice on the bundled ROMs is to treat the 'low-quality ROMs' as disposable and 'replace immediately.' The card layout under OnionOS is predictable, which matters when you go to clean it up or add your own dumps. If you want the full core-by-core walkthrough, our RetroArch cores setup in 12 steps covers which core to pick per system; the on-card structure looks like this:

SD root (OnionOS)
/
├─ miyoo283_fw.img      # firmware image — do NOT delete
├─ .tmp_update/         # Onion boot hooks
├─ BIOS/                # scph1001.bin, gba_bios.bin, neogeo.zip ...
├─ Emu/                 # per-system emulator packages
├─ RetroArch/           # cores + configs
├─ Roms/
│  ├─ GB/   GBC/  GBA/
│  ├─ FC/   SFC/  MD/
│  ├─ SMS/  PCE/  PS/
│  ├─ NEOGEO/  ARCADE/
│  └─ ...
├─ Saves/               # .srm saves + save states
└─ Imgs/                # box art, screenshots

The PS1 Ceiling: What Plays at Full Speed

PlayStation 1 is where the Miyoo Mini Plus does its most impressive work and also where its limits become visible if you know where to look. This is the tier the marketing photos lead with, and — unusually — the marketing is basically telling the truth here.

The reliable full-speed canon

The 2026 guides converge on a PS1 list that runs at or near full speed, and it maps cleanly to what testers report: Final Fantasy VII, VIII and IX; Crash Bandicoot 1-3; Spyro 1-3; Metal Gear Solid; Castlevania: Symphony of the Night; Tekken 3; Gran Turismo 1-2; Resident Evil 1-2; Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1-2; Wipeout; and Ridge Racer. These are the games that justify the purchase. The one control caveat is real and worth stating: the Mini Plus has a D-pad and face buttons but no analog nubs, so anything that leaned on the DualShock's sticks — the survival-horror tank-camera games, the 3D platformers — is playable but not native-feeling.

Where the slowdowns hide

Full speed is the rule, not a guarantee. PropelRC, whose reviewer logged real playthroughs rather than a five-minute boot test, singles out 'minor slowdown in Gran Turismo 2' — precisely the kind of alpha-heavy, geometry-dense racer that finds the edge of a dual-A7. Expect occasional dips in games with heavy transparency effects or dense particle work, and remember the storage arithmetic: a single multi-disc RPG can eat more card space than a thousand NES ROMs, which is exactly why the '28,000' figure cannot be what it implies.

The marquee: Symphony of the Night

If one game sells the PS1 tier, it is Castlevania: Symphony of the Night — the 1997 Konami title directed by Toru Hagihara with Koji Igarashi as assistant director, scored by Michiru Yamane, that fused Metroid's map with an RPG's leveling and, in doing so, named a genre. Hardcore Gaming 101 thought the series important enough to devote an entire book to it. On the Mini Plus it runs beautifully, the 640x480 panel flattering its sprite-and-scanline art, and it is the single best argument that this little machine's ceiling is high enough for most people. That it also ships, on the 128GB card, next to a PSP remake of the same game it cannot run is the irony we turn to next.

The 8- and 16-Bit Core, Where the Device Actually Lives

Strip away the aspirational PS1 marketing and the Miyoo Mini Plus is, at heart, the finest 8- and 16-bit machine you can put in a coin pocket. This is not a consolation tier; it is the point.

SNES and the Chrono Trigger test

The Super Nintendo library is where the device is unimpeachable. PropelRC's benchmark is worth quoting in full because it is the kind of claim you can only make after actually finishing a game: 'Chrono Trigger (SNES): Perfect 60fps throughout my 12-hour playthrough.' Chrono Trigger — the 1995 Square 'Dream Team' collaboration between Hironobu Sakaguchi, Yuji Horii and Akira Toriyama, scored by Yasunori Mitsuda and Nobuo Uematsu — is a demanding SNES title with Mode 7 and heavy audio, and it runs flat-out. So does Super Mario World, so does Super Metroid, so do the SA-1 chip games that trip up weaker emulators. The 2026 guides' shortlist of Zelda, Kirby, Street Fighter II and the rest is not a stretch; it is a floor.

Genesis, Neo Geo, and the alphabetical dump

Sega's 16-bit catalogue runs equally cleanly — Sonic, Streets of Rage, and the deep cuts. This is also where you can literally see the reseller's methodology. A leaked Mega Drive folder from one of these cards opens with Aa Harimanada (a 1993 Japan-only sumo game), AAHH!!! Real Monsters, Addams Family Values and Adventures of Batman & Robin — an alphabetical directory dump, region-agnostic, no curation whatsoever. Neo Geo tells the same story: a curated CPS-plus-Neo-Geo folder holds somewhere around 400 'Neo Geo' entries against SNK's roughly 150 official MVS releases, meaning well over half are regional duplicates, bootlegs and hacks. Metal Slug (Nazca/SNK, 1996) runs perfectly; it just happens to be sitting next to four near-identical copies of itself.

Famicom and NES: region-locked curiosities

The FC folder is the most revealing of all, because it is stuffed with Japanese Famicom titles most Western buyers will never have heard of: Akumajou Densetsu (the Japanese Castlevania III, with its extra VRC6 sound chip), Akumajou Special: Boku Dracula-kun, Gradius II, Super Star Force and Super Xevious: Gump no Nazo. Slipped in among them is a Super Mario Bros. (25 Anniversary Edition) — which is not an official Nintendo release at all but a fan repro, a tell that the folder includes bootlegs presented with a straight face. For the cultural context of why this specific library keeps recurring on cheap hardware, Jimmy Maher's Digital Antiquarian essay 'Generation Nintendo' remains the best long read on how the Famicom canon became the shared vocabulary of an entire hobby. The Mini Plus runs all of it without breaking a sweat; the question was never whether it could, only whether anyone curated it. Nobody did.

The Padding Problem: ROMs That Will Never Run

Here is the part the product listings will not tell you: a meaningful slice of the advertised 28,000 games cannot run on the device at all. Not 'runs slowly' — cannot boot. The count is padded with software the hardware was never going to execute, and once you see it you cannot unsee it.

PSP ISOs on a machine that cannot do PSP

The single clearest proof sits in the 128GB card's own advertised title list. Alongside genuine PS1 fare like Xenogears (Square, 1998), Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories, and the WWF SmackDown! wrestling games, the listing proudly includes Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles and Brave Story: New Traveler. Both are PSP titles. Dracula X Chronicles shipped on Sony's handheld in October 2007; Brave Story is a PSP JRPG. Neither will run on a dual-core A7 with 128MB of RAM — PSP emulation is flatly not viable on this class of chip. Their presence in the 'game list' is not a bonus; it is padding. The reseller poured a PSP romset onto the card because it inflated the number, and the number is the product.

The '2025 / 2026 / 2027' games that are not from those years

The most entertaining tell is the fake release years. A Geekbuying archive of one card's GB/GBA list shows entries labeled 2025 Frogger's Adventures: Temple of the Frog, 2026 Shikakui Atama wo Marukusuru Advance, and 2027 Bouken Yuuki Pluster World: Densetsu no Plust Gate EX. Read quickly, those look like brand-new games. They are not. Those four-digit numbers are catalog index prefixes — line numbers in the reseller's file list — not release dates. Frogger's Adventures: Temple of the Frog is a Konami Game Boy Advance game from 2001. Shikakui Atama and Pluster World are early-2000s GBA titles too. Cross-check any suspicious name against Wikipedia's record of 2026 releases and the illusion collapses instantly — none of these appear, because none of them are from this decade. The same list, tellingly, opens alphabetically with 007: The World Is Not Enough, 10-Pin Bowling, 102 Dalmatians and Zool — a raw directory dump, sorted by filename, dressed up as a curated library.

Duplicates, regions, revisions, and bootlegs

Underneath the two spectacular tells is the quieter one that inflates the count most: multiplicity. A single game appears as USA, Europe and Japan builds; as Rev 0 and Rev A (the list literally shows 'Pokémon Crystal Version (Rev A)'); as the original plus two translation patches plus a randomizer hack plus a bootleg demake. Every one of those is a separate file, and every file is a +1 on the box. This is why the honest, de-duplicated library is a few thousand titles and the advertised one is 28,000. If you want a library you can trust every entry of, the answer is not a bigger card — it is a curated set, which we will get to under pricing.

The Game List vs Peer Devices and Curated Sets

A game list only means something relative to what else your money buys. The Miyoo Mini Plus competes on two axes at once: against other budget handhelds that ship padded cards, and against the idea of a small, honest, curated library. Here is how the proposition stacks up.

The comparison table

Device / set	Silicon	Real ceiling	Claimed games	Honest playable set	Street price	Best for
Miyoo Mini Plus	SSD202D 2x A7, 128MB	PS1 (light N64)	~28,000	~a few thousand	~$54 bare	Pocketable 8/16-bit + PS1
Anbernic RG35XX (orig.)	ATM7039S 4x A9, 256MB	PS1 + light DS	~5,000-10,000	~a few thousand	~$60-80	Same tier, mini-HDMI out
Retroid Pocket 6 / Nova	Snapdragon-class Android	GameCube / PS2 / DC	User-loaded	Vast (you curate)	~$229-244	Serious 6th-gen emulation
Analogue 3D	FPGA (no emulation)	N64 only, cart-accurate	Your cartridges	The N64 library	~$249.99	N64 done properly
Tiny Best Set: GO!	Runs on the Miyoo itself	N/A (it is the ROMs)	~a few hundred, hand-picked	All of it, every entry good	Free (homebrew/legal)	A library with zero junk

Curated beats bulk: the Tiny Best Set argument

The most important row in that table is the last one. Tiny Best Set: GO! is a hand-assembled collection sized specifically for Miyoo-class handhelds — a few hundred titles where every single entry is worth your time, versus 28,000 where 27,000 are duplicates, bootlegs and unrunnable PSP ISOs. Loaded onto the same $54 device, it turns a chaotic file dump into a genuine library. The lesson generalises: on hardware this modest, curation is the feature. The number on the box is anti-curation.

When more silicon changes the answer

If your 'game list' ambitions run past PS1 — if you actually want GameCube, PS2 or Dreamcast — the Mini Plus is the wrong tool and no card will fix it. That is a silicon problem, and the fix costs money. We put the two obvious upgrade paths head-to-head in Retroid Pocket 6 vs Nova at $244 vs $229, and for the specific 8/16-bit + PS1 fight the Mini Plus is actually in, our Miyoo Mini Plus vs RG35XX breakdown explains why 128MB of Miyoo firmware polish beats 256MB of Anbernic on paper. Know which fight you are in before you buy the card.

How It Actually Plays: Five Real Scenarios

Specs and lists are theory. Here is how the game list resolves in five hands, because the same 28,000-file card is a different device depending on who is holding it.

The casual and the commuter

For the casual player who wants to fall back into Pokémon or Sonic on a train, the Mini Plus is close to ideal. It is 165g, genuinely pocketable at 108 x 78mm, and the battery is built for exactly this: roughly 7.5 hours of Game Boy or 6-7 hours of SNES on a charge, per PropelRC's testing. The 5W USB-C charging is slow — an overnight-only affair — and there is no Bluetooth for wireless earbuds, so bring wired headphones. But for the 8- and 16-bit commuter, this is the device the whole category is measured against. The junk on the card does not matter; you will play thirty of the games and ignore the other 27,970.

The completionist and the RPG marathon

The completionist is the buyer the PS1 and SNES tiers were made for. A 12-hour Chrono Trigger run at a locked 60fps, a full Symphony of the Night map to 200.6%, the FF7-8-9 trilogy back to back — the hardware sustains all of it, and OnionOS save states mean you never lose a boss fight to a dead battery. The one caveat is storage discipline: multi-disc PS1 RPGs are large, so a completionist should delete the padding and keep the games they will actually finish. This is the player who benefits most from throwing out the bundled card and building a clean one.

The speedrunner

The speedrunner is the one edge case where I would hesitate. Emulation on a dual-A7 introduces input latency and the occasional frame-pacing wobble that a serious runner will feel, and save states — while useful for practice — are not tournament-legal for most leaderboards. As a practice pad for a GBA or SNES category it is fine; as your primary run device it is not. If frame-perfect accuracy is the goal, FPGA hardware or a wired original is the honest answer, and no 28,000-game card changes that.

The co-op player and the link cable

Co-op is a real, underrated strength. The v4.4.0-beta OnionUI build added netplay, including GBA link-cable emulation between two units over Wi-Fi — so two Mini Pluses can trade Pokémon or run a Four Swords session without a physical cable. It is fiddly to set up and depends on a decent local network, but it works, and it is the kind of feature the box will never advertise because it is a firmware achievement, not a hardware one.

The mobile minimalist

Finally, the buyer who wants one tiny thing that does the classics and nothing else. This is the Mini Plus's spiritual home. It does not do PSP, it does not do Dreamcast well, it will not stream or run apps — and that focus is the appeal. As Conway put it, the plastic build 'can make it feel cheap,' but at $54 the value proposition is not craftsmanship, it is that it disappears into a pocket and boots straight into forty years of games.

Pricing & Availability in 2026

Because the device and the games are sold separately-but-together, pricing is genuinely confusing. Here is the honest breakdown, separating what you pay for the machine from what you pay for a number on a card.

The pricing table

Configuration	Storage	Advertised games	Typical price	What you are really paying for
Bare device	None	0	~$53.99 US / £60-70	The hardware, honestly priced
32GB pre-loaded	32GB	~13,000	~$55-60	Card + a padded dump
64GB pre-loaded	64GB	~25,966 (Reddit tally)	~$59.99	More padding, same games
128GB pre-loaded	128GB	~28,000	~$69.99	PS1 headroom + a lot of junk
Bare device + Tiny Best Set	Your own card	~few hundred, curated	~$54 + free ROMs	A library with no junk

What you are really paying for

The spread between the bare device (~$54) and the 128GB bundle (~$70) is about sixteen dollars, and what those sixteen dollars buy is a microSD card plus a file dump you could assemble yourself. There is nothing wrong with paying it for convenience — but understand that you are not paying for '28,000 games,' you are paying for a card someone else filled. The device is the honest purchase; the game count is the marketing.

The legal path, stated plainly

Now the part every retro article owes its readers. Emulators themselves are legal — the principle was settled in Sony Computer Entertainment v. Connectix (9th Cir. 2000), which held that reverse-engineering a console BIOS to build a compatible emulator is fair use. Distributing and downloading copyrighted ROMs is a different matter, and the pre-loaded cards live squarely in that grey-to-black zone. The clean path is dumping your own cartridges — our guide to dumping carts in 12 steps walks through it — or sticking to homebrew and legally-distributable curated sets like Tiny Best Set. The Machine's position is unglamorous but consistent: own the cart, dump the cart, play the dump.

Who Should Buy It: Use-Case Recommendations

Enough theory. Here is the direct guidance, sorted by what you actually want out of a game list.

Buy it if

• You want the best pocketable 8/16-bit machine under $60. Nothing at this price does Game Boy through SNES more cleanly, and the 640x480 screen is genuinely excellent.
• PS1 is your ceiling and you know it. FF7-9, Symphony of the Night, Crash, Spyro, Tekken 3 — if that is your canon, this device nails it.
• You value curation over count. Buy the bare unit, load Tiny Best Set or your own dumps, and skip the 28,000-file circus entirely.
• You want OnionOS specifically. The firmware — save states, Game Switcher, RetroAchievements, netplay — is the real product, and it is the best in its class.
• You want a cheap, focused second device. As a nightstand or backpack machine that boots straight into classics, at $54 it is close to disposable in the best sense.

Skip it if

• You expect the '28,000 games' to all work. They will not; a large fraction are duplicates, bootlegs, or PSP/heavy-N64 files the chip cannot run.
• You want GameCube, PS2, Dreamcast or PSP. Wrong silicon. Look at a Retroid Pocket instead.
• You need analog sticks or video-out. The Mini Plus has neither; the RG35XX at least gives you mini-HDMI.
• You are a competitive speedrunner. Emulation latency and non-legal save states rule it out for serious runs.

The upgrade paths

If the Mini Plus teaches you that you want more, the ladder is clear. For higher emulation ceilings, an Android-based Retroid Pocket 6 or Nova opens up sixth-generation systems. For a single system done to perfection, the Analogue 3D handles N64 in FPGA hardware with none of the emulation compromise. And if you fall down the accuracy rabbit hole entirely, an FPGA-first approach is where this hobby ends up. The Mini Plus is a wonderful place to start and a poor place to insist on staying past PS1.

Pros, Cons & the Verdict

The Miyoo Mini Plus is a good device wrapped in a dishonest number. Judged as hardware and firmware — the parts Miyoo and OnionUI actually made — it is excellent for its price and tier. Judged by the '28,000 games' on the reseller's box, it is a padded fiction. The trick to being happy with one is knowing which of those two things you bought.

Pros

• Flawless 8- and 16-bit emulation; PS1 mostly full-speed — a legitimately high ceiling for $54.
• Superb 3.5in 640x480 IPS panel (~229 PPI, ~450 nits), sharper than an original 3DS.
• OnionOS is the best firmware in the class: save states, Game Switcher, RetroAchievements, netplay.
• Genuinely pocketable at 165g, with 6-7.5 hours of real-world battery on 8/16-bit.
• Bare-device pricing (~$54) is honest; the hardware is worth it on its own.

Cons

• The advertised game counts are padding — duplicates, bootlegs, and unrunnable PSP/N64 files inflate them wildly.
• No Bluetooth, no video-out, and slow 5W charging.
• No analog sticks — a real compromise for PS1 3D and any N64 you attempt.
• N64 is light-titles-only; Dreamcast and PSP are effectively off the table.
• The all-plastic build, as XDA noted, 'can make it feel cheap.'

The verdict — 7.5/10

Take the number off the box and the Miyoo Mini Plus earns a confident 7.5/10. It is one of the best sub-$60 retro handhelds ever made, provided you understand it as an 8/16-bit-and-PS1 machine with a chaotic pile of ROMs you should mostly delete. The reviewers who scored it higher — XDA at 9/10, PropelRC at 8.5/10 — were rating the hardware and firmware, and on those terms they are not wrong. Half a point comes off here specifically for the game list, because the '28,000 games' story is the thing that gets people to buy it and the thing most likely to disappoint them. Buy the device, ignore the number, load a card you curated yourself, and it will outlast three phones. The best Miyoo Mini Plus game list is the short one you build on purpose — not the long one somebody sold you.