Miyoo Mini Plus vs Anbernic RG35XX 2026: 128MB vs 1GB

Two handhelds, both about the size of a Game Boy Color, both hovering around sixty dollars, both built to do exactly one job: run your childhood on a 3.5-inch screen. On paper they read like twins. Identical panel. Identical price bracket. Identical target buyer squinting at an AliExpress listing at midnight. Under the shell they share almost nothing. One is a dual-core relic tuned to a mirror finish by a volunteer firmware team. The other is a quad-core workhorse with eight times the memory and a firmware situation best described as a zoo. This is the Miyoo Mini Plus against the Anbernic RG35XX, and the interesting part is that the cheaper, weaker one is not obviously the loser.

What follows is a full teardown of the argument, not a spec-sheet drag race. We will look at the silicon, the emulation ceiling, the firmware ideologies, the save-state and netplay plumbing, the money, and the five or six kinds of buyer each device actually serves. Along the way we will lean on people who have actually held both devices rather than reprinting a marketing bullet list.

The Matchup

Two devices, one price bracket

The framing that sells these things is nostalgia, and both brands know it. The Miyoo Mini Plus is a deliberate homage to the Game Boy family, a vertical slab you can palm and forget you are holding. Handheld Gaming Community summed up its appeal without hyperbole: the Mini Plus 'strikes a good balance between a nostalgic design, solid build quality for its price, and exceptional portability.' The RG35XX line chases the same feeling from a slightly different angle, and Retro Game Corps recommends the vertical RG35XX specifically to buyers who want 'something that reminds you of a Game Boy.' Same shelf, same emotional pitch, same rough asking price.

Where they diverge is intent. Miyoo built a small, quiet, single-purpose object and then let a community operating system make it feel expensive. Anbernic built a more capable computer, wrapped it in cheap plastic, and threw the doors open to whatever firmware the internet wanted to bolt on. Neither approach is wrong. They are aimed at different nervous systems.

Why RG35XX now means the H700 Plus

A necessary clarification, because the naming is a mess. When someone said RG35XX in 2023, they meant the original: an Actions ATM7039S chip, a fixed version of GarlicOS, and a ceiling that stopped hard at PlayStation 1. That device is effectively legacy now. The living RG35XX is the Allwinner H700 generation, which spans the RG35XX Plus, the horizontal RG35XX H, the RG35XX SP clamshell, and the RG35XX Pro. When a 2026 buyer types 'RG35XX' into a store search, the thing that ships is an H700 machine.

So that is the device this comparison uses: the RG35XX Plus and its H700 siblings, the versions that actually compete with a current Miyoo Mini Plus on a store page today. If you own an original 2023 RG35XX, most of the software talk still applies, but the performance ceiling below is the H700's, not yours.

The thesis in one sentence

Here is the whole article compressed for the impatient: the Miyoo Mini Plus is the better-feeling device inside its lane, and the RG35XX Plus is the more capable device with a wider lane. The entire buying decision is whether your library lives inside the Miyoo's lane or spills past it. Everything below is the evidence for that sentence.

Specs, Head to Head

The full table

Start with the raw numbers, because the gap is stark enough to structure the rest of the discussion. Note the two rows that decide almost everything: the CPU and the RAM. The display row, by contrast, is a dead heat, which is exactly why screen size settles nothing here.

What the table hides

Tables flatten nuance, so two footnotes. First, the 8x RAM gap is real but not linearly meaningful. For an SNES core, 128MB is comically sufficient; the Miyoo will never touch the ceiling. The gigabyte only starts mattering when you ask for PSP textures or a heavy standalone emulator, which is precisely the territory the Miyoo was never built to enter. Second, the weight difference is larger than it looks in grams. At roughly 122 grams the Miyoo genuinely vanishes into a jeans pocket; the 186-gram RG35XX Plus is pocketable but you know it is there.

The one row nobody reads carefully

Look again at the display line. Both panels are 3.5-inch IPS at 640×480 in a 4:3 shape. That resolution is not an accident, and it is the single most underrated spec on either device. A 640×480 4:3 panel integer-scales cleanly for the systems people actually buy these for. NES output is 256×240, SNES is 256×224, Genesis is 320×224, and PS1 hovers around 320×240 to 640×480. All of them land on a 640×480 grid without the smeary fractional scaling that ruins pixel art on a widescreen phone. DROIX, comparing the two directly, noted that the panels are effectively identical and the RG35XX simply 'offers more hand space due to its larger overall size.' The screen is a tie; the hands are not.

The Silicon: A7 vs H700

A dual-core A7 from another era

The Miyoo Mini Plus runs a dual-core ARM Cortex-A7 at 1.2 GHz with 128MB of DDR3. The Cortex-A7 is an in-order, power-sipping design that ARM introduced in 2011. That is not a typo and it is not an insult. For 8-bit and 16-bit emulation, an efficient in-order core clocked at 1.2 GHz is more than the workload demands, and the low power draw is a feature: it is a big reason the 3,000 mAh cell lasts as long as it does behind a small screen. The A7 is a scalpel, not a bulldozer. Point it at a Game Boy Advance ROM and it is silent, cool, and correct.

The limit arrives the moment the workload stops being a clean 2D core. Anything that wants aggressive out-of-order execution, real floating-point throughput, or a GPU with actual fill rate, the A7 simply cannot serve. It is a chip that does a bounded set of jobs perfectly and refuses the rest. Whether that is a wall or a well-drawn boundary depends entirely on what you plan to play.

A quad-core A53 with a real GPU

The RG35XX Plus runs the Allwinner H700, a quad-core Cortex-A53 that reviewers clock around 1.5 GHz, paired with a dual-core Mali-G31 MP2 GPU and a full gigabyte of LPDDR4. The A53 is still an in-order core, but it is 64-bit, ARMv8, and there are four of them, and the Mali GPU gives the chip fill rate the Miyoo's silicon can only dream about. This is the difference between a machine that emulates 2D perfectly and a machine that emulates 2D perfectly and then keeps going.

Pocket Retro Gaming lists the exact configuration: an 'Allwinner H700 quad-core chip' with a 'G31 MP2 dual-core GPU and 1GB LPDDR4 RAM.' Retro Game Corps, covering the whole RG35XX family, called the H700 devices 'an excellent combination of affordability and performance.' That phrase is doing a lot of work. It is not calling the H700 fast in absolute terms; a modern phone laughs at it. It is calling it fast for the money, and against a dual-core A7, it is.

The gap that DROIX measured

You do not have to take the spec sheet's word for the performance delta. DROIX ran both devices side by side and reported the obvious: 'The H700 processor with GPU runs faster than the Miyoo processor.' They also delivered the crucial caveat about memory, and it is the most honest line in the entire matchup: 'The Miyoo Mini Plus only has 128MB RAM, but in most cases this is all you need.' That is the whole argument in two sentences. The RG35XX is faster. In most cases the Miyoo has enough. Your job as a buyer is to decide whether you live in 'most cases' or in the exceptions. If you want a refresher on how the emulator cores themselves scale across hardware like this, our walkthrough on installing 200 RetroArch cores lays out which cores are lightweight and which ones demand a chip like the H700.

The Emulation Ceiling

Everything up to PS1: a genuine tie

Here is the part that upends the spec sheet. For everything from the NES up through the PlayStation 1, these two devices are functionally equivalent in the games that matter. Handheld Gaming Community described the Miyoo's reach precisely: it handles 'the early 8-bit and 16-bit consoles and even the 32-bit era with the original PlayStation 1,' with only 'minor issues such as slight loading delays or audio anomalies' on the most demanding titles. That covers NES, SNES, Genesis, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Master System, Game Gear, TurboGrafx-16, Neo Geo, most arcade, and PS1. Which is to say: the overwhelming majority of what anyone buys a sub-$70 handheld to play.

The RG35XX Plus does all of the same systems with more headroom to spare, which mostly manifests as fewer of those 'slight loading delays' on the heaviest PS1 discs and more comfortable performance in demanding arcade drivers. But if your entire library is 8-bit through PS1, the extra silicon is buying you insurance, not new capabilities. This is exactly why DROIX told existing Miyoo owners not to upgrade unless they specifically wanted 'faster PS1 and Dreamcast performance.' Below the PS1 line, the two devices are the same device with different logos.

Above PS1: where they part ways

Cross the PS1 line and the tie collapses. The RG35XX Plus reaches into systems the Miyoo cannot touch: selective Dreamcast, selective Nintendo 64, and selective PlayStation Portable. The word 'selective' is load-bearing and the reviewers are careful with it. Pocket Retro Gaming reports that on the RG35XX Plus, Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, and PSP receive only 'partial support.' Community testing tells the same story in more detail: Dreamcast's Crazy Taxi runs well, while heavier titles like Sonic Adventure 2 and Shenmue push the H700 hard enough that frameskip becomes necessary. N64 is the usual per-game lottery it is on every device in this class.

The Miyoo Mini Plus, by contrast, does not pretend. Its ceiling is PS1 and GBA with only selective Nintendo DS support, and OnionOS is honest about it rather than shipping a broken PSP core to look good on a bullet list. If you want to chase N64 upscaling or Dreamcast properly, neither of these is really the tool; that is a job for FPGA hardware or a beefier chip, which is a rabbit hole we went down in our look at N64 upscaling on the Analogue 3D. On a $60 handheld, the RG35XX's 'selective' is a bonus, not a promise.

Three sources, one conclusion

Triangulate the performance picture across independent testers and it holds. DROIX: the H700 'runs faster.' Retro Game Corps: the H700 family is 'an excellent combination of affordability and performance,' with support charts that mark N64 and PSP with asterisks reading 'not every game at full speed.' Pocket Retro Gaming: N64, Dreamcast, and PSP are 'partial support' on the RG35XX Plus. Every source agrees the RG35XX is faster and every source agrees its post-PS1 support is conditional. There is no reviewer out there claiming this chip is a Dreamcast machine, and you should distrust any listing that does. For a sense of what genuinely comfortable Dreamcast and PSP performance costs, the jump is to something like a Retroid, which we ranked across five models in our 2026 Retroid Pocket lineup breakdown.

OnionOS vs the Linux Zoo

OnionOS: one stack, polished to a shine

If the RG35XX wins the hardware chapter, the Miyoo wins this one, and it is not particularly close. OnionOS is a community operating system built specifically for the Miyoo Mini and Mini Plus, and it is the single most important reason to buy the device. The official OnionUI documentation describes an operating system with 100+ built-in emulators, auto-save and resume, and something most firmware skips entirely: it uses 'its own build of RetroArch, with a custom display driver made for maximum precision and performance.' Someone tuned the display pipeline for this exact 640×480 panel, and it shows.

The reviewers noticed. Handheld Gaming Community called OnionOS 'the real star of the show' and said it 'elevates the user experience to a level far beyond the stock firmware.' That is the consistent refrain across every Miyoo writeup: the hardware is fine, the operating system is the product. Every core is pre-configured, every overlay is drawn for this screen, and the whole thing is designed so you play instead of tinker. If you want to see what a fully loaded OnionOS build looks like in practice, we counted the real numbers in our Miyoo Mini Plus ROM library audit.

The RG35XX firmware buffet

Anbernic took the opposite philosophy. The RG35XX Plus ships with GarlicOS 2 as its custom Linux stock firmware, and then the community piles on. You can run GarlicOS 2, muOS, MinUI, and Knulli, each with a different personality. muOS is the current darling for people who want a clean, fast, actively developed frontend. MinUI is for minimalists who want the interface to disappear. Knulli is the full Batocera-style experience. That is choice the Miyoo simply does not offer, because OnionOS is the only game in town on Miyoo hardware and does not need competition.

The trade-off is coherence. On the Miyoo you get one exceptional experience with no decisions to make. On the RG35XX you get a menu of experiences and the homework of picking one, flashing it, and configuring it. For a tinkerer that is the entire appeal. For someone who wants to hand the device to a kid or a partner, it is friction.

A note on Knulli, Batocera, and the lore

Worth knowing the genealogy, because the marketing never explains it. Knulli is a fork of Batocera, and it exists because the standalone Batocera-for-RG35XX project was rebranded into Knulli, which is now the maintained path. The RG35XX Plus firmware hub and the Knulli release page are the canonical sources; a KNULLI build shipped in mid-2025 adding support across the RG35XX family. If you have ever run Batocera on anything, Knulli will feel like home. If you want the full Batocera experience and the theory behind it, we broke down the desktop and handheld installer in our Batocera setup guide. The Miyoo's OnionOS, for the record, lives at the official OnionUI GitHub repository, which is the only place you should ever download it from.

Saves, Netplay, Shaders

Save states and resume

Both devices are, under the frontend, running RetroArch, so both inherit RetroArch's excellent save-state machinery: multiple slots, screenshots per slot, and instant load. The difference is how gracefully the frontend wraps it. OnionOS ships auto-save and resume as a first-class feature per the OnionUI docs, meaning you can hit sleep mid-boss-fight, close the device, and pick up exactly where you left off hours later. It is the closest a $60 device gets to the Switch's suspend-and-resume, and it is the feature that makes the Miyoo feel like a finished consumer product rather than a hobby board.

The RG35XX firmwares all offer the same underlying save-state features, and GarlicOS, muOS, and Knulli each expose them competently. Whether resume is as seamless depends on which firmware you flashed, which is the recurring theme: on the RG35XX, quality is a function of your firmware choice, whereas on the Miyoo it is simply the default.

Netplay and wireless

This is where the wireless spec rows cash out. The Miyoo Mini Plus has 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, and OnionOS actually uses it: the game-list menu lets you 'launch a Netplay session' directly, download cover art, and sync RetroAchievements. It is genuinely capable of online play for the systems its cores support. What it lacks is Bluetooth, so there is no pairing a wireless controller or headset; you play on the built-in controls, full stop.

The RG35XX Plus brings more radio hardware to the table: 5 GHz Wi-Fi for faster, less congested netplay and, crucially, Bluetooth 4.2. That Bluetooth radio means you can pair an external controller for HDMI-out couch sessions, or a wireless headset for late-night play. Combined with the mini-HDMI port, the RG35XX quietly moonlights as a tiny plug-into-the-TV console in a way the Miyoo physically cannot. DROIX flagged this as the Miyoo's clearest hardware omission: 'One thing lacking on the Miyoo is a HDMI port, something both RG35XX models have.'

Shaders and the 4:3 advantage

Because both run RetroArch, both support the full shader stack: CRT masks, scanlines, LCD grids for handheld cores, the lot. Here the hardware gap gently favors the RG35XX again; heavier CRT shaders like the multi-pass Royale or Lottes presets are more comfortable with the H700's headroom, whereas the Miyoo prefers lighter scanline and grid shaders to protect its frame rate. OnionOS mitigates this by shipping 'custom overlays and custom filters made specially for the Miyoo Mini screen,' per the OnionUI docs, so the out-of-box look is already tuned even if you never open a shader menu. The shared 640×480 4:3 panel is the real hero for both, because integer scaling plus a good scanline shader is where these small screens genuinely shine.

Price and Availability

The 2026 price picture

The money is close enough that it should not be your tiebreaker, but the exact figures matter because they frame the value argument. The Miyoo Mini Plus lists at $62.99 on Miyoo's own store, and during a May 2026 promotion the 64GB model dropped to $56.99 against a stated $79.99 regular price. In the UK it hovers around £60. The RG35XX Plus generally sits near $65 at typical pricing, though Pocket Retro Gaming argues it is 'only a smart buy when found in the $45 to $55 range,' which it regularly hits on sale.

What you actually pay per capability

Run the value math and it is a wash that tilts on intent. At $56.99 the Miyoo Mini Plus is arguably the best-executed sub-$60 object in the category, a device where every dollar went into feel and firmware. At $50 on sale the RG35XX Plus is the better raw-capability-per-dollar buy, because you are getting a quad-core chip, a gigabyte of RAM, HDMI, Bluetooth, dual SD slots, and stereo speakers for the same money. Neither is a rip-off. They are priced like what they are: two competent products at the floor of the market.

Buying without getting burned

Two availability warnings. First, both devices are cloned and counterfeited; buy the Miyoo from the official store and the Anbernic from Anbernic's own storefront or a known reseller, and be suspicious of any listing far below the ranges above. Second, watch the storage tier. A 'cheap' listing is often the smaller-card model, and the price delta to the 64GB version rarely justifies saving the ROMs you will inevitably want. For either device, you will end up sourcing a larger microSD anyway, and the firmware handles the rest.

Who Each One Is For

Buy the Miyoo Mini Plus if...

Five concrete profiles. First, the pocket purist: you want a device that vanishes into a jeans pocket and comes out only to play Link's Awakening on a train. At 122 grams the Miyoo is the smallest, lightest genuinely-good option, and Handheld Gaming Community's 'exceptional portability' line is not marketing, it is the point. Second, the set-and-forget player: you want to turn it on and play, not flash firmware and configure cores. OnionOS is the most finished experience in the category, full stop.

Third, the 16-bit-and-below loyalist: your heart lives in the SNES, Genesis, and GBA eras, and PS1 is your occasional ceiling. The Miyoo does that library flawlessly and you will never feel the missing headroom. If that is you, the RG35XX's extra silicon is money spent on systems you do not play.

Buy the RG35XX Plus if...

Fourth profile, the ceiling-chaser: you want at least a shot at Dreamcast, N64, and PSP, and you accept 'selective' as the price of entry. The Miyoo cannot do this at all; the RG35XX can do it sometimes, and sometimes is infinitely more than never. Fifth, the living-room hybrid: you want to pair a Bluetooth controller, plug into the TV over HDMI, and use the thing as a micro-console when you are not holding it. That is a hardware capability the Miyoo physically lacks, and it is the clearest reason to pay a little more.

A sixth, honest profile: the tinkerer. If flashing muOS on Tuesday and Knulli on Friday sounds like the hobby rather than a chore, the RG35XX's open firmware buffet is a feature the single-track Miyoo cannot match. The device is a canvas; some people want the canvas.

Buy neither if...

The uncomfortable case. If you genuinely want to play Dreamcast, N64, and PSP reliably rather than selectively, neither of these devices is the right purchase, and buying one to do it will disappoint you. That workload wants a stronger chip. The honest upgrade path runs to a Retroid or similar, and we mapped the price-to-performance ladder in our Retroid Pocket rankings. Do not buy a $60 handheld expecting a $250 one's ceiling; buy it for the enormous library it does run perfectly, and let the ceiling be a bonus.

Switching Sides

Moving from Miyoo to RG35XX

Say you own a Miyoo Mini Plus and the Dreamcast itch finally got you. Migrating to an RG35XX Plus is straightforward because your actual content, the ROMs and saves, is portable. RetroArch save states and SRAM files are largely interchangeable between RetroArch-based frontends, so the real work is reorganizing the folder structure your new firmware expects. Here is the shape of the move:

Miyoo (OnionOS) SD layout          RG35XX (muOS/Knulli) target
-------------------------          ---------------------------
/Roms/GB/    ->  copy to  ->       /ROMS/gb/   (or /roms/gb)
/Roms/GBA/   ->  copy to  ->       /ROMS/gba/
/Roms/SFC/   ->  copy to  ->       /ROMS/snes/
/Saves/*.srm ->  copy to  ->       /saves/ or per-system save dir
/Saves/*.state (RetroArch) ->      re-map to new core's state slot

Step order:
1. Back up the entire Miyoo SD to a PC first. Non-negotiable.
2. Flash the RG35XX firmware to a NEW card (Balena Etcher / Rufus).
3. First boot the RG35XX to let it build its folder tree.
4. Copy ROMs into the matching system folders it created.
5. Copy .srm battery saves; verify one game before bulk-copying.
6. Accept that .state save states may not survive a core change.

The one caveat worth repeating: battery saves (.srm) are reliable across cores, but save states (.state) are tied to the exact emulator core and version that wrote them. If OnionOS and your new RG35XX firmware use different core versions, expect states to break. Finish your in-progress games on the Miyoo, or rely on in-game battery saves for the transition. The core-compatibility weeds are the same ones we untangle in the RetroArch cores guide.

Moving from RG35XX to Miyoo

The reverse migration is simpler in one way and harder in another. Simpler, because OnionOS is a single known-good target, so there is no firmware paralysis; you flash Onion from the official OnionUI repo and you are done. Harder, because you are moving to a device with a lower ceiling, so any Dreamcast, N64, or PSP content you carried over simply will not run, and you should leave it behind rather than clutter the card. Copy your 8-bit through PS1 libraries, let OnionOS scrape the art over Wi-Fi, and enjoy the fact that you now have nothing left to configure.

The controller and accessory reality

One migration gotcha people forget: accessories do not transfer. If you built a Bluetooth-controller-and-HDMI living-room setup around the RG35XX, none of that follows you to a Miyoo, which has neither radio nor port. Conversely, the Miyoo's ecosystem of tiny cases, grips, and screen protectors is sized for the Miyoo and will not fit the larger RG35XX. Budget a few dollars for new physical accessories whenever you switch, because the old ones are e-waste the moment you change devices.

Pros and Cons

Miyoo Mini Plus, laid bare

The case for and against the little one, without the marketing gloss.

RG35XX Plus, laid bare

And the case for and against the workhorse.

The pattern in the tables

Read the two tables together and the shape is unmistakable. Almost every Miyoo pro is about refinement and feel, and almost every Miyoo con is about a hard capability limit. Almost every RG35XX pro is about capability, and almost every RG35XX con is about friction or bulk. Neither device has a fatal flaw. They have opposite personalities, and the tables are just that personality difference rendered as bullet points.

The Verdict

The data-backed recommendation

There is no universal winner here, and any review that declares one is not reading its own evidence. The data points to a clean split. If your library stops at PlayStation 1, and most people's does, the Miyoo Mini Plus is the better object: smaller, lighter, cheaper on sale, and running the single most polished firmware in the category. Handheld Gaming Community's verdict stands, that OnionOS 'elevates the user experience to a level far beyond the stock firmware,' and that experience is the reason to buy. Every source we checked agrees the Miyoo does 8-bit through PS1 beautifully, and every source agrees that is where it stops.

If your library spills past PS1, or you want HDMI and Bluetooth, the RG35XX Plus is the better machine. DROIX's summary is the fair one: for a new buyer with no existing device, the RG35XX Plus is 'the better handheld,' but an existing Miyoo owner should not upgrade 'unless seeking faster PS1 and Dreamcast performance.' That single sentence is the buying guide. The RG35XX's quad-core H700 and gigabyte of RAM are real advantages, and they are advantages you will feel only if you actually push past the systems the Miyoo already handles.

How to choose in ten seconds

The decision tree is genuinely this short. Do you want the smallest possible pocketable device with zero setup and a library that stops at PS1? Buy the Miyoo Mini Plus. Do you want more power, HDMI, Bluetooth, and a shot at Dreamcast and PSP, and are you fine picking and flashing firmware? Buy the RG35XX Plus. Do you want reliable Dreamcast, N64, and PSP? Buy neither, and read our Retroid rankings instead. That is the entire calculus.

The Machine's closing note

What makes this matchup interesting is that the cheaper, weaker device is not the lesser one. The Miyoo Mini Plus is a case study in doing less, perfectly. The RG35XX Plus is a case study in doing more, competently. Retro Game Corps' phrase for the RG35XX, 'an excellent combination of affordability and performance,' and Handheld Gaming Community's line about the Miyoo's 'exceptional portability' are both true, and they describe two different virtues that cannot exist in the same 122-gram shell. You are not buying the better handheld. You are buying the handheld whose compromises you happen to like. Pick your compromise, source a big microSD card, and stop reading spec sheets. Both of these things will play your childhood back to you for less than the cost of one new AAA game, and that was always the only spec that mattered.