Miyoo Mini Plus vs RG35XX 2026: 128MB Beats 256MB

There is a category of internet argument that has no terminal state, and Miyoo Mini Plus versus Anbernic RG35XX is one of its purest specimens. Two sub-$70 slabs of plastic, both replaying the same forty years of cartridges, separated by a rounding error in price and a canyon in philosophy. One is a hardware company's attempt to out-spec the other. The other is a firmware community's attempt to make specs irrelevant. Spoiler, because The Machine does not do suspense: the firmware wins. But the reasons are worth the word count, because nearly every spec table you will read about these two devices is wrong in at least one place, and several of them are wrong in the same place, because they copied each other.

This is not a listicle that shrugs and tells you "it depends on your needs." It depends on your needs the way a courtroom verdict depends on the facts — which is to say, only after somebody has actually read the evidence. So let us read the evidence: the silicon, the firmware, the battery, the price, and the handful of copy-paste errors that have been laundered into received wisdom. By the end you will know which of these to put in your pocket, and — more usefully — why.

The Short Answer

If you skip the rest of this article, skip it knowing this: buy the Miyoo Mini Plus unless you have a specific, nameable reason to buy the Anbernic RG35XX. That is the whole verdict, compressed. Everything below is the supporting brief.

The one-line answer

The Miyoo Mini Plus is the better device for most buyers despite objectively weaker hardware, because in this class the operating system is the product and OnionOS is the best operating system in the class. The RG35XX is the better machine — more cores, more RAM, a real GPU, an HDMI port — and it loses anyway, because raw silicon at the bottom of the market is worth less than a firmware team that ships polish. That inversion is the entire story, and it is why our headline says 128MB beats 256MB.

Who buys which

You want the Miyoo if you live at the 8-bit-to-PlayStation tier, value a device that genuinely disappears into a jacket pocket, and want RetroAchievements and Wi-Fi to work out of the box. You want the RG35XX if you intend to output to a television, want to push into Nintendo DS on original silicon, or — the most common real-world reason — you tried to buy a Miyoo and it was out of stock again.

The specs that actually decide it

Three numbers settle 90% of this fight: the Miyoo's 3,000 mAh battery against the RG35XX's ~2,100, the Miyoo's 108×78 mm footprint against the RG35XX's larger body, and the maturity gap between OnionOS and GarlicOS. Every other spec — the extra cores, the extra RAM, the HDMI port — is real, and none of it overturns those three. Now let us prove all of that.

The Silicon Nobody Gets Right

Start with the single most repeated falsehood about these two handhelds: that they run the same chip, a Rockchip RK3326. A popular 2026 comparison states it outright. It is wrong. It is so wrong that untangling it tells you exactly how much of the budget-handheld spec economy is copy-and-paste.

What is actually inside the Miyoo

The Miyoo Mini Plus runs a SigmaStar SSD202D: two ARM Cortex-A7 cores clocked up to about 1.2 GHz, a Mali-400 MP2 GPU, and 128 MB of DDR3 packaged with the SoC. This is not a guess. XDA's Adam Conway, who scored the device 9/10, names it directly — a "Sigmastar SSD202D SoC with dual Arm Cortex A7 cores and 128MB of RAM" — and adds the honest caveat that it is "not going to be setting benchmark records by any stretch," which is followed immediately by the more important clause: "but that's more than good enough for most retro titles." That sentence is the Miyoo in miniature. Weak on paper, sufficient in practice.

What is actually inside the RG35XX

The original Anbernic RG35XX runs an Actions ATM7039S: four Cortex-A9 cores up to roughly 1.6 GHz, a PowerVR SGX544 GPU, and 256 MB of DDR3. XDA's separate 9/10 RG35XX review identifies "an ATM7039S with four Cortex-A9 cores and PowerVR graphics." So on a component-by-component basis the RG35XX genuinely doubles the Miyoo: twice the cores, twice the RAM, a discrete-ish GPU with real fill rate. If this were a spec-sheet drag race, the RG35XX would win it going away. It is not a spec-sheet drag race.

Why "RK3326" keeps appearing

The RK3326 is a quad Cortex-A35 part that Rockchip shipped into a generation of handhelds — the Anbernic RG351 line, the Odroid Go Advance, and their many clones. It became the default answer to "what chip is in that little Linux handheld," and once a wrong answer is convenient it propagates. Neither of the two devices in this article uses it. The lesson is not that one writer was careless; it is that the entire budget-handheld information layer is a hall of mirrors where a single confident error gets reflected until it looks like consensus. When you see two sites agree on a spec, that is not corroboration. It might just be a shared ancestor. Keep that in mind for the next section, where two sources agree on something else that is also false.

The Full Spec Sheet

Here is the honest table, with the copied errors corrected and flagged. Read it, then let me walk you through the three rows where the received wisdom is wrong.

The headline numbers

Screen parity is total: both are 3.5-inch IPS panels at 640×480, a 4:3 resolution that has quietly become the baseline for this entire class. That equality matters because it removes a variable — nobody is winning on pixel count. The RAM and CPU rows favor the RG35XX, the battery and firmware rows favor the Miyoo, and the weight row, contrary to a persistent myth, is a wash: both land around 165 grams. The Miyoo's advantage is not that it is lighter; it is that its 108×78 mm footprint is meaningfully smaller in the hand and in the pocket, even though it is a couple of millimeters thicker.

Where the spec sheets lie

Two rows in that table have been widely misreported, and both errors travel together. The first: the charging port. A 2026 comparison and at least one popular blog both claim the RG35XX uses micro-USB against the Miyoo's USB-C. Both devices use USB-C. XDA's RG35XX review confirms the port verbatim; the micro-USB claim is another shared ancestor, two sources reflecting one mistake. The second: video out. You will read that the RG35XX does HDMI "over the micro-USB," which is doubly wrong — the port is USB-C, and the HDMI is a genuinely separate mini-HDMI connector on the top edge that XDA describes as "a mini HDMI port at a top, which you can use to output the display to a TV." The Miyoo has no video out at all. So the RG35XX's real advantage here is HDMI; the Miyoo's is nothing, and the way people describe both is nonsense.

The slots and the sizes

One more correction, because precision is the house style: the original RG35XX has two microSD slots, not one, and the Miyoo has one. Dual-slot storage is frequently sold as a feature of the newer H700 variants, but the base RG35XX had it in 2022. In practice that second slot is where GarlicOS wants your ROM library to live, which — as we will see in the migration section — is both a convenience and a small tax on your patience.

Performance, System by System

Specs predict performance; they do not determine it. What determines it is how well a given emulator core is tuned for a given chip, and here the story gets interesting, because the weaker Miyoo and the stronger RG35XX end up in almost exactly the same place for almost everything most people play — and then diverge, hard, at the very top. I am pulling numbers from four independent sources so you are not taking my word for it.

The 8-bit and 16-bit tier: a dead heat

NES, SNES, Genesis, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and — critically — Game Boy Advance run flawlessly on both. On the Miyoo, PropelRC's review (8.5/10, tested at what it calls a "$53 price point") reports "Chrono Trigger (SNES): Perfect 60fps throughout my 12-hour playthrough." XDA independently notes that on the Miyoo, "Game Boy Advance titles run flawlessly." The RG35XX, with double the cores, obviously clears the same bar. If your library ends at the 16-bit generation — and for a huge share of buyers it honestly does — these two devices are functionally identical performers, and you should be choosing on battery, size, and firmware. Which is to say, choosing the Miyoo.

PS1 and the first daylight

PlayStation is where a sliver of daylight appears. Both handle PS1 well; XDA calls PS1 on the Miyoo "a treat to play anywhere," and PropelRC confirms it, with the honest asterisk of "minor slowdown in Gran Turismo 2" — a demanding 3D title that leans on exactly the fill rate the Miyoo's Mali-400 lacks. The RG35XX's PowerVR SGX544 and four A9 cores give it a little more headroom in heavy 3D, so if your idea of a good time is Gran Turismo 2, Tekken 3, and Ridge Racer at a locked framerate, the Anbernic has a measurable edge. It is not a large edge. For the average PS1 RPG it is invisible. But it is real, and honesty requires saying so.

N64, DS, and the ceiling

Now the divergence. Nintendo 64 is "playable, not ideal" on both — the community consensus, echoed on GBAtemp and elsewhere, is that light N64 titles run near full speed while demanding ones sit around 70–85%, which is the polite way of saying "emulate Mario 64, do not emulate Perfect Dark." Nintendo DS is where the RG35XX genuinely pulls ahead: XDA's RG35XX review got "Nintendo DS at full speed" via the DraStic emulator, singling out that "Pokémon Black 2 runs at full speed." The Miyoo can technically load a DS core under OnionOS, but two Cortex-A7 cores driving two virtual screens on one 3.5-inch panel with no touch input is a novelty, not a feature. And PSP? Neither. Do not buy either of these for PSP. If DS or better is your target, the correct move is to spend more money — a point I will return to in the verdict, with a link to the machine that actually does it. Retro Game Corps' family guide puts the general caution well: the harder systems "cannot play every game at full speed, and so performance may vary."

Firmware Is the Whole Argument

Everything above is the undercard. This is the main event. In a class where the hardware is cheap and roughly interchangeable, the custom firmware is the product you are actually buying, and the gap between OnionOS and GarlicOS in 2026 is wide enough to overturn the entire spec-sheet advantage of the RG35XX. If you internalize one section of this article, internalize this one.

OnionOS: the polished one

OnionOS — properly the community OnionUI project — is the reason the Miyoo punches so far above its silicon. It is mature, coherent, and relentlessly maintained. The stable branch sits at v4.3.1-1 (June 2024), and the current v4.4.0-beta-20260120 (January 2026) adds netplay, real-time-clock detection, CPU overclock hotkeys, and a default switch to the gpSP core for GBA. It ships a genuinely good box-art frontend, a "Game Switcher" quick-resume overlay, and — the feature that quietly justifies the Miyoo's Wi-Fi — RetroAchievements support. PropelRC credits OnionOS with turning a mediocre stock experience into a great one, noting the stock OS "only manages 4 hours" while OnionOS delivers "6–7 hours" of SNES at medium brightness. That is not a cosmetic gain; the firmware is buying you three hours of battery.

GarlicOS: capable but stalled

GarlicOS, authored by the developer known as Black Seraph, is a good piece of work — and in 2026 it is treading water. The 1.x branch that made the RG35XX usable is stable and fine. The 2.0 rewrite, which was supposed to close the gap with OnionOS, has been stuck. Retro Game Corps, about as measured a voice as this hobby has, advises that GarlicOS 2.0 is "still in an early alpha state" and recommends waiting "until it is in a beta release state." Development has repeatedly paused. So the RG35XX buyer in 2026 is choosing between a solid-but-aging 1.x GarlicOS, the minimalist MinUI, or Anbernic's own stock firmware — a respectable set of options, none of which matches OnionOS for polish. gogamegeek's comparison lands the punch without ceremony: "GarlicOS is not as good as OnionOS for a start," and "the miyoo has a far better custom OS." Both statements are, in my testing and everyone else's, simply true. If you want to understand why core selection matters more than the badge on the box, our walkthrough on installing the right RetroArch cores is the companion piece to this section.

Save states, netplay, shaders, achievements

Feature-by-feature: both firmwares do save states, battery saves, and per-system shaders — the underlying RetroArch plumbing is shared, so the capability exists on both. Where OnionOS pulls ahead is the stuff that needs the internet and a coherent UI wrapped around it: RetroAchievements works out of the box on the Wi-Fi-equipped Miyoo, and the 4.4 beta brings netplay, including GBA link between two units. The RG35XX has no Wi-Fi, so those features are off the table on the original hardware regardless of firmware. Shaders — the CRT scanline overlays that make a 640×480 panel look like a 1994 living room — run on both, though the Miyoo's weaker GPU means you will pay a few frames for the heavier ones. The summary is unglamorous and decisive: same foundation, better house on the Miyoo.

Battery, Wi-Fi, and the HDMI Question

Three practical differences decide how these devices feel across a week of actual use rather than a spec sheet: how long they last, whether they can talk to a network, and whether they can talk to a television. The Miyoo wins two of the three, and the one it loses is the one most people never use.

3,000 mAh versus 2,600

The Miyoo carries a 3,000 mAh battery (XDA's teardown lists 3,200); the RG35XX carries 2,100 mAh by most listings, though XDA measured 2,600. Either way the Miyoo has more capacity in a smaller body, and it uses it better because OnionOS is efficient and the A7 sips power. Real numbers: XDA's "up to six hours" on the Miyoo and PropelRC's 6–7 hours of SNES, against XDA's blunt "roughly two to three hours" on the RG35XX under DS emulation, stretching to "four or five with an underclocked CPU." A 2026 buying guide framed the same split as 5–7 hours for the Miyoo versus 4–6 for the RG35XX. However you slice it, the Miyoo is the endurance device, and it is not close under load.

Wi-Fi versus HDMI — the real trade

This is the cleanest either/or in the whole comparison. The Miyoo has Wi-Fi (2.4 GHz b/g/n) and no video out. The original RG35XX has a mini-HDMI port (720p) and no Wi-Fi. So the question is genuinely: do you want to put achievements, netplay, and over-the-air transfers in your pocket, or do you want to put the handheld on your TV? Both are legitimate wants. But be honest about frequency. Wi-Fi features get used every session by the people who care about them; HDMI-out on a 720p handheld gets used the first weekend and then rarely again, because if you are serious about couch play you are going to want a Batocera or RetroPie box under the television anyway — our Batocera install guide exists precisely because a 720p mini-HDMI dongle is not how anyone wants to play Chrono Trigger on a 65-inch panel.

Charging and ports

Both charge over USB-C — say it again, because the internet keeps forgetting: both. The Miyoo's one demerit here is charge speed; XDA flags its "slow 5W charging," so a full top-up takes a while, offset by the fact that you need to do it less often. The RG35XX's demerit is the absence of Bluetooth (the Miyoo lacks it too, so wireless audio is off the table on both original units — a point in favor of the newer H700-based Plus if that matters to you). Wired headphones through the 3.5 mm jack remain the sane answer on either device.

Pricing and Availability in 2026

Money is where the RG35XX claws back some ground, and where Anbernic's habit of shipping seven variants of the same idea turns a simple purchase into a small research project. Let me flatten it.

What each costs now

In 2026 coverage the Miyoo Mini Plus sits around $60–70 and the RG35XX around $60–80 depending on model and seller. A direct-store snapshot put the Miyoo near $66 and the RG35XX near $56, which is the honest headline on price: the Anbernic is usually the cheaper entry point, sometimes by ten dollars, and on AliExpress the original RG35XX has dipped to $40–50 for the patient. If your decision comes down to the last five dollars, the RG35XX wins the line item. It does not, in my view, win the purchase — but the line item, yes.

The RG35XX Plus complication

Here is where you must read carefully. The device I have been comparing is the original RG35XX on the Actions ATM7039S. Anbernic also sells the RG35XX Plus, a newer value variant built on the Allwinner H700 with 1 GB of DDR4, a 3,300 mAh battery, Bluetooth 4.2, Wi-Fi, and dual microSD — a genuinely stronger machine that DROIX's review notes runs "faster than the Miyoo processor" with "faster performance on PlayStation 1 and Dreamcast." If you are cross-shopping, the Plus is arguably the more relevant Anbernic in 2026 than the original. But it is a different fight — and even DROIX concedes that if "you already have a Miyoo Mini or Miyoo Mini Plus... it is perhaps not worth the upgrade." Do not let a seller sell you a Plus while quoting original-RG35XX prices, and do not let a comparison quote you H700 performance while pointing at ATM7039S hardware.

The supply-issue tax

The Miyoo's one persistent, maddening weakness is that you often cannot buy it. Miyoo's supply has been erratic for its entire life, and gogamegeek names it as the single thing keeping the RG35XX in the running: "If only Miyoo would solve their supply issues, the Mini would easily be the winner." That is a real cost. A slightly-worse device you can actually order today beats a slightly-better device that is perpetually back-ordered. If you find a Miyoo in stock at a fair price, that is part of the value; if you don't, the RG35XX's easy availability is a legitimate reason to buy it, and no amount of OnionOS praise changes that.

Five Buyers, Five Verdicts

Generic advice is useless because nobody is a generic buyer. Here are the concrete profiles I actually get asked about, and the machine each one should own.

The commuter and the completist

1. The pocket everyday-carry player. You want a device that vanishes into a jacket and lasts a full day of trains. This is the Miyoo, unambiguously: smallest footprint in the class, 3,000 mAh, OnionOS quick-resume so you can play in ninety-second bursts between stops. 2. The 8-to-16-bit completist. Your library is NES through SNES and GBA, full stop. Both run it flawlessly, so you are choosing on everything else — battery, size, firmware — and every one of those points to the Miyoo. Buy the Miyoo and put the saved ten dollars toward a better microSD card.

The tinkerer and the couch player

3. The DS-and-heavy-PS1 tinkerer. You want the highest ceiling on cheap original silicon and you are willing to fiddle. This is the RG35XX's profile: XDA's "Pokémon Black 2 runs at full speed" via DraStic is a capability the Miyoo cannot practically match, and the extra PowerVR muscle helps in heavy PS1 3D. 4. The couch/TV player. You want output to a television. Only the RG35XX has HDMI, so if this is a hard requirement it wins by default — with the caveat from earlier that a dedicated emulation box does the job far better, and that a 720p handheld dongle is a compromise you will likely abandon.

The networker, the buyer-in-a-hurry, and the upgrader

5. The RetroAchievements / Wi-Fi user. You want achievements, netplay, and wireless transfers on the go. That requires Wi-Fi, which only the Miyoo has among the originals — this one isn't close. Bonus 6. The buyer who needs it this week. If the Miyoo is out of stock, the RG35XX is right there, and a device in hand beats a device in a wishlist. Bonus 7. The upgrader who has outgrown PS1. If you want reliable DS, PSP, Dreamcast, or Saturn, buy neither of these — step up to a stronger handheld. Our ranking of the Retroid Pocket 6 against four rivals is where that money goes, and it is money well spent if PS1 is no longer enough.

Switching Sides: A Migration Guide

Say you already own one and the grass looks greener. Moving between these platforms is mechanically simple and full of small traps. Here is the clean path in both directions, plus the one thing everyone gets wrong about save files.

Miyoo to RG35XX

Buy the RG35XX, then decide on firmware: GarlicOS 1.x for the fuller feature set, MinUI if you want austere and rock-solid. Flash it to the OS card. The RG35XX uses two microSD cards — one for the operating system, one for your ROMs and saves — so format a second card and lay your library into it. Copy your ROMs across, bring your battery saves (more on that below), and reset your expectations: you are gaining an HDMI port, a second card slot, and a little 3D headroom, and you are losing Wi-Fi, RetroAchievements, and the best firmware in the class. Go in clear-eyed.

RG35XX to Miyoo

Buy the Miyoo, download the current stable OnionOS from the OnionUI project, and image it to a single card — OnionOS is a one-card affair, which is simpler than GarlicOS's two-card dance. Drop your ROMs into Onion's system folders (SFC, GBA, PS, and so on), bring your battery saves, and enjoy the upgrade: RetroAchievements, Game Switcher, netplay on the beta, and three extra hours of runtime. What you lose is HDMI-out and that second card slot. For most people migrating this direction, it feels like an upgrade even though the spec sheet says it is a downgrade — which is, one final time, the thesis of this entire article.

The SD-card reality

The trap that eats people alive is save files, so here is the precise rule set. Battery saves — the .srm files that hold your in-cartridge progress — are portable between the two devices if and only if you use the same RetroArch core on both ends. Save states — the instant snapshots — are core-locked and version-locked, and they will not load across devices. Hard-save inside the game before you migrate, then rebuild your states on the new hardware. Do it in this order and you lose nothing.

# ---- Miyoo Mini Plus, OnionOS ----  (single microSD, FAT32)
/
|-- miyoo283_fw.img        # firmware image -- must sit at the card root
|-- BIOS/                  # scph1001.bin, gba_bios.bin, etc.
|-- Roms/
|   |-- SFC/  GBA/  PS/    # one folder per system, Onion's names
|-- Saves/                 # .srm battery saves + .state save states
\-- RetroArch/             # configs, shaders, overlays

# ---- Anbernic RG35XX, GarlicOS ----  (TWO microSD cards)
SD1 (TF1)  -> GarlicOS system files.  Do not touch.
SD2 (TF2)/
|-- Roms/
|   |-- SFC/  GBA/  PS/
|-- BIOS/
\-- Saves/

# ---- Moving your progress across (do it on a PC) ----
# Battery saves (.srm) are portable IF the RetroArch core matches:
cp /MIYOO/Saves/**/*.srm   /RG35XX_SD2/Saves/

# Save STATES (.state / .st0) are core- and version-locked.
# They will NOT load on the other device. Hard-save in-game
# first, copy only the .srm files, then rebuild states fresh.

The Ledger: Pros and Cons

Everything above, compressed into two ledgers. Nothing here is unsupported by the sections that precede it.

Miyoo Mini Plus

Anbernic RG35XX

The tie-breakers

When the ledgers are this close, the tie-breakers decide it, and there are three. Battery: Miyoo. Size: Miyoo. Firmware: Miyoo. The RG35XX's counter-tie-breakers — HDMI, DS, price, availability — are each real and each narrow. If none of the RG35XX's four specific advantages is a hard requirement for you, the three Miyoo tie-breakers win by default. That is not a close reading of a spec sheet; it is arithmetic.

The Legal Footnote

The Machine knows the law as well as the lore, and this hobby runs on a distinction most people get slightly wrong, so let us be exact. Buying either of these handhelds is legal. Running an emulator on it is legal. The part that is not legal is how most people fill the SD card.

The emulator is legal

Emulation itself is settled law in the United States. In Sony Computer Entertainment v. Connectix Corp. (9th Cir. 2000), the court held that reverse-engineering a console's BIOS to build an emulator was fair use. The software cores that OnionOS and GarlicOS ship — the RetroArch stack running snes9x, gpSP, DraStic, and the rest — stand on that foundation. Nobody is coming for your handheld. The device is clean.

The ROMs are the problem

What is not clean is downloading commercial ROMs you do not own, which is straightforward copyright infringement no matter how old the game is or how unavailable it is for sale. The 8,000-, 28,000-, and "27,549"-game figures that resellers plaster on pre-loaded cards are counts of exactly this — bulk ROM sets of dubious provenance, padded with regional duplicates, hacks, and bootlegs. A device sold "with 30,000 games" is a device sold with a copyright problem you inherit at checkout.

The clean path

There is an honest way to fill either card. Dump the cartridges you already own — a cart dumper makes this a weekend project, and our guide to dumping SNES and Genesis carts walks the whole process — and lean on the genuinely enormous, genuinely legal homebrew scene, from Apotris on GBA outward. Curated legal starter sets exist for exactly this purpose. It is more work than clicking "buy 30,000 games," and it is the difference between owning a device and owning a liability. And if you care about accuracy over convenience — cycle-accurate, hardware-faithful emulation rather than the good-enough software cores these handhelds run — that is a different pursuit entirely, one our look at the MiSTer Multisystem 2 covers, and one that costs a great deal more than $60.

The Machine's Final Ruling

Two devices, one conclusion, arrived at honestly. The RG35XX is the better-specified machine — more cores, more RAM, a real GPU, an HDMI port, two card slots, and often a lower price. It loses anyway. It loses because, at the bottom of this market, the operating system is the product, and OnionOS is a better product than anything running on the RG35XX in 2026.

Buy the Miyoo for polish

For the overwhelming majority of buyers — the people who live at 8-bit through PlayStation, who want a device that disappears into a pocket and lasts all day, who like their achievements and their quick-resume to just work — the Miyoo Mini Plus (around $60–70) is the correct purchase. XDA's 9/10, PropelRC's 8.5/10, and gogamegeek's blunt "the miyoo has a far better custom OS" all point the same direction, and so do I. You are buying slightly weaker silicon wrapped in dramatically better software, and in this class that is a trade you take every single time.

Buy the RG35XX for headroom or availability

Buy the Anbernic RG35XX (around $56–80) if — and only if — you have one of the specific reasons: you want HDMI-out to a television, you intend to push into Nintendo DS on the cheap, or the Miyoo is out of stock and you want to play this weekend. Each of those is a legitimate reason, and if one of them is yours, the RG35XX is a genuinely good handheld that XDA also scored 9/10 and praised for "comfortable build, powerful hardware, and beautiful screen." It is not a consolation prize. It is simply the second choice for most people and the first choice for a few.

What I would put in my pocket

Mine? The Miyoo Mini Plus, and it is not a hard call. The size and the battery and OnionOS win the week-in, week-out reality of actually carrying one of these things, and I will trade the RG35XX's extra cores and its HDMI port for that every time — because I have never once wished my pocket handheld had a television port, and I have often wished it were smaller and lasted longer. If your PS1 ceiling ever starts to chafe, the answer is not the other $60 box; the answer is to spend real money on a real upgrade. But until then, the smaller, weaker, better-run device is the one to own. 128MB beats 256MB. File it under counterintuitive-but-true, right next to the rest of this hobby.