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

The search phrase miyoo mini plus vs rg35xx is doing a great deal of quiet, unpaid labor, and almost all of it is wrong. It assumes there is one Miyoo Mini Plus, which is true. It assumes there is one RG35XX, which stopped being true somewhere around the middle of 2023. It assumes the correct answer is a spreadsheet duel between two spec sheets. And it assumes that the device with the bigger numbers wins. Three assumptions, and we are going to spend the next several thousand words dismantling all of them with the patience of a machine that has read every review, every GitHub release note, and one federal appellate decision on the legality of console emulation.

Here is the punchline, delivered up front because you have earned it: the Miyoo Mini Plus ships with 128MB of RAM and a dual-core chip. The original RG35XX ships with 256MB and four cores. For most people, most of the time, the Miyoo is the better handheld. If that sentence irritates you, good — it means you still trust the spec sheet, and we can fix that. This is a comparison about firmware, ergonomics, battery chemistry, and the peculiar economics of $60 hardware, in which the loser on paper wins in the hand. Let's begin.

The 2026 Problem: Which RG35XX?

The single most useful thing a 2026 buying guide can tell you is that "RG35XX" is no longer a product. It is a brand of product line, the way "iPhone" is not a phone. Anbernic has spread the RG35XX name across at least five distinct machines with two entirely different chip platforms, and the internet has responded by comparing all of them, interchangeably, to the one Miyoo that has not changed since 2023. This is how you end up with guides that praise the RG35XX's Bluetooth in one paragraph and its lack of Wi-Fi in the next. Both statements are true. They are about different devices.

The original RG35XX (2022, Actions ATM7039S)

The device that started the fight is the 2022 original: a Game Boy–shaped vertical unit built around an Actions Semiconductor ATM7039S — four Cortex-A9 cores clocked to 1.6GHz, paired with a PowerVR SGX544 GPU and 256MB of DDR3. It has a dedicated mini-HDMI output, two microSD slots, USB-C charging, and, crucially, no Wi-Fi at all. It launched at $59.99 and now floats through clearance channels. This is the RG35XX that is a genuine like-for-like price rival to the Miyoo, and it is the one most head-to-head videos actually filmed.

The RG35XX Plus, H, and SP (Allwinner H700)

Then, in late 2023, Anbernic quietly swapped the entire brain. The RG35XX Plus, the horizontal RG35XX H, and the clamshell RG35XX SP all abandoned the Actions chip for an Allwinner H700: a quad-core Cortex-A53 at 1.5GHz, a Mali-G31 MP2 GPU, and a full 1GB of LPDDR4 — eight times the Miyoo's memory. These added Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 4.2, and a 3,300mAh battery. The Plus is the vertical, D-pad-only model. The H is horizontal with dual analog sticks. Note that carefully: several guides — and the brief that seeded this article — credit the vertical Plus with analog sticks. It does not have them. The sticks live on the H and SP. If a comparison page tells you to buy the "RG35XX Plus for its analog sticks," it is describing a device that does not exist.

The one constant: the Miyoo Mini Plus

Against this shifting target sits the Miyoo Mini Plus, which has had the courtesy to stay still. One chip (SigmaStar SSD202D), one screen (3.5-inch, 640×480), one form factor (vertical, D-pad, no sticks), one battery (3,000mAh), since 2023. That stability is itself an argument: the entire community optimization effort has pointed at one hardware target for years. So the honest framing for 2026 is not "Miyoo vs RG35XX." It is "the Miyoo Mini Plus vs whichever RG35XX you actually mean," and the answer changes depending on which box arrives. We will keep all three RG35XX classes on the table throughout, because pretending there is only one is the original sin of this comparison.

Specs Head-to-Head

Below is the full sheet, three columns wide, because a two-column table would force us to lie about which RG35XX we mean. Read it once for the shape of things, then let us tell you which rows actually matter — because most of them don't.

Silicon and memory

The rows that generate the most forum heat — core count, clock speed, RAM — are the rows that matter least. On paper the original RG35XX's quad-A9-plus-PowerVR arrangement should bury the Miyoo's dual-A7. In practice both devices hit the same wall at roughly the same place: the PlayStation. The extra cores and the discrete GPU buy the RG35XX a genuine edge in a narrow band of demanding software (we'll quantify it below), but they do not change the tier. Both are “GBA-and-under flawless, PS1-with-caveats” machines. The H700 units are the only ones that meaningfully move the ceiling, and they do it with 1GB of RAM, not with a faster clock.

Screen, battery, and I/O

Screen parity is the reason this comparison exists at all. Both flagships use a 3.5-inch IPS panel at 640×480 — the same size, the same resolution, the same 4:3 shape that suits everything up to the PS1 era. PropelRC clocked the Miyoo's panel at 229 PPI and called it “sharper than the original Nintendo 3DS,” which is faint but accurate praise. With the display neutralized, the decision collapses onto the rows people ignore: battery capacity, Wi-Fi, HDMI, slot count, and firmware.

What the spec sheet doesn't tell you

None of these rows capture the thing that actually determines your daily experience: the software you stare at every time you press power. That is not a hardware spec. It is a community project, it updates on GitHub, and it is where this entire comparison is won and lost. Hold that thought — it gets its own section.

The RK3326 Myth

Before we go further, we have to perform an exorcism, because a large fraction of the "miyoo mini plus vs rg35xx" pages ranking on Google right now share a single, load-bearing falsehood. We fetched one of the better-known 2026 comparison articles while researching this piece and found, stated as fact, that "both devices use the same RK3326 processor." This is wrong. It is not slightly wrong. It is wrong in the way that claiming two cars share an engine when neither car contains that engine is wrong.

Neither device uses an RK3326

The Rockchip RK3326 is a real chip — it powers older Anbernic units like the RG351 line. Neither the Miyoo Mini Plus nor any RG35XX contains one. The Miyoo runs a SigmaStar SSD202D; XDA's Adam Conway, in a 9/10 review, states it plainly: a “SigmaStar SSD202D SoC with dual Arm Cortex A7 cores and 128MB of RAM.” The original RG35XX runs an Actions ATM7039S with, per the same outlet, “four Cortex-A9 cores and PowerVR graphics.” The H700 units run an Allwinner. Three different silicon vendors across the two products. Zero Rockchips. If a page tells you they share a chip, it has never opened either device and is quoting another page that also never opened either device.

Why the error propagates

The mechanism is boring and instructive: comparison-farm articles copy each other. One early post guessed at a shared chipset, a second cited the first, and by 2026 the RK3326 claim has metastasized across a dozen SEO pages that rank above the actual reviews. It is a small lie, but it tells you exactly how much of the “research” in this category is transcription rather than testing. When you see it, close the tab. The same discipline applies to the second great copy-paste error in this niche.

The USB-C / micro-USB confusion

For years, listing sheets — and, again, the brief behind this article — insisted the original RG35XX charges over micro-USB while the Miyoo uses USB-C. Both devices use USB-C. XDA's hands-on review says “USB-C” for the RG35XX in as many words. The micro-USB claim is another artifact of writers copying a spec table nobody verified. We flag these not to be pedantic but because they are the tell: in a category where the hardware costs less than a AAA game, the writing costs even less, and the only defense is checking the primary sources. Which, having done, we can now use to answer the question that actually matters — what runs?

Performance: What Actually Runs

There is no Geekbench culture for $60 handhelds, so "benchmarks" here means the aggregated, attributed testing of reviewers who ran real games and reported real framerates. We pulled from XDA, PropelRC, DROIX, Retro Game Corps, and the GBAtemp community. The consensus is remarkably tight, and it draws a hard line at the PlayStation.

8-bit and 16-bit: both flawless

Nobody is stress-testing an NES on these chips. Through the 16-bit era — NES, SNES, Genesis, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, GBA — both flagships are effectively perfect. PropelRC's Miyoo testing is the quotable benchmark: “Chrono Trigger (SNES): Perfect 60fps throughout my 12-hour playthrough.” XDA adds that on the Miyoo, “Game Boy Advance titles run flawlessly.” The RG35XX matches this without breaking a sweat; its spare headroom simply goes unused down here. If your library ends at the Super Nintendo, the performance question is settled before it starts, and you should be choosing on battery and firmware alone. Our full breakdown of what the Miyoo actually plays lives in the companion piece on why PS1 is the Miyoo's ceiling.

PS1: the real dividing line

The PlayStation is where the two chips finally diverge, and it is a narrow, honest gap rather than a chasm. On the Miyoo, XDA reports “PlayStation 1 games are a treat to play anywhere,” while PropelRC notes the qualifier: “minor slowdown in Gran Turismo 2.” That is the Miyoo's ceiling in one sentence — the bulk of the PS1 catalog runs, the heaviest 3D racers show occasional dips. The original RG35XX, with its PowerVR GPU, holds those same demanding scenes together slightly better, and the H700 units clear PS1 outright and push into Dreamcast; DROIX's RG35XX Plus review cites “faster performance on PlayStation 1 and Dreamcast” than the Miyoo. Here is a rough ceiling ladder, drawn from the combined testing:

System            Miyoo Mini Plus   RG35XX (2022)     RG35XX Plus/H (H700)
----------------  ----------------  ----------------  --------------------
NES / SNES / GBA  Full speed        Full speed        Full speed
Genesis / TG-16   Full speed        Full speed        Full speed
PS1 (2D/light 3D) Full speed        Full speed        Full speed
PS1 (heavy 3D)    Minor dips        Near-full         Full speed
Nintendo DS       Out of scope*     Full (2-3h batt)  Playable
N64 (light)       ~near full        ~near full        Playable
N64 (demanding)   70-85%            70-85%            Variable
Dreamcast         No                No                Playable*
PSP               No                No                Light titles, frameskip

* Miyoo has a DS core in Onion 4.3+, but one 3.5in screen and
  no touch make it impractical, not impossible.

DS, PSP, and N64: where the RG35XX pulls ahead

Above the PlayStation, the RG35XX family's advantages become real. The headline is Nintendo DS: XDA's RG35XX review runs it “at full speed,” noting “Pokemon Black 2 runs at full speed” — a genuine capability the Miyoo cannot practically match, because the DS's dual-screen, touch-driven design is miserable on a single 3.5-inch panel even when the core technically loads. But read the fine print: XDA measured only “two to three hours” of battery “with Nintendo DS emulation,” stretching to “four or five with an underclocked CPU.” The capability is real; the endurance is not. On the H700 units, DROIX found PSP “low demanding games generally are playable with some frame skipping,” and Retro Game Corps warns in its family guide that the harder systems “cannot play every game at full speed, and so performance may vary.” That asterisk is the whole story above PS1: it runs, sometimes, with caveats, for a couple of hours. Choosing the right emulator core for each system matters as much as the chip — see our RetroArch core setup walkthrough for the per-system picks that squeeze the most out of either device.

The Firmware War: Onion vs Garlic

This is the section the spec sheet cannot write, and it is the section that decides the comparison. Two devices with nearly identical screens and overlapping capability tiers are separated almost entirely by the software you interact with a hundred times a day. On the Miyoo that software is OnionOS; on the RG35XX it is GarlicOS. They are not equal, and neither is in the shape its fans pretend.

OnionOS: polished, and frozen

OnionOS — properly the community OnionUI project, hosted at github.com/OnionUI/Onion — is the reason the Miyoo punches above its silicon. It is genuinely excellent: a clean Game Switcher for instant resume, box art, RetroAchievements, per-game overrides, and a battery optimization so effective PropelRC measured it lifting runtime from “4 hours → 7 hours.” The community verdict is blunt; the writer at gogamegeek put it as “The miyoo has a far better custom OS,” and “the mini+ will be the ultimate winner for me — because of onion os and the size.” The caveat a 2026 buyer must know: OnionOS has plateaued. The stable build (v4.3.1-1) has been frozen since June 2024, with only a single beta tag since — v4.4.0-beta from January 2026, which added netplay, a gpSP default GBA core, and CPU overclock hotkeys. Polished, mature, and largely done.

GarlicOS: capable, and stalled

GarlicOS, built for the original RG35XX by the developer Black Seraph in partnership with Anbernic, adds ScummVM and a raft of usability fixes over the stock Linux image, and reviewers uniformly recommend flashing it. But it is in worse shape than Onion. The much-anticipated GarlicOS 2.0 has been, in effect, on hold while its developer recovers his health, and Retro Game Corps still tells readers it is “still in an early alpha state” and to “wait until it is in a beta release state.” So the firmware war in 2026 is between one CFW that is finished and one that is stuck — and “finished” beats “stuck” every day of the week. gogamegeek's summary is the fair one: “GarlicOS is not as good as OnionOS.”

Knulli, muOS, and the alternatives

The plot twist is that GarlicOS is increasingly irrelevant, because it targets the original RG35XX's Actions chip. The H700 units run a different, healthier software ecosystem entirely: Knulli (a Batocera derivative), muOS, MinUI, and ROCKNIX, all under active development. If you buy an RG35XX Plus or H, you are not in the Garlic world at all — you are in the muOS/Knulli world, which is arguably the most vibrant custom-firmware scene in budget handhelds right now. This is the strongest single argument for the H700 units over both the original RG35XX and the Miyoo: the software is still moving. Whichever camp you land in, none of it changes the fact that both flagship CFWs are, underneath, front-ends for the same RetroArch cores.

Battery, Weight & Ergonomics

With performance tiered and firmware weighed, the decision drops to the physical: how long it lasts, what it weighs, and whether you want to look down or across at it.

The battery numbers

The Miyoo wins endurance decisively, and it is not close once you account for real-world use. Its 3,000mAh cell (some listings say 3,200) delivers a comfortable 5–7 hours; PropelRC logged 6.5 hours on SNES at medium brightness and 7.5 on Game Boy, crediting OnionOS's aggressive power management. The original RG35XX's smaller cell — 2,100mAh on most listings, though XDA's teardown found 2,600mAh — is its weakest point: XDA measured just “two to three hours” under DS emulation, “four or five with an underclocked CPU.” The H700 units reset the math with a 3,300mAh battery and land around 8 hours, taking the endurance crown back from the Miyoo. The Miyoo's one battery demerit is charging: XDA flags its “slow 5W charging,” so a full top-up is a multi-hour affair.

The weight myth (136g vs 165g)

You will see the Miyoo Mini Plus listed as low as 116g or 136g. Ignore those numbers; they are the original 2021 Miyoo Mini, a smaller 2.8-inch device, misfiled under its bigger sibling's name. XDA's hands-on review weighs the Mini Plus at 165g; other measurements land at 162g. That is functionally identical to the original RG35XX's ~165g — so there is no meaningful weight advantage between the two closest rivals, whatever the spec-scrapers claim. The H700 units are the genuinely heavier ones at 175–186g, because that endurance-winning 3,300mAh battery has to weigh something. The Miyoo's real physical edge is footprint, not mass: at roughly 108×78mm it is slightly smaller in the hand than the RG35XX's ~117×81mm, though a touch thicker at 22mm.

Vertical vs horizontal

This is preference, not performance, but it is the preference most likely to make you regret a purchase. The Miyoo and the vertical RG35XX/Plus are Game Boy–shaped: ideal for portrait-friendly, D-pad-driven, 2D libraries, cramped for anything wanting a thumbstick. If your heart is set on PS1 3D or DS, the horizontal RG35XX H — with its two analog sticks and wider grip — is the ergonomically correct choice, and it is the variant those “RG35XX has sticks” guides were fumbling toward. Neither vertical device has a stick, full stop. Decide whether your library is a thumb-on-a-cross library or a thumb-on-a-stick library before anything else; it invalidates half the spec sheet.

Pricing & Availability

These devices are cheap enough that price is rarely the deciding factor — but availability and what's actually in the box are, and both hide traps.

Street prices in 2026

The whole field lives inside a $20 band. Our searches and the reviewer consensus put the Miyoo Mini Plus at roughly $53.99–$70 depending on storage and retailer, and the RG35XX family at $50–$85 depending on which model. The original RG35XX is frequently the cheapest thing here on clearance; MakeUseOf reviewed it under the banner “Great Retro Gaming Fun for $50.” Here is the current lay of the land:

The supply problem

The recurring wrinkle on the Miyoo side is stock. Miyoo has historically struggled to keep the Mini line available, and gogamegeek's verdict carries a pointed conditional: “If only Miyoo would solve their supply issues, the Mini would easily be the winner.” Anbernic, by contrast, manufactures at scale and floods every marketplace — you can buy an RG35XX at 3am from four different storefronts. If you want the device in your hand this week rather than on a restock alert, that operational reality tilts toward Anbernic regardless of which chip you prefer.

What you actually get in the box

Both typically ship with a preloaded microSD card advertising some enormous number — 5,000, 28,000, whatever the reseller printed. Treat that figure as marketing, not inventory; it counts duplicate regions, revisions, bootlegs, and hacks, and it dedupes down to a few thousand actual games. We took that reseller-count theater apart in our piece on the Miyoo's alleged 28,000-game list. PropelRC's advice on the bundled card is the correct instinct: the ROMs are “low-quality” and you should “replace immediately.” Which raises a question we are legally and editorially obligated to address before the verdict — but first, who should buy what.

Five Buyers, Five Answers

Specs are abstract; people are not. Here are five concrete buyers and the device each should actually purchase. Find yourself.

The pocket purist and the couch player

1. The commuter whose library ends at PS1. You want NES through PlayStation, in your jacket pocket, for the length of a train ride and then some. Buy the Miyoo Mini Plus. It is the smallest, it lasts 5–7 hours, OnionOS resumes instantly, and its ceiling is exactly your ceiling. Nothing here is a compromise for you.

2. The TV-first retro dabbler. You mostly want to fling SNES and Genesis onto the living-room television for guests. The Miyoo is disqualified — it has no video out. Buy any RG35XX; DROIX's line is the whole argument: “one thing lacking on the Miyoo is a HDMI port, something both RG35XX models have.”

The tinkerer, the DS fan, and the ergonomics obsessive

3. The firmware tinkerer. You enjoy the device as much as the games — flashing CFW, tweaking cores, chasing RetroAchievements. Buy an RG35XX Plus or H and live in the muOS/Knulli scene, the most actively developed firmware world in this price class. The Miyoo's OnionOS is superb but essentially finished; you want something still moving.

4. The Nintendo DS loyalist. Your killer app is Pokémon Black 2 or The World Ends With You. The Miyoo can technically load a DS core but it is a bad time on one screen. Buy the original RG35XX, which XDA runs “at full speed” — and buy a spare battery pack, because you have two to three hours before it dies.

5. The stick-dependent 3D player. Your library leans on the analog stick — PS1 racers, N64, anything that fights a D-pad. Buy the horizontal RG35XX H. It is the only device here with dual sticks and a grip built for them, and it is what people mean when they wrongly say “RG35XX Plus with sticks.” If your ambitions climb past this tier entirely — PSP, GameCube, comfortable Dreamcast — stop shopping in the $60 bracket and read our Retroid Pocket 5 vs 6 breakdown instead.

Migration Guide

Already own one and eyeing the other? Migration is mostly a saves problem, and it is more manageable than the forums suggest, because underneath both custom firmwares the emulators are the same RetroArch cores writing the same save formats.

Miyoo (OnionOS) → RG35XX

The good news: RetroArch save files (.srm) and save states are portable, because both devices run the same libretro cores. The workflow:

1. On the Miyoo, back up the entire SD card to your PC first — non-negotiable.
2. Locate your saves. Under OnionOS the tree looks like this:

/ (SD root)
├─ miyoo283_fw.img        # firmware image
├─ Emu/                   # per-system emulator configs
├─ Roms/                  # your game files, by system folder
├─ Saves/                 # .srm saves + save states  <-- copy these
└─ RetroArch/             # RetroArch core configs

1. Copy the contents of Saves/ to your PC.
2. Flash GarlicOS (original RG35XX) or Knulli/muOS (H700) onto the target device's card.
3. Drop the matching .srm files into the new firmware's save directory for each system. In-game battery saves transfer cleanly; RetroArch save states are core-version-sensitive, so finish your current session with a real in-game save before you migrate anything precious.

RG35XX → Miyoo (OnionOS)

The reverse is the same operation with the folders swapped: pull your .srm files off the GarlicOS/Knulli card, install OnionOS per the OnionUI docs, and drop the saves into the Miyoo's Saves/ tree under the matching system. Because both sides are RetroArch, a Chrono Trigger battery save written on GarlicOS loads on OnionOS without conversion. Save states are the fragile part — they encode the exact emulator build's memory layout — so never rely on a state surviving the jump.

Moving your ROMs (do this the clean way)

Do not clone the reseller card. Both devices arrive with legally dubious, technically sloppy preloaded libraries; a migration is the perfect moment to start clean with dumps of games you own and homebrew. Rebuild your Roms/ tree from a curated set rather than copying 28,000 files you'll never open. If you own the cartridges, dumping them yourself is the unambiguous path — our cartridge-dumping walkthrough covers the hardware and the eleven steps. Which brings us, unavoidably, to the law.

Pros & Cons

The full ledger, one table per option, so you can see each device's case and its indictment side by side.

Miyoo Mini Plus

RG35XX (2022, original)

RG35XX Plus / H (H700)

The Legal Part

The Machine knows the law as well as the lore, and the law here is clearer than the marketing. There are two separate questions — is the emulator legal, and is the ROM legal — and the answers are, respectively, yes and usually no.

Connectix, and why emulators are legal

Emulation itself is settled, protected law in the United States. In Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. v. Connectix Corp. (9th Cir., 2000), the court held that reverse-engineering a console's BIOS to build a compatible emulator was fair use. That decision is why RetroArch, and by extension OnionOS and GarlicOS, exist without lawyers circling. The chips in these handhelds running someone else's console is not the legally interesting part. The SD card is.

The ROM problem

Downloading or distributing copyrighted ROMs you do not own is infringement, full stop, and the enormous preloaded libraries these devices ship with — the “28,000 games” on a $60 handheld — are exactly that: commercial distribution of other people's copyrighted software, quietly bundled to move hardware. That the reseller included them does not launder them. It is the single legally exposed act in this entire hobby, and it is the one every seller commits on your behalf before the box ships.

The clean path

The lawful route is unglamorous and completely viable. Dump the cartridges and discs you own — fair-use backups of your own media — and fill the rest of the card with homebrew, which is free to distribute by design. For a curated, legally-clean starting library, the community-assembled Tiny Best Set: GO! is the standard recommendation: a tight, high-quality collection rather than a bootleg data-dump. Wipe the reseller card, keep the hardware, supply your own games. The device is legal. Your library is your responsibility.

The Verdict

We opened with the punchline; here is the proof of it. Across every axis that the spec sheet can measure, the RG35XX family wins — more RAM, more cores, a real GPU, HDMI, Bluetooth on the newer models, DS at full speed. And across the axes the spec sheet cannot measure — firmware polish, battery endurance, pocketability, the sheer daily pleasantness of the thing — the Miyoo Mini Plus wins. In a $60 device you use in fifteen-minute bursts, the second list matters more than the first. Firmware beats silicon.

Buy the Miyoo Mini Plus if…

Your library tops out at the PlayStation, you value a 5–7 hour battery and a device that vanishes into a pocket, and you want the most refined software experience in the category. This is most people. OnionOS is the closer of the argument — gogamegeek called the Miyoo “the ultimate winner… because of onion os and the size,” and PropelRC's 8.5/10 at a “$53 price point” is the fair score. It is our default recommendation, with one asterisk: buy it the moment you find it in stock.

Buy an RG35XX if…

You need HDMI output, you specifically want Nintendo DS (original RG35XX) or analog sticks (the H), or you are a tinkerer who wants to live in the actively-developed muOS/Knulli firmware world (the H700 Plus/H). DROIX's honest caveat governs the upgrade question: if you already own a Miyoo, the jump is “perhaps not worth it” unless you need a capability the Miyoo physically lacks. Buy the RG35XX for what it does that the Miyoo can't — not because its spec sheet is longer.

The one-line answer

For the person who typed “miyoo mini plus vs rg35xx” into a search bar and wants a single sentence: buy the Miyoo Mini Plus unless you need a television, a thumbstick, or a Nintendo DS — in which case buy the specific RG35XX built for that one job. The 128MB machine beats the 256MB machine, because in 2026 the thing you are really buying is the software, and the Miyoo's is better. XDA scored both 9/10. XDA was right both times. The tiebreaker was never the chip.