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

There is a specific class of question that looks like a coin flip and is actually a category error, and Miyoo Mini Plus vs RG35XX is the textbook case. It reads like a two-horse race. It is really a three-horse race in which two of the horses share a name, a screen, and almost nothing else, and the spec sheet has been photocopied across so many storefronts that nobody selling either device can reliably tell you which numbers belong to which machine.

Here is the punchline first, because The Machine does not do suspense: the Miyoo Mini Plus has half the RAM of the original RG35XX, half the CPU cores, no dedicated GPU worth the name, and no video output of any kind. It wins its weight class anyway. That is not a paradox and it is not fanboyism — it is what happens when firmware and ergonomics matter more than the last twenty percent of silicon a device cannot fully exploit. The counterintuitive headline — 128MB beats 256MB — is literally true, and the rest of this piece is the roughly six thousand words explaining why, when it stops being true, and which of the three RG35XX machines you are actually comparing against.

We will decode the spec sheet row by row, walk the benchmark evidence from XDA, PropelRC, DROIX, Retro Game Corps and the community testing threads, price both families in mid-2026, and then tell you — with numbers, not vibes — which one to buy for which job. If you already own one and want to jump ship, there is a migration guide with the SD-card folder map near the end. Let us start with the naming mess, because everything downstream depends on getting it straight.

Which RG35XX, Exactly?

Before you can compare the Miyoo Mini Plus to “the RG35XX,” you have to decide which RG35XX you mean, because Anbernic has stamped that four-character badge on at least three fundamentally different machines. This is not pedantry. Pick the wrong one and every number in your head is off by a factor of two — RAM, battery, chipset generation, the works.

Three machines, one badge

The original RG35XX shipped in 2022 on the Actions Semiconductor ATM7039S — four Cortex-A9 cores up to 1.6GHz paired with a PowerVR SGX544, the same GPU family that once pushed pixels inside the PS Vita and the iPhone 5. It has 256MB of RAM, a mini-HDMI port, and no Wi-Fi. The RG35XX Plus arrived in 2024 on the Allwinner H700 — four Cortex-A53 cores at 1.5GHz, a Mali-G31, a full gigabyte of LPDDR4, Wi-Fi 5, and Bluetooth 4.2. Then there is the horizontal RG35XX H and the clamshell RG35XX SP, both H700-based, the H being the one that finally bolts on dual analog sticks. Same badge, three silicon generations, four form factors.

Why the spec sheets bleed together

Reseller listings and aggregator “vs” pages treat these as interchangeable, so you get spec tables that pair the original’s 256MB with the Plus’s 3,300mAh battery and the H’s analog sticks — a machine that does not exist. The most common research brief circulating for this exact comparison does precisely that: it lists 128MB against 256MB in one breath and Allwinner H700 with 1GB DDR4 in the next, which are two different fights. We are going to run both of them honestly rather than average them into a chimera.

The Miyoo Mini Plus is, mercifully, one thing

The Miyoo side is simpler. There is one Miyoo Mini Plus: a SigmaStar SSD202D with, in XDA’s own teardown language, “dual Arm Cortex A7 cores and 128MB of RAM,” a Mali-400 MP2, and a 3.5-inch 640×480 IPS panel. It comes in storage trims of 32, 64 and 128GB, and in a handful of colors including a translucent shell the community adores, but the silicon never changes. When someone says “Miyoo Mini Plus,” you know exactly what is in their hand. When they say “RG35XX,” you have to ask a follow-up question. That asymmetry is the first data point in this whole comparison, and it matters more than it looks.

The Spec Sheet, Decoded

Here is the full board. To keep it honest, the Miyoo Mini Plus is shown against both the original RG35XX (its true 2022 price-and-size peer) and the RG35XX Plus (the 2024 machine most people actually cross-shop it against today). Read the rows, then read the three subsections underneath, because a spec table without interpretation is just a tidy list of ways to be misled.

SoC and RAM: yes, the Miyoo really has half the silicon

Two cores versus four. 128MB versus 256MB versus 1,024MB. On a spreadsheet this is a rout, and it stays a rout right up until you ask what those extra cores and megabytes are doing while you play Chrono Trigger. The answer, at the 8- and 16-bit tier, is: mostly idling. A Super Nintendo core is single-threaded and fits its working set in a rounding error of RAM; the fourth A9 core on the RG35XX and 900-odd megabytes on the Plus are headroom for systems the panel and the price point were never really built to reach. XDA’s Adam Conway put the Miyoo’s silicon in its place plainly — it is “not going to be setting benchmark records, but that is more than good enough for most retro titles.” That sentence is the entire thesis of this article in seventeen words.

The ports tell the real story

This is where the machines actually diverge, and where the brief’s “Miyoo has Wi-Fi, RG35XX has HDMI” line is half-right in a way worth untangling. The Miyoo Mini Plus has 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi and no Bluetooth and no video output at all. The original RG35XX is the mirror image: a mini-HDMI port that will, per XDA’s RG35XX review, “output the display to a TV or monitor,” and no Wi-Fi whatsoever — Conway notes it “does not have Wi-Fi support to pull game images or other metadata.” The RG35XX Plus is the only one that refuses to compromise: Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 4.2, and HDMI together. So the honest version of the port story is that the two 2022 machines each sacrificed exactly one connectivity feature, in opposite directions, and only the 2024 H700 refresh paid to have all three.

Weight, footprint, and the pocket test

Ignore the blogs that claim the Miyoo weighs 118 grams; that figure belongs to the smaller original Miyoo Mini and got copy-pasted onto the Plus. XDA’s hands-on lists the Miyoo Mini Plus at roughly 165g in a 108×78×22mm shell — nearly identical in mass to the original RG35XX (~165g, 117×81×20mm), and a touch lighter than the RG35XX Plus at ~175g. The Miyoo’s win here is not weight, it is footprint: it is narrower and shorter but thicker, a genuinely pocketable brick, where the RG35XX family is wider and flatter and reads more like a small Game Boy Micro descendant. If “fits in the coin pocket of a pair of jeans” is a spec you care about, that is the Miyoo, and it is the only one of the three that clears the bar.

Silicon vs. Firmware: The Question That Decides It

Every argument about these devices eventually collapses into one question: does raw hardware or software polish win at the bottom of the market? The answer, unsatisfyingly for spec-sheet warriors, is “it depends on the tier” — and understanding exactly where the line sits is the difference between buying the right machine and buying the one that benchmarked well on paper.

Why 256MB does not cash out

The original RG35XX out-specs the Miyoo on four axes — twice the cores, twice the RAM, a real PowerVR GPU, and a higher peak clock — and at the systems both machines are actually good at, none of it converts into a lead you can see. PlayStation 1 is the ceiling for both; below it, a competent frontend running mature libretro cores saturates neither machine. The RG35XX’s advantages are real but they are banked against systems — Saturn, Dreamcast, PSP — that the original’s PowerVR and driver stack cannot reliably deliver anyway. You paid for horsepower the software cannot put on the road.

Firmware is the multiplier

OnionOS is the reason the Miyoo punches above its silicon. It is not a skin — it is a reworked userland that, by PropelRC’s measurement, takes battery life from “4 hours” on the stock OS to “7 hours,” adds RetroAchievements, and layers a Game Switcher quick-resume overlay on top of RetroArch. That is a firmware change buying you a 75% battery improvement on identical hardware. When gogamegeek compared the two directly, the verdict was not about clocks: “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.” Firmware, in this class, is a hardware multiplier — and the Miyoo has the better multiplier.

The exception: when silicon actually wins

Here is the honest caveat fanboys skip. Move up to the RG35XX Plus and its Allwinner H700, and the silicon story flips, because now there is enough of it to matter. DROIX’s reviewer is blunt: “The H700 processor with GPU runs faster than the Miyoo processor,” delivering “faster performance on PlayStation 1 and Dreamcast.” The H700 does not just win the spec sheet, it wins games — light Dreamcast titles, more forgiving PSP with frame-skipping — that the Miyoo simply cannot run. So the rule is precise: at or below PS1, firmware wins and the Miyoo takes it; above PS1, silicon wins and you want the H700. The trap is buying the H700’s headroom for a library that never leaves the 16-bit era.

What Each Machine Actually Runs

Enough theory. Here is the evidence from people who put a stopwatch and a frame counter on these things — XDA and PropelRC on the review side, DROIX on the H700, Retro Game Corps on the family’s limits, and the community testing threads on GBAtemp and the r/SBCGaming and r/miyoomini subreddits for the ragged edges. The numbers cluster cleanly into three tiers.

8-bit and 16-bit: both flawless, stop worrying

NES, Master System, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Genesis, SNES, Game Boy Advance — all of it runs at full speed on both machines, full stop. PropelRC clocked Chrono Trigger on the Miyoo at “Perfect 60fps throughout my 12-hour playthrough.” XDA found “Game Boy Advance titles run flawlessly.” The RG35XX does the same tier without breaking a sweat on its four A9 cores. If your library is Nintendo and Sega’s first three generations plus Game Boy Advance — which, be honest, is what most people actually play — there is no performance difference between these devices worth a single dollar of price premium. The decision moves entirely to firmware, battery, and feel.

PlayStation: the shared ceiling

PS1 is where both 2022 machines top out, and both clear it with the occasional stumble. The Miyoo handles it well — XDA says “PlayStation 1 games are a treat to play anywhere” — with PropelRC noting only “minor slowdown in Gran Turismo 2,” one of the genuinely demanding 3D titles in the library. The RG35XX is at least the Miyoo’s equal here and arguably a hair ahead thanks to the PowerVR GPU. This is the tier we have written about at length elsewhere; if you want the full breakdown of exactly where the Miyoo’s PlayStation ceiling sits and why, we mapped it game by game. The short version: both machines are “yes, with rare exceptions” on PS1, and the RG35XX Plus turns those rare exceptions into “yes.”

N64, DS, PSP, Dreamcast: the ragged edge where the fights actually happen

Above PS1 is where these machines separate, and where the original RG35XX pulls its one clear win over the Miyoo. XDA’s RG35XX review found it “can play games on handhelds as recent as the Nintendo DS at full speed,” with “Pokemon Black 2 runs at full speed” — but at a brutal cost: “roughly two to three hours of playtime with Nintendo DS emulation,” extendable “to four or five with an underclocked CPU.” The Miyoo can technically load a DS core under OnionOS but it is impractical on a single 3.5-inch screen with no touch input. N64 is a coin flip on both — community testing on GBAtemp pegs lighter titles at near-full-speed and demanding ones at 70–85%. PSP is a no on both 2022 machines. Only the H700 Plus changes the picture: DROIX confirms “faster performance on… Dreamcast” and playable-with-frame-skip PSP, though Retro Game Corps’ family guide keeps the asterisk honest — those heavier systems “cannot play every game at full speed, and so performance may vary.” Translation: the RG35XX badge can reach one tier higher than the Miyoo, but only in its H700 incarnation, and only with caveats.

OnionOS vs. GarlicOS: The Firmware War

If the hardware is a near-tie below PS1, the software is where the Miyoo builds its actual lead. Both device families are Linux underneath and both lean on RetroArch for the heavy lifting, but the community firmware experience is not close — and it is the single most-cited reason reviewers hand the Miyoo the win.

OnionOS: the reason the Miyoo wins on points

OnionOS — properly the OnionUI project on GitHub — is the most polished custom firmware in this price class, and it is the Miyoo’s secret weapon. The stable build has sat at v4.3.1-1 (June 2024) for over a year, with the newest tag being v4.4.0-beta-20260120 (January 2026), which added netplay, RTC handling, CPU-overclock hotkeys, and made gpSP the default GBA core. Out of the box you get the Game Switcher quick-resume overlay, auto-save-states, RetroAchievements, box art, and a genuinely coherent menu system. It is, as gogamegeek flatly put it, “a far better custom OS” than what is on the Anbernic side. The one caveat: stable OnionOS has been frozen for a while, so if you were hoping for aggressive ongoing development, both camps have plateaued.

GarlicOS, Knulli, and the Anbernic stack

The RG35XX side runs Anbernic’s competent-if-plain stock Linux, or the community’s GarlicOS (built by the developer known as Black Seraph) on the original, or Knulli (a Batocera derivative) on the H700 units. GarlicOS is stable and beloved, but its next-generation GarlicOS 2.0 has been stuck: Retro Game Corps’ guide still warns it is “in an early alpha state” and recommends “waiting until it is in a beta release state,” and development has been on hold. So the honest firmware standing is: the Miyoo’s best-in-class option (OnionOS) is more polished than the RG35XX’s best option (GarlicOS/Knulli), but both ecosystems have stalled at the bleeding edge. If you want a device that is excellent the day it arrives and do not intend to chase nightly builds, that asymmetry favors the Miyoo. If you enjoy flashing firmware for its own sake, it is a wash — and our step-by-step RetroArch core setup applies equally to either machine.

Save states, netplay, and shaders: the fine print

All three machines do save states and in-line quick resume through RetroArch; the Miyoo’s Game Switcher just makes it feel like a modern console’s “suspend” rather than a menu dive. Netplay is where connectivity bites: the original RG35XX has no Wi-Fi, so no netplay, period; the Miyoo can do it only on the OnionOS 4.4.0 beta (including GBA link between two units); the RG35XX Plus does it through RetroArch over its Wi-Fi 5. Shaders — CRT masks, LCD grids, scanline overlays — are a RetroArch feature all three share, and at native 640×480 the 4:3 panel is a near-perfect canvas for integer-scaled SNES and GBA with an LCD-grid shader on top. Heavy multi-pass shader stacks will tax the A7 and A9 chips, so keep it to one or two passes; the H700 has more room to spare.

Battery, Screen, and Feel in the Hand

Specs win arguments; battery life, screen quality, and ergonomics win the actual hours you spend holding the thing. This is the category where the Miyoo’s engineering choices quietly pay off, and where the RG35XX gets a point or two back.

Battery: the Miyoo’s quiet, decisive win

The Miyoo Mini Plus carries a 3,000mAh cell (XDA’s unit measured 3,200) and, crucially, the OnionOS efficiency to use it. Real-world figures land at “up to six hours” per XDA and “6–7 hours” of SNES at medium brightness per PropelRC — with that firmware-driven jump from “4 hours” stock to “7 hours” on OnionOS. The original RG35XX, on a smaller 2,100mAh battery (XDA’s sample read 2,600), manages a comfortable 4–5 hours on light systems but collapses to “two to three hours” once you push it into DS emulation. The RG35XX Plus rebalances with a bigger 3,300mAh pack for around eight hours. So the ranking is Plus > Miyoo > original RG35XX, and against its true price peer the Miyoo simply lasts longer per charge doing the thing you will actually do most: 16-bit and GBA on the couch.

The screens are near-identical twins

Both machines use a 3.5-inch 640×480 IPS panel, and that shared spec is not a coincidence — it is the correct panel for 4:3 retro content, because 640×480 divides cleanly for integer scaling of most pre-PS2 systems. The Miyoo’s is a genuinely good example: PropelRC measured “450 nits brightness, making it playable outdoors” and 229 PPI that is “sharper than the original Nintendo 3DS.” Anbernic does not publish nits for the RG35XX, but in side-by-sides the two are close enough that nobody sane picks between them on screen quality alone. Both are sharp, bright, and correctly proportioned; neither is the reason you would choose one over the other.

Build and ergonomics: plastic, pocketability, and slow charging

The Miyoo’s shell is “entirely-plastic… aside from the glass screen,” which XDA notes “can make it feel cheap” — a fair knock on a device that otherwise over-delivers. The RG35XX feels denser and, in longer sessions, a little more comfortable to hold thanks to its wider body. The Miyoo’s other real wart is charging: it takes power at only “5V 1A, or 5W,” so a full charge runs “up to three hours” — glacial by 2026 standards, and a genuine annoyance if you top up between sessions. And it bears repeating, because it is the most common thing buyers miss: the Miyoo Mini Plus has no Bluetooth, so wireless earbuds are out; it is wired headphones or the speaker. If untethered audio matters to you, that alone can decide the purchase in the RG35XX Plus’s favor.

Pricing and Availability in 2026

Both families live in the same $60–80 band, which means price rarely breaks the tie cleanly — but there are real gaps depending on which exact model and which storefront you choose. Here is the current lay of the land.

What each actually costs right now

In mid-2026 the Miyoo Mini Plus streets at roughly $60–70, with the bare device dipping to around $54 on AliExpress and the pre-loaded storage trims running $59.99 (64GB) to $69.99 (128GB). The original RG35XX is the bargain-bin play — $40–50 on AliExpress, but often marked up to ~$75 on Amazon. The H700 machines (Plus, H, SP) sit a notch higher: one 2026 price check lists the Miyoo around $65 against the RG35XX H at about $85, a ~$20 gap in the Miyoo’s favor. If pure dollars-per-fun below PS1 is the metric, the Miyoo or a discounted original RG35XX wins; the premium buys you the H700’s headroom and connectivity, not a better 16-bit experience.

AliExpress vs. Amazon: the ~$20 convenience tax

Both brands sell primarily through AliExpress (cheapest, slowest, direct from the manufacturer’s region) and Amazon (a $15–25 markup for fast shipping and painless returns). Neither company runs a meaningful first-party storefront in most markets, so you are buying from a marketplace either way. The practical advice: if you are patient, AliExpress during a sale is the value move; if you want it this week and want frictionless returns on a sub-$80 gadget, eat the Amazon tax and move on with your life.

The storage-tier trap — and the legal footnote

Do not overpay for a “128GB, 28,000 games!” bundle. The pre-loaded SD card is the least valuable part of the transaction: those counts are marketing built on duplicate regions, revisions, hacks, and bootlegs, and we have documented how the Miyoo’s “28,000 games” figure dedupes down to a few thousand real titles. Buy the smallest storage tier, supply your own microSD, and fill it yourself. On the law: emulators are unambiguously legal — Sony Computer Entertainment v. Connectix (9th Cir. 2000) settled that — but downloading commercial ROMs is not. The clean path is dumping cartridges you own; if you want to do that properly, here is how to dump a cart in about 30 minutes. The Machine does not give legal advice, but it does know the difference between a preservation hobby and a copyright tort.

Which One Fits Which Player

The spec debate is abstract; buying advice should not be. Here are the concrete profiles, matched to the machine that actually serves them, because “it depends” is only useful if you say what it depends on.

The pocket purist and the polish-first buyer

Buy the Miyoo Mini Plus if you are the pocket purist. You want NES-through-PS1, you want it to fit in a jacket pocket, you want it to turn on and be excellent with zero configuration, and you value a device that lasts 6–7 hours of Chrono Trigger per charge. OnionOS out of the box, the smallest footprint of the three, the best battery-per-dollar at this tier. This is the default recommendation for most people, and it is not close for this profile. The polish-first buyer — someone who wants a console-like “just works” experience rather than a firmware-flashing hobby — lands on the same machine for the same reason: OnionOS is the most finished software in the class.

The TV player and the wireless-audio user

Buy an RG35XX if you want to play on a television. The Miyoo has no video output at all; every RG35XX has mini-HDMI. If “dock it to the living-room TV for a couch session” is on your list, the Miyoo is simply disqualified and any RG35XX does it. The wireless-audio user is in the same boat: the Miyoo has no Bluetooth, so if you insist on wireless earbuds, you need the RG35XX Plus (or H), which pack BT 4.2. These are small features until they are the exact feature you need, at which point they are the whole decision.

The DS/PS1 dabbler and the Dreamcast upgrader

The DS dabbler who specifically wants Pokémon Black 2 at full speed on a budget should look hard at the original RG35XX — XDA confirmed it does DS “at full speed,” a tier the Miyoo cannot practically reach — just accept the two-to-three-hour battery penalty. The Dreamcast/PSP upgrader who wants to push past PS1 should skip both 2022 machines and buy the RG35XX Plus on the H700; DROIX confirms the faster PS1 and Dreamcast performance and playable-with-frame-skip PSP. If your ambitions run even higher — smooth PSP, GameCube, Saturn — neither brand’s $70 device is your answer, and you should be reading our Retroid Pocket 5 vs 6 breakdown instead, because that is the tier where those systems actually run.

The stick-first player and the gift buyer

The stick-first player — anyone whose library leans on twin-stick shooters, N64, or PS1 games that want a real analog stick — should ignore every vertical device in this comparison and buy the horizontal RG35XX H, which is the only one in the family with dual sticks. Neither the Miyoo nor the vertical RG35XX/Plus has an analog stick at all; the D-pad-only form factor is a hard limit, not a preference. Finally, the gift buyer purchasing for someone who has never emulated anything: get the Miyoo Mini Plus with OnionOS pre-installed. It is the one your recipient can turn on and immediately understand, and “it just worked” is worth more than any spec.

Switching From One to the Other

Say you already own one and the argument above convinced you to jump. Good news: because both families store everything on a removable microSD and both lean on RetroArch, migrating is mostly a file-copy exercise — with one non-negotiable first step.

Back up your saves before you touch anything

Battery saves (.srm files) and save states are the only irreplaceable things on your card; ROMs you can re-source, saves you cannot. Pull the microSD, put it in a computer, and copy the entire saves directory somewhere safe before you do anything else. On OnionOS the SD root looks like this, and the folders you care about are the ones with your progress in them:

SD root (OnionOS / Miyoo Mini Plus)
├── miyoo283_fw.img     <- firmware image, must stay at root
├── BIOS/               <- console BIOS files (dump your own)
├── Roms/               <- per-system folders: SFC, GBA, PS, MD, FC ...
├── Emu/                <- emulator packages
├── RetroArch/          <- cores, shaders, per-game overrides
├── Saves/              <- .srm battery saves + save states  <== BACK THIS UP
└── miyoo/              <- system + Game Switcher data

Miyoo to RG35XX

Reflash a fresh card for the destination: GarlicOS or Knulli for an H700 unit, GarlicOS or stock for the original. Follow this order:

1. Copy your Saves/ folder (the .srm files especially) to your computer.
2. Image the new card with the RG35XX firmware per that firmware’s instructions.
3. Drop your ROMs into the matching per-system folders — note the folder names differ (OnionOS uses SFC/FC/MD; some Anbernic builds use SNES/NES/Genesis), so match by system, not by copying blindly.
4. Place the matching .srm files next to the ROMs — RetroArch matches saves to ROM filenames, so keep the ROM names identical and the saves carry over.
5. Boot, verify a save loads, and only then wipe the old card.

RG35XX to Miyoo

The higher-value direction, since you are moving toward OnionOS. Grab the stable OnionUI release from GitHub, image your card, and let the folder map above guide you. The critical detail is again filename parity: RetroArch on the Miyoo will find your existing .srm saves as long as the ROM filenames match what they were on the RG35XX. Copy ROMs into the OnionOS Roms/ subfolders, drop the saves in Saves/, and let the Game Switcher rebuild its state on first boot. Budget twenty minutes and one careful read of the OnionUI docs; there is nothing here a patient person cannot do with a card reader and a coffee.

The Ledger: Pros and Cons

Every device in this comparison is genuinely good — there is no lemon here, only trade-offs. Laid out plainly, side by side, so you can weigh the ones that matter to you.

Miyoo Mini Plus: pros and cons

The polish-and-pocketability pick — it earns XDA’s 9/10 and PropelRC’s 8.5/10 by nailing the fundamentals and losing only on connectivity and charging speed.

RG35XX (original, 2022): pros and cons

The spec-sheet winner that cannot fully spend its advantages, but it reaches one tier higher and adds a TV-out the Miyoo lacks.

RG35XX Plus (H700, 2024): pros and cons

The “if you want more, pay more” option — genuinely faster, genuinely more connected, genuinely less pocketable.

The Verdict

Several thousand words of nuance, one clear recommendation — because you came here for an answer, not a shrug. The data points the same direction it has since 2022, and the 2024 H700 refresh only sharpens the split rather than blurring it.

If your ceiling is PS1: buy the Miyoo Mini Plus

For the library most people actually own — NES, SNES, Genesis, Game Boy Advance, PlayStation 1 — the Miyoo Mini Plus is the pick, and the “128MB beats 256MB” headline is not a stunt. It wins on the things you touch every day: OnionOS out of the box, 6–7 hours of battery, the smallest body, a 450-nit screen, all for around $54–70. XDA’s 9/10 and PropelRC’s 8.5/10 are not measuring silicon; they are measuring the experience, and the experience is better. The original RG35XX’s extra cores and RAM are real and mostly irrelevant to this library. Firmware won.

If you need Dreamcast, HDMI, Bluetooth, or sticks: buy the right RG35XX

The moment your requirements list includes a system past PS1, a TV output, wireless earbuds, or an analog stick, the Miyoo is out and the only question is which RG35XX. Want to push into Dreamcast and forgiving PSP with Bluetooth audio? The RG35XX Plus on the H700, where DROIX confirms the real performance gains. Want DS at full speed on the cheapest possible hardware and do not mind a two-hour battery? The original RG35XX. Want dual analog sticks? The horizontal RG35XX H. Just do not buy an RG35XX for a 16-bit library and expect the spec sheet to translate into a better Super Metroid — it will not.

The one-line answer

Most people, most libraries, most budgets: Miyoo Mini Plus, and spend the $20 you saved on a decent microSD and a case. Buy an RG35XX Plus only if you specifically want Dreamcast, Bluetooth, or HDMI, and the RG35XX H only if you want analog sticks. And if reading this made you realize your ambitions actually run to smooth PSP, GameCube, or Saturn, none of these $70 machines is your device — that is a tier up, and Retroid-class hardware is where that fight gets settled. Below PS1, though, the little translucent Miyoo remains the most machine you can buy for the money, and it is not particularly close.