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

There is a specific argument that never dies on the retro-handheld forums, and it goes like this: someone buys a sixty-dollar plastic rectangle, discovers it plays Chrono Trigger flawlessly, and then needs to know whether the other sixty-dollar plastic rectangle would have played it slightly more flawlessly. The two rectangles are the Miyoo Mini Plus and the Anbernic RG35XX. They have been fighting for the entry-level crown since 2022, and the fight is more interesting than it has any right to be.

It is interesting because it is not a fair fight on paper, and the underdog keeps winning anyway. The RG35XX has twice the RAM, twice the CPU cores, and an actual 3D GPU. The Miyoo Mini Plus has half of all of that, built around a dual-core chip that started life inside security cameras. Yet ask a hundred owners which one they would keep and the vote skews hard toward the weaker device. This article is about why — and about the several things the marketing copy, the spec sheets, and possibly the brief that commissioned this article get wrong.

We are going to correct some myths, cite the people who actually measured the numbers, and hand you a recommendation that hinges on exactly one question you can answer in four seconds. Let us begin with the answer, because you are busy.

The Short Answer

You do not need 6,000 words to buy a $66 handheld, so here is the compressed version. The longer version exists to defend it, because every sentence below is contested by someone with a Reddit account.

The one-sentence verdict

Buy the Miyoo Mini Plus if your library ends at the PlayStation 1 and you want the best software experience in the class; buy the Anbernic RG35XX if you want Nintendo DS, light Nintendo 64, HDMI output to a television, or the cheapest competent device on the shelf that day. The Miyoo wins the experience. The Anbernic wins the ceiling. Everything after this is footnotes.

Why the weaker device keeps winning

The headline of this article is not a typo. The Miyoo's 128MB of RAM genuinely beats the Anbernic's 256MB for the games these devices exist to play, and it does so because RAM stopped being the bottleneck somewhere around the Super Nintendo. A SNES needed 128 kilobytes of work RAM. A Game Boy Advance needed 288 kilobytes. Both of these handhelds have hundreds of megabytes. The extra 128MB on the Anbernic is real, and for an 8-, 16-, or 32-bit library it is completely inert. What decides the experience at this price is not silicon — it is the firmware wrapped around it, and on that axis the Miyoo brought a masterpiece to a fistfight.

The three facts that actually decide it

First, the software: OnionOS on the Miyoo is a purpose-built operating system tuned to one chip and one screen, and multiple reviewers flatly state it is the better OS. Second, the ceiling: the RG35XX's quad-core Cortex-A9 and PowerVR GPU push a genuine tier higher, into Nintendo DS and light N64, where the Miyoo simply cannot follow. Third, the form factor: the Miyoo is a pocket-sized vertical device you forget you are carrying; the RG35XX is a larger, Game Boy Advance-shaped slab that is more comfortable for a long session on the couch. Pick the two of those three that matter to you and the decision makes itself.

The RK3326 Myth and What They Really Run

Before we compare anything, we have to demolish a claim that circulates in half the comparison posts on the internet, including the research brief handed to this author: the idea that both devices run a Rockchip RK3326. They do not. Neither one does. The RK3326 is a fine little chip that powers the Anbernic RG351 family and the Odroid Go, but it is nowhere inside either device in this comparison. This matters because if you get the silicon wrong, every downstream conclusion about performance is built on sand.

No, they do not share a Rockchip

The Miyoo Mini Plus runs a SigmaStar SSD202D: a dual-core ARM Cortex-A7 clocked at 1.2GHz with 128MB of on-package DDR3 and no dedicated 3D GPU. This is the same chip that CNX Software documented running RetroArch back in 2021, and it was originally designed for smart displays and IP cameras. XDA's review confirms the layout in plain language — the Mini Plus uses "dual Arm Cortex A7 cores and 128MB." The original Anbernic RG35XX, meanwhile, runs an Actions Semiconductor ATM7039S: a quad-core Cortex-A9 that boosts to around 1.6GHz, paired with a four-core PowerVR SGX544 GPU and 256MB of DDR3. Two entirely different chips from two entirely different vendors. Anyone who tells you they are the same RK3326 is repeating a myth.

Cortex-A7 versus Cortex-A9: same era, opposite philosophy

The research brief also claimed the A7 is "the successor of A9," which is the kind of half-truth that sounds authoritative and falls apart on contact. Both cores belong to the same ARMv7-A architecture generation. The Cortex-A9 is an out-of-order design that extracts more instructions-per-clock and hits higher peak throughput. The Cortex-A7 is an in-order design built for efficiency — it was literally created to be the small, power-sipping half of a big.LITTLE pairing with the A15. Calling the A7 a "successor" is like calling a scooter the successor of a sedan because it was built later. It is newer and thriftier, not simply better. On raw multi-threaded compute, the RG35XX's four out-of-order A9 cores outrun the Miyoo's two in-order A7 cores, and it is not close.

Why the weaker chip still wins its weight class

So the RG35XX has the stronger processor. Why does the Miyoo keep winning? Because emulating a Super Nintendo does not need the stronger processor. Both chips clear the bar for everything up to PS1 with headroom to spare, which means the contest is decided above the silicon — in the operating system, the screen tuning, the battery, and the way the thing feels in your hand. XDA's reviewer put the Miyoo's position perfectly: it is "not going to be setting benchmark records... but that's more than good enough for most retro titles." That sentence is the entire thesis of this comparison. The extra muscle in the Anbernic only cashes out at the very top of the library, and most buyers never go there. If you want the deeper teardown of why the memory gap is a red herring, we wrote a whole companion piece on how 128MB out-games 256MB in this class.

The Spec Showdown

Here is the full accounting, corrected for the errors that plague most spec tables — including the two whoppers about the charging port and the battery that even reputable comparison sites keep copying from each other. Read it, then read the paragraph underneath it, because half of these rows are decoys.

The full table

The two rows everyone gets wrong

Look at the charging port and the battery, because those two rows are where nearly every comparison — including this article's own brief — goes off the rails. The claim that the original RG35XX uses micro-USB is false. It is USB-C, confirmed verbatim in XDA's teardown. The brief inherited that error from another comparison site, which inherited it from another, in a game of telephone that has been running for two years. Both devices are USB-C. Second, the RG35XX's battery is not 2,100mAh; XDA measured 2,600mAh, though some retail listings still print 2,100. That single correction guts the popular claim that the Miyoo lasts "50% longer." Against 2,600mAh, the Miyoo's 3,000mAh is only about 15% more capacity. The Miyoo still wins runtime, but for a reason nobody puts on the box, which we will get to.

The rows that are actually decoys

RAM, GPU, and CPU-core count are the rows people fixate on and the rows that matter least. Yes, the RG35XX has a PowerVR GPU and the Miyoo has none — irrelevant, because 2D emulation is a CPU job and the Miyoo's chip rasterizes its 640×480 frames just fine. Yes, the RG35XX has twice the RAM — irrelevant below the DS tier. The rows that genuinely swing the purchase are further down: Wi-Fi (a Miyoo exclusive here), HDMI (an Anbernic exclusive here), form factor, and preferred firmware. Those four decide who should buy which. Cross out the silicon; the fight is on the intangibles. If you are new to the whole idea of matching an emulator to a system, our guide to picking the right RetroArch core untangles the part of this that survives across both devices.

Performance: What the Grades Hide

The tidy way to summarize emulation performance is a letter-grade table, and we will give you one, because it is genuinely useful. But letter grades hide as much as they reveal, and the interesting story on these two devices lives entirely in the gap between a B and a C.

System-by-system grades

The PS1 line and the 128MB question

Everything up to and including the PlayStation 1 is a solved problem on both devices, and this is where the RAM myth dies its quietest death. PropelRC's Miyoo review — an 8.5/10 verdict — recorded "Chrono Trigger (SNES): Perfect 60fps throughout my 12-hour playthrough" and flagged only "minor slowdown in Gran Turismo 2" on the PS1 side, which is exactly the kind of demanding late-gen 3D title that also stutters on the Anbernic. XDA's reviewer was blunter: on the Miyoo, "Game Boy Advance titles run flawlessly, PlayStation 1 games are a treat to play." The 128MB never becomes the wall. If you want the granular PS1 breakdown — which of the roughly 155 tested titles hold full speed on the Miyoo — we catalogued it in our piece on the Miyoo's real PS1 performance. The short version: the library that matters runs, and the RAM you paid extra for on the Anbernic sits unused during all of it.

DS, N64, and the ceiling that separates them

Here is where the Anbernic earns its keep and the grade table stops lying. The original RG35XX's quad-core A9 and PowerVR GPU push a genuine tier past the Miyoo. XDA's RG35XX review — also a 9/10 — recorded "Nintendo DS at full speed, and Pokemon Black 2 runs at full speed," a sentence you will never truthfully write about a Miyoo Mini Plus. The catch, and there is always a catch, is that XDA measured only "two to three hours of playtime with Nintendo DS emulation," because pushing the chip that hard drains the smaller battery fast. The Miyoo can technically launch a DS core via DraStic, but on a single 640×480 screen with a dual-core A7 behind it, the experience is a compromise most people abandon within an afternoon. Nintendo 64 is a coin-flip on both: community testing on GBAtemp and elsewhere puts light N64 titles near full speed and demanding ones down at 70–85%. Neither device is an N64 machine; the Anbernic is just a slightly less bad one. Above that — PSP, Dreamcast, Saturn — both devices politely decline.

Firmware: Onion vs. Garlic

If the silicon is a draw for anything you will actually play, the firmware is the whole ballgame. This is the single most important section in the article, and it is also the one where the reviewers stop hedging and start taking sides.

OnionOS: the reason the Miyoo exists

OnionOS — properly OnionUI — is community custom firmware for the Miyoo Mini and Mini Plus, and it is the closest thing this hobby has to a finished product at the budget end. It is built around exactly one chip and one screen, which is why it feels less like a ROM launcher and more like a console interface. It ships with box art, per-system screen parameters — gamma, saturation, contrast — that let you dial in the panel, RetroAchievements support, and a Wi-Fi-driven pipeline that lets you drop ROMs onto the device without ejecting the card. PropelRC credited OnionOS with "vastly improved battery life (4 hours → 7 hours)" over the stock software, which tells you the optimization runs all the way down to the power management. When a gogamegeek comparison put it head-to-head, the conclusion was unambiguous: "the miyoo has a far better custom OS."

GarlicOS, MinUI, Knulli: the Anbernic buffet

The Anbernic answer is not one OS but a shelf of them, and that is both its strength and its asterisk. GarlicOS, built by the developer known as Black Seraph, is the crowd favorite — the "set it and forget it" option that is simple, stable, and focused entirely on playing games. MinUI strips the interface to near-nothing; Retro Game Corps's Russ noted it is "the OS that I add to devices that I am going to gift to people who aren't very familiar with electronics." Knulli brings a fuller EmulationStation experience. The genuinely clever part, per Russ, is that these "all completely reside on microSD card, so you can swap between them without making any permanent change to the device itself" — the RG35XX has two card slots, so you can literally keep two operating systems in your pocket. The asterisk: not every option is finished. Russ warned that GarlicOS 2.0 was "still in an early alpha state" and advised waiting "until it is in a beta release state." The buffet is bigger; some dishes are undercooked.

Wi-Fi and the box-art pipeline

The firmware gap widens into a canyon the moment you factor in connectivity. The Miyoo Mini Plus has Wi-Fi (2.4GHz 802.11 b/g/n); the original RG35XX has none. On OnionOS this is not a checkbox feature — it is a workflow. You transfer ROMs over the network, scrape box art directly to the device, and sync RetroAchievements without ever touching the SD card. On the RG35XX you are ejecting the card, walking to a computer, and using a reader, every single time. Neither device is a netplay machine — the Miyoo's radio and dual A7 make RetroArch netplay technically possible and practically pointless, and the RG35XX cannot even attempt it — so do not buy either one to play Street Fighter against a stranger. But for the mundane, constant task of getting games and art onto the thing, the Miyoo's Wi-Fi is a quality-of-life gap the Anbernic never closes.

Screen, Battery, and Build

The two devices share a screen resolution and almost nothing else about how they feel. This is the section where spec sheets are most misleading, because "3.5-inch 640×480 IPS" describes both panels and tells you nothing about which one you would rather stare at.

The identical panel that is not identical

Both use a 3.5-inch IPS display at 640×480, a 4:3 resolution that is close to a perfect integer fit for most of the systems these devices emulate — a huge, underrated advantage over the 16:9 handhelds that stretch and blur old games. In practice the panels are excellent on both; the difference is what the software does with them. OnionOS's per-system screen parameters mean you can tune the Miyoo's output game by game, warming up a washed-out GBA title or taming an over-saturated Genesis palette. The RG35XX's panel is every bit as sharp — PocketLab.pro, a dedicated handheld review site, rated the RG35XX "objectively much better" than the Miyoo on display, controls, audio, price, and performance — but you have fewer built-in knobs to fiddle with. That PocketLab verdict is worth quoting because it is the strongest case for the Anbernic, and it is not wrong. It just measures the wrong things for the buyer whose library stops at the PS1.

Battery: 3,000 vs 2,600, and why runtime still diverges

We already corrected the capacity numbers: 3,000mAh on the Miyoo against roughly 2,600mAh on the RG35XX (some listings say 2,100). That is a ~15% capacity edge, not the 50% the internet repeats. And yet the Miyoo genuinely runs longer — PropelRC clocked 6.5 hours on SNES and 7.5 hours on Game Boy, against the RG35XX's rougher 4–6 hours and its brutal 2–3 hours under DS load. The reason is not the battery; it is the chip. The dual-core in-order A7 sips power where the quad-core out-of-order A9 gulps it, and OnionOS's tuning squeezes out the rest. This is the technically-precise version of the story: the Miyoo wins endurance through efficiency, not capacity. The marketing gets the right answer for the wrong reason, which is somehow worse than getting it wrong.

In the hand: clamshell density vs. GBA sprawl

Pick both up and the spec table's "162g vs 165g, nearly identical" line reveals itself as nonsense. The Miyoo is a small, dense, vertical device with a Game Boy footprint, weighing around 120g in hands-on measurement — it disappears into a jacket pocket. The RG35XX is a larger, Game Boy Advance-shaped slab at roughly 165g. Neither is better in the abstract; they are better at different things. DroiX's reviewer found the RG35XX "does feel a bit more comfortable to hold over longer gaming sessions as your hands are more free," while the same reviewer's affection for the smaller Miyoo was undisguised. XDA docked the Miyoo slightly for materials — its plastic "can make it feel cheap" up close — but praised its "comfortable build" overall. The honest read: the Miyoo is a pocket device, the RG35XX is a couch device, and your commute versus your sofa decides which ergonomics you want.

Pricing and Availability in 2026

These are budget devices, so a five-dollar swing is a real percentage of the purchase. Prices move constantly on AliExpress and Amazon, so treat the table below as a snapshot of early-to-mid 2026 street pricing rather than a fixed MSRP.

The pricing table

Stock reality in 2026

The single most important availability fact is that the Miyoo Mini Plus is periodically hard to source. When it is in stock it is a phenomenon; when it is not, you are waiting weeks or paying a scalper. Anbernic, by contrast, floods every channel — the RG35XX family is easier to buy on any given day, a point the gogamegeek comparison made bluntly when it called the Anbernic "much easier to buy." If you need a device this week and the Miyoo is out, that is not a tie-breaker, it is the whole decision. You cannot play a handheld that has not shipped.

What "cheap" actually costs you

Both devices arrive with a microSD card, and both of those cards are, to be polite, disposable. Budget another $10–20 for a reputable card if you plan to keep any saves you care about, because the bundled cards fail. Note also the storage asymmetry: the RG35XX's two slots let you separate operating system from library, while the Miyoo's single slot holds everything. Retailers advertise support up to 2TB, which is marketing theater — a good 256GB or 512GB card holds more retro games than any human will finish in a lifetime, and cards past 512GB introduce more compatibility headaches than they solve. And a housekeeping note that applies to both: the games are your problem to source legally. If you own the cartridges, our walkthrough on dumping your own SNES and Genesis carts is the clean way to fill either card.

Who Each One Is Actually For

Specs are abstract; use cases are not. Here are the concrete scenarios, and which device wins each. Find yourself on this list and stop reading.

Buy the Miyoo Mini Plus if…

You are a commuter or a pocket gamer. The Miyoo's small, dense, vertical body is the entire pitch — it goes where a larger handheld cannot, and it comes out during the four minutes you are waiting for coffee. Your library ends at the PS1. If you play NES through PlayStation and nothing heavier, the Miyoo does all of it flawlessly and you are paying for nothing you will not use. You value software polish over raw power. OnionOS with Wi-Fi ROM transfer, box art, per-game screen tuning, and RetroAchievements is the best-integrated experience under $100, full stop. You want the longest battery in the class. Six to seven hours on 16-bit systems, delivered by an efficient chip rather than a big cell. For a sense of just how deep that curated library goes, we went down the rabbit hole on the Miyoo's oft-quoted 6,041-game count and what it actually means.

Buy the RG35XX if…

You want Nintendo DS or light N64. This is the Anbernic's clean, uncontested win — the quad A9 and PowerVR GPU run DS at full speed on many titles, which the Miyoo cannot do. You want to play on a television. The RG35XX's mini-HDMI output (720p) turns it into a tiny console; the Miyoo has no video out at all. You want the cheapest competent device today. At around $56 direct from Anbernic, it is frequently the lowest-cost quality option, and it is almost always in stock. You prefer a larger, couch-friendly body and the flexibility of swapping between GarlicOS, MinUI, and Knulli across two SD cards.

Buy neither if…

You want PSP, Dreamcast, Saturn, or GameCube. Both devices tap out below that line, and no firmware fixes a hardware ceiling. If that is your library, you are shopping a tier up — a device like the Retroid Pocket, which we broke down in our Retroid Pocket 6 comparison, is where that money should go. You want online multiplayer. Neither is a netplay machine. You want analog sticks for 3D games — the standard RG35XX and the Miyoo are both D-pad-only vertical-ish devices; you want the RG35XX H or a Retroid for dual sticks.

The RG35XX Plus Problem

There is an elephant in this comparison, and it wears an Allwinner badge. Anbernic did not sit still after the original RG35XX; it released the RG35XX Plus, and the Plus is a materially different — and stronger — device that muddies every conclusion above. We have to address it, because for many buyers it is the correct answer to a question they did not ask.

What the Plus changes

The RG35XX Plus swaps the aging Actions ATM7039S for an Allwinner H700: a quad-core Cortex-A53 at 1.5GHz with a Mali-G31 MP2 GPU, 1GB of LPDDR4 RAM, 64GB of onboard storage, dual microSD slots, Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) plus Bluetooth 4.2, and a 3,300mAh battery rated around eight hours. Notebookcheck documented the launch as an upgrade in chipset, RAM, and battery at roughly the same price point. Retro Game Corps's Russ described Anbernic's whole H700 line as "an excellent combination of affordability and performance," and you can buy the thing straight from Anbernic's own store. On paper, the Plus beats both devices in this article.

Does it make this whole fight moot?

Not quite, and the person best placed to say so is a reviewer who owns both. DroiX, reviewing the RG35XX Plus, confirmed the raw-power story — "the H700 processor with GPU runs faster than the Miyoo processor," with "faster performance on PlayStation 1 and Dreamcast" and PSP where "low demanding games generally are playable with some frame skipping." But the same review delivered the line that keeps the Miyoo relevant: "if you already have a Miyoo Mini or Miyoo Mini Plus... it is perhaps not worth the upgrade." The Plus is a better emulator. It is not a smaller device, it does not run OnionOS, and it does not fit in the pocket the Miyoo lives in. If you are choosing fresh and want the most performance per dollar, the Plus is the smart buy. If you already own a Mini Plus, the Plus does not solve a problem you have.

The upgrade ladder above both

Zoom out and these three devices are the bottom rung of a tall ladder. Above the H700 sits the Snapdragon-class handheld tier — the Retroid Pockets, the Odin line — where DS, PSP, Dreamcast, and even GameCube become real, and where the price climbs from $60 to $200-plus. The honest framing for a first-time buyer: the Miyoo Mini Plus and RG35XX are not the devices you buy to emulate everything; they are the devices you buy to emulate the 8-, 16-, and 32-bit era brilliantly, cheaply, and in your pocket. The moment your ambitions cross the PS1 line, you are shopping a different ladder rung entirely, and no amount of arguing about 128MB versus 256MB matters up there.

Switching Sides: A Migration Guide

Say you own one of these and want the other, or you are consolidating a drawer full of handhelds onto a single device. Moving your library and — critically — your saves between OnionOS and GarlicOS is not hard, but there is one trap that will eat your progress if you are careless. Here is how to do it without losing a 40-hour Final Fantasy file.

The folder layout, side by side

Both operating systems organize ROMs into per-system folders, so the ROMs themselves move cleanly. Saves are where the two diverge, and where you have to pay attention:

# --- OnionOS layout (Miyoo Mini Plus) ---
/Roms/[SYSTEM]/                 # ROMs, one folder per system
/Saves/CurrentProfile/saves/    # .srm battery saves  (PORTABLE)
/Saves/CurrentProfile/states/   # savestate slots      (NOT portable)
/RetroArch/.retroarch/config/   # per-core overrides

# --- GarlicOS layout (Anbernic RG35XX) ---
/Roms/[SYSTEM]/                 # ROMs, one folder per system
/Roms/save/[CORE]/              # .srm + .state written per core
/RetroArch/.retroarch/          # config root

# The rule that saves your progress:
#   .srm   (battery saves) -> copy freely; format is core-agnostic
#   .state (savestates)    -> DO NOT trust across devices/OSes
#
# A savestate written by one gpSP build under OnionOS will NOT
# reliably load on a different gpSP build under GarlicOS.
# Beat the boss, hit the in-game SAVE, THEN migrate.

Step by step, either direction

1. On the source device, load each in-progress game and use its in-game save (the one that writes a .srm), not just a savestate. This is the single step that prevents heartbreak.
2. Power down, remove the microSD card, and put it in a computer with a reader.
3. Copy your /Roms/ folders wholesale to the destination card — the per-system structure is compatible, though a handful of folder names differ (check the destination OS's system-folder list and rename the odd one out).
4. Copy your .srm battery saves into the destination OS's save location shown above. These are portable and will load.
5. Leave your .state savestate files behind, or copy them knowing they may not load. They are core- and version-locked; treat them as disposable.
6. On the destination device, scrape box art fresh — on the Miyoo you can do this over Wi-Fi; on the RG35XX you will scrape via the card or a scraper tool on the computer.
7. Boot, load one game, confirm the .srm save resumes, and only then wipe the source card.

The save-state trap, spelled out

The mistake that ruins migrations is trusting savestates. A savestate is a raw snapshot of the emulator's memory at a moment in time, and it is bound to the exact core and often the exact build that wrote it. Move it to a different device running a different version of the same core and it may load as garbage or refuse entirely. Battery saves — the .srm files an in-game save menu produces — are the actual game's save format and travel between devices reliably. The one-line rule: in-game save before you migrate, savestate only within a single device. Follow that and you will never lose a file crossing the Onion/Garlic border.

Pros and Cons, Tallied

The full ledger, so you can see the trade at a glance. Neither column is empty, which is exactly why this comparison has outlived four hardware generations.

Miyoo Mini Plus

Anbernic RG35XX

The tiebreakers

When every row cancels out, three questions break the tie. Do you need Nintendo DS or a TV output? Take the RG35XX; the Miyoo cannot do either. Do you prize the best software experience and the smallest possible device? Take the Miyoo; nothing in this class matches OnionOS. Is one of them out of stock and you want to play this weekend? Take whichever you can actually buy — the Anbernic, most likely, because it is always available. There is no wrong answer here, only a mismatched one.

The Machine's Final Word

We have corrected a fake chipset, a fake charging port, a fake battery figure, and a fake weight parity, and after all that housekeeping the recommendation is refreshingly stable. Here it is, three ways, so you can take the version that fits your temperament.

The data-backed pick

For the buyer whose library lives in the 8-, 16-, and 32-bit era — which is the overwhelming majority of people shopping at this price — the Miyoo Mini Plus is the recommendation. It plays everything up to the PS1 flawlessly, per XDA and PropelRC; it runs longer on a charge; it fits in a pocket the RG35XX cannot; and it runs the best firmware in the class, a point gogamegeek and PropelRC state without hedging. The 128MB genuinely beats the 256MB, because the games in question needed neither. That is the headline and it is true.

The contrarian pick

But the RG35XX is the smarter buy more often than the Miyoo faithful admit, and honesty demands the counter-argument. If you want Nintendo DS — a full tier of gaming the Miyoo simply cannot reach — or HDMI output to a television, or the cheapest competent device on the shelf today, the RG35XX is objectively the better machine, and PocketLab.pro will back you up on display, controls, audio, and raw performance. DroiX's summary of the original still lands: it is "not a Miyoo Mini but it's the next best thing," and "the next best thing" that costs less and is always in stock is a very defensible purchase.

One year from now

Zoom out to the timeframe that actually matters — the drawer you open in a year. The Miyoo Mini Plus is the device you keep because it is always in your jacket and it never annoys you. The RG35XX is the device you keep because it does the one heavier thing you occasionally need and it plugs into the TV. Both are extraordinary for the money, and the fact that a $66 handheld triggers this much analysis is the actual story of the budget-emulation era. Buy the one that fits the four-second question at the top of this article. Then stop reading comparisons and go play Chrono Trigger — it runs perfectly on both.