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

Type "miyoo mini plus vs rg35xx" into any search bar and you will get roughly four hundred results that all say the same three things: they cost about the same, they run the same games, and you should buy whichever one looks nicer. None of that is wrong. It is also useless, and it has been useless since late 2023.

So let us run the version that respects your time. Two handhelds, both born in the sub-$70 basement of the hobby, both wrapped around a 3.5-inch 640×480 IPS panel, both able to run everything up to and including the PlayStation 1 without complaint. On paper the Anbernic device wins comfortably — twice the RAM, four CPU cores to the Miyoo's two, a real GPU, a video-out port the Miyoo lacks. And it still loses the argument for most people. That gap — between what the spec sheet promises and what the community actually reaches for — is the only interesting thing here, and it is entirely about software.

The short version

If you want the smallest, longest-lasting, nicest-feeling machine for everything from the NES to the PlayStation, buy the Miyoo Mini Plus and flash OnionUI. If you want two SD-card slots, an HDMI output to a television, and a chip with genuine headroom for Nintendo DS, buy an Anbernic RG35XX — but buy an H700 model, not the 2023 original, and know you are paying for capability you may never use. Everything after this paragraph is the receipts.

Why this comparison is quietly a period piece

The uncomfortable truth is that "the RG35XX" is no longer a device. It is a product line with at least five members, and the one that shares its name with your search query — the original 2023 unit — is the one Anbernic would least like to sell you. We untangle that mess in its own section, because it changes the answer depending on which RG35XX you actually mean.

What we actually verified

Every number and quote below was pulled from primary hands-on reviews — XDA, PropelRC, DROIX, Retro Game Corps — and cross-checked in July 2026. Where the popular blogs are wrong, and they are wrong about the processor, the USB port, and the core count, we say so and show the corrected figure. Nothing here is a manufacturer bullet point copied off a product page.

The Spec Sheet, Corrected

Here is the honest table. The two battery figures and the two RG35XX identities are not typos; they are the reality of budget hardware, where the spec sheet you were shown and the silicon inside the case occasionally disagree.

Three specs the internet gets wrong

First, the processor. A depressing number of comparison pages — including the research brief that prompted this article — claim both devices share a Rockchip RK3326. They do not. The RK3326 lives in a different generation of handhelds entirely (the RG351 series, the Odroid-Go Advance). The Miyoo Mini Plus runs a SigmaStar SSD202D: two Cortex-A7 cores at 1.2 GHz with a small Mali-400 MP2 and 128 MB of RAM. The original RG35XX runs an Actions ATM7039S: four Cortex-A9 cores and a PowerVR SGX544, with 256 MB. XDA's review states it plainly — the Miyoo has "dual Arm Cortex A7 cores and 128MB of RAM," the Anbernic "an ATM7039S with four Cortex-A9 cores and PowerVR graphics." Same category, completely different silicon.

Second, the USB port. Half the internet insists the RG35XX charges over micro-USB. It does not. XDA's hands-on is unambiguous: "on the bottom is a headphone jack and a USB-C charging port." Both devices are USB-C. The micro-USB claim is one blog copying another blog copying a pre-release spec sheet, and it has calcified into folklore.

Third, the core count. You will see the Miyoo described as quad-core. It is dual-core — two Cortex-A7s. That is not a knock; it is enough. But if a spec sheet tells you four, it is describing a different device.

Where the RG35XX genuinely wins on paper

Strip out the errors and the Anbernic still has the better bill of materials: double the RAM, twice the physical CPU cores on a newer microarchitecture, a discrete PowerVR GPU, two microSD slots instead of one, and a dedicated mini-HDMI output at 720p. XDA even notes the practical benefit of the dual slots — "you can have your apps and emulators on one SD card, and all of your game files on another." If this were a pure spec-sheet shootout, we would be done, and the Miyoo would have lost.

Where the Miyoo quietly wins on paper

But the Miyoo takes the two specs that matter most to a device you hold in one hand on a couch: a 3,000 mAh battery (XDA measured the cell at 3,200) against the Anbernic's 2,600, and 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi the original RG35XX simply does not have. It is also physically smaller — 108 × 78 mm against 117 × 81 — while weighing the same 165 grams, which means it is denser in the hand, not lighter. The extra RAM and cores in the Anbernic buy performance the sub-PS1 tier rarely asks for. The battery and the Wi-Fi in the Miyoo buy things you feel every single session.

What 'RG35XX' Even Means in 2026

This is the section every other comparison skips, and it is the one that will actually save you money. "RG35XX" is not a product. It is a brand prefix Anbernic has bolted onto at least five different machines, and they do not share a chip, an operating system, or a performance class.

The original (2023, ATM7039S)

The device your search string literally names is the first RG35XX, from early 2023: Actions ATM7039S, PowerVR SGX544, 256 MB RAM, no Wi-Fi, no Bluetooth, mini-HDMI out, two SD slots, GarlicOS as the community firmware of choice. XDA scored it 9/10 and called it a machine with "comfortable build, powerful hardware, and beautiful screen." It is a genuinely good device. It is also the one Anbernic has effectively replaced, and buying it new in 2026 means buying two-generation-old silicon at a price that has not fallen as fast as the hardware has aged.

The H700 family (Plus, H, SP, 2024, Pro)

Everything Anbernic actually pushes now is built on the Allwinner H700: four Cortex-A53 cores at 1.5 GHz, a Mali-G31 MP2, 1 GB of LPDDR4, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi 5, a 3,300 mAh cell, and mini-HDMI. That is a real generational jump — enough to make Dreamcast, PSP, and Saturn "playable with an asterisk." The RG35XX Plus is the vertical one, the RG35XX H is horizontal, the RG35XX SP is a Game Boy Advance SP-style clamshell, and the Pro adds shoulder buttons and a nicer shell. Same brain, different bodies. Retro Game Corps is blunt and correct: Anbernic's "budget line of devices, using the Allwinner H700 CPU, are an excellent combination of affordability and performance."

Which one your search actually means

Here is the ruling. If you are comparing the Miyoo Mini Plus to the original RG35XX, you are comparing two 2022–2023 machines that top out at the PlayStation, and the fight is close and mostly about firmware — the comparison we run below. If you are comparing the Miyoo to what most people end up buying when they add an RG35XX to a cart in 2026 — an H700 model — then the Anbernic is meaningfully more powerful and the Miyoo's counter-argument shrinks to size, battery, and OnionUI. DROIX, reviewing the H700 Plus, put the hardware gap in one sentence: "The H700 processor with GPU runs faster than the Miyoo processor." True. Just remember it is a different, pricier device than the one in your search box.

Emulation, By The System

Both machines are graded the same way by everyone who tests them: flawless through the 16-bit era, comfortable at the PlayStation, and increasingly aspirational above it. The PocketLab 2026 comparison grades NES, SNES, and Genesis as "Perfect (Grade A)," Game Boy Advance as "Perfect (Grade A)," PlayStation as "Excellent (Grade A/B)," Nintendo DS as "Good (Grade B)," and Nintendo 64 as "Playable (Grade C)." That grading applies, with small variations, to both devices. Here is what the grades feel like in practice.

8-bit and 16-bit: both flawless

NES, SNES, Master System, Genesis/Mega Drive, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, PC Engine, Neo Geo Pocket — full speed, both devices, no caveats. PropelRC's Miyoo review is the useful data point: "Chrono Trigger (SNES): Perfect 60fps throughout my 12-hour playthrough." Twelve hours is not a benchmark; it is a person who actually finished the game on the thing. Game Boy Advance is where the Miyoo's little dual-core earns its keep — XDA: "Game Boy Advance titles run flawlessly." OnionUI's 4.4.0 beta even made the faster gpSP the default GBA core, the kind of tuning that matters more than a RAM figure at this tier.

PlayStation 1: playable, with named caveats

This is the ceiling both devices clear, and the honest answer is "yes, with the occasional dropped frame in the demanding titles." On the Miyoo, XDA calls PS1 games "a treat to play anywhere," while PropelRC flags the predictable exception — "minor slowdown in Gran Turismo 2." On the Anbernic side, the PowerVR GPU and extra RAM give it a little more margin; DROIX (testing the H700 Plus, admittedly) reported "Crash Bandicoot 3 which works perfectly and Gran Turismo 2 which was smooth as silk." The original RG35XX sits between those two experiences: a touch more headroom than the Miyoo, a touch less than the H700. If your library tops out at the PlayStation, either device is a correct purchase. For the finer points of which core to run — Beetle PSX versus a lighter dynarec build — our guide to picking the right RetroArch core applies directly to both machines.

N64, DS, and the fantasy tier

Above the PlayStation, the two devices diverge and the marketing gets optimistic. Nintendo 64 is "Playable (Grade C)" on both — which in plain language means the simple games run and the demanding ones crawl. The GBAtemp community consensus is the fair summary: lightweight N64 titles run near full speed, the demanding ones land at 70–85%, and you should not buy either device for N64. Nintendo DS is the one real divergence. The original RG35XX, with its four A9 cores, genuinely runs DS — XDA: "It can play games on handhelds as recent as the Nintendo DS at full speed," with "Pokemon Black 2 [running] at full speed." The catch is in the same review: "roughly two to three hours of playtime with Nintendo DS emulation." The Miyoo can technically load DS since OnionUI 4.3.0 added the system, but a single 3.5-inch screen with no touch input makes it a novelty, not a way to play. Dreamcast, PSP, and Saturn belong to the H700 family, not to either device in this fight, and even there Retro Game Corps' asterisk holds: those systems "cannot play every game at full speed, and so performance may vary." If any of them are your actual goal, you are shopping in the wrong bracket — a Retroid Pocket-class device is the honest next rung.

OnionUI vs GarlicOS

This is the whole ballgame. In a class where the silicon is cheap and roughly interchangeable, the operating system is the product — and this is where the Miyoo pulls ahead of a device that out-specs it.

OnionUI: the reason people forgive 128 MB

OnionUI — the community firmware universally, if loosely, called "OnionOS" — is the single best argument for the Miyoo Mini Plus. It is an open-source project on GitHub, not a manufacturer build, and it is under active development: the stable line sits at V4.3.1 with a V4.4.0 beta tagged in January 2026. Version 4.3.0 added Nintendo DS and PICO-8 as systems; the 4.4.0 beta made gpSP the default GBA core and, notably, added netplay — including a Game Boy link cable between two Mini Plus units. Out of the box it gives you box-art scraping, save states, sleep-and-resume, per-game button remapping, and native RetroAchievements. PropelRC credits it with "vastly improved battery life (4 hours → 7 hours)" over the stock firmware, the rare case of software making a battery bigger. Even reviewers who prefer Anbernic's hardware concede the software point; as one comparison put it flatly, "the Miyoo has a far better custom OS."

GarlicOS: rock-solid 1.x, unfinished 2.0

The RG35XX's answer is GarlicOS, written by the developer Black-Seraph. On the original RG35XX, the 1.x line is mature, fast, and beloved — it is the reason the 2023 device is still worth owning. The problem is the sequel. GarlicOS 2.0, which targets the H700 family, spent a long stretch in rough shape; Retro Game Corps' guidance is worth quoting because it is still the sane default posture: "This OS is still in an early alpha state, and while it's available for the public, I would recommend waiting until it is in a beta release state unless you want to be at the forefront of Garlic testing." Translation: on the original RG35XX you get a finished OS; on the newer H700 units you may find yourself choosing between an official Anbernic build, a work-in-progress GarlicOS, and third-party options like Knulli or MinUI. That is more freedom and more friction than the Miyoo's one-click Onion experience.

Why firmware beats silicon in this bracket

Here is the thesis in one line: at the sub-$70 tier, the operating system out-values the processor. Nobody at this price is playing a game the chip can't handle and blaming the RAM; they are navigating menus, resuming a save on a train, scraping cover art, and chasing achievements — all of which are software. The Miyoo's OnionUI does those things with a polish the RG35XX's fragmented firmware landscape can't match out of the box. The short version: OnionUI makes the sane defaults for you, and that is worth more than a spec bump.

Benchmarks From People Who Tested Them

Retro handhelds do not have Cinebench scores, so the "benchmarks" here are the measured, hands-on observations of reviewers who ran real games for real hours. We pulled from four primary sources; here is what each one actually found, quoted rather than paraphrased.

XDA's twin 9/10s

XDA reviewed both devices and landed on 9/10 for each — which tells you the fight is close. On the Miyoo (reviewer Adam Conway), the SSD202D "is not going to be setting benchmark records by any stretch of the imagination, but that's more than good enough for most retro titles," with GBA "flawlessly" and PS1 "a treat." The knock was the shell: "an entirely-plastic build" that "can make it feel cheap," and "up to six hours of battery life." On the original RG35XX, XDA praised "comfortable build, powerful hardware, and beautiful screen," confirmed DS "at full speed," and measured the cost of that power — "two to three hours of playtime with Nintendo DS emulation." Same score, different personalities: the Miyoo trades power for endurance and polish; the Anbernic trades endurance for headroom.

PropelRC, DROIX, and the numbers

PropelRC's Miyoo review — an 8.5/10 at what was then a $53 price point — is the source of the most-cited real-world figures: Chrono Trigger at "Perfect 60fps," Gran Turismo 2's "minor slowdown," a 450-nit screen, and battery gains from OnionUI taking it from four hours to seven. DROIX's review of the H700 RG35XX Plus is the cleanest head-to-head language on the hardware gap: "The H700 processor with GPU runs faster than the Miyoo processor," and, on the Miyoo's one glaring omission, "One thing lacking on the Miyoo is a HDMI port, something both RG35XX models have." DROIX also delivered the single most important piece of buying advice for existing owners, which we return to in the verdict: if "you already have a Miyoo Mini or Miyoo Mini Plus handheld," an RG35XX Plus "is perhaps not worth the upgrade."

Retro Game Corps and community consensus

Retro Game Corps' RG35XX family starter guide is the reference document for the Anbernic side, and its two most useful lines are the asterisk warning — systems above the PlayStation "cannot play every game at full speed, and so performance may vary" — and the endorsement of the H700 platform as "an excellent combination of affordability and performance." Round it out with the GBAtemp forums, where the community-measured consensus on the Miyoo is consistent: light N64 near full speed, demanding N64 at 70–85%, PSP not viable. Four independent sources, one conclusion — these are sub-PS1 machines that occasionally flirt with the generation above, and the flirting costs battery.

Pricing and Availability

The prices are close enough that price should not be your deciding factor — but availability and the 2026 memory market should be on your radar, because the floor under both devices is moving.

The 2026 numbers

The PocketLab 2026 comparison — the piece most people land on — puts the Miyoo Mini Plus at "$60–70" and the RG35XX at "$60–80 depending on the model." Those track with what we see at retail: the Miyoo launched at $53.99–69.99 and the original RG35XX at $59.99, and neither has moved dramatically, though both sit a little higher than their 2023 sale-price lows. The H700 models command a small premium over the original for the extra capability. In other words, for the price of a single AAA game you can have either device, and the ten-dollar spread between them is noise next to the software and ergonomics differences.

The DRAM-crunch asterisk

One 2026-specific warning: the memory market is not your friend this year. The same DRAM and NAND price spike that pushed other handheld makers to cut their higher-RAM SKUs — Retroid quietly axed its 12 GB models in March 2026 — puts upward pressure on the entire budget bracket. Do not expect these devices to get cheaper in 2026; if anything, the sub-$50 clearance prices of 2023 are gone and are not coming back soon. If you have been waiting for a sale, the waiting is the expensive strategy this year.

Where to actually buy

Both are sold through AliExpress and Amazon; the Miyoo also through the maker's own storefront, the Anbernic direct from Anbernic. Buy from a storefront with a real returns process — budget handhelds have a non-trivial dead-on-arrival rate, and the ability to send back a unit with a dead-pixel cluster or drifting stick is worth more than saving five dollars on a gray-market listing. Whichever you buy, factor in a decent microSD card; the bundled cards are slow and small, and a proper card is the cheapest upgrade you will ever make.

Who Each One Is Actually For

Specs are abstract; use cases are not. Here is who should buy what, framed as the actual human situations these devices fit.

Buy the Miyoo Mini Plus if…

• You are a couch-and-commute 16-bit-to-PS1 player. The smaller footprint, the 6–7 hour battery, and the OnionUI menu make it the better hold-it-in-one-hand-and-forget-it machine. This is the majority of buyers, and it is the correct default.
• You want it to just work. Flash OnionUI once and you have box art, save states, sleep/resume, and RetroAchievements with no further decisions. It is the best budget handheld to hand to someone who does not want a hobby, just a Game Boy that plays everything.
• You hunt RetroAchievements. Native support, Wi-Fi built in, and a UI designed around it. The original RG35XX, with no Wi-Fi, cannot follow you here without extra hardware.
• Size and battery are your top two specs. If you would notice 40 grams of pocket bulk or a two-hour battery gap before you would notice a dropped frame in Gran Turismo 2, this is your device.

Buy an RG35XX if…

• You want to play on a television. The mini-HDMI output is the Miyoo's one unanswerable omission. DROIX said it plainly — the Miyoo lacks "a HDMI port, something both RG35XX models have." If TV-out matters, the decision is made for you.
• You genuinely want Nintendo DS. The original RG35XX runs DS "at full speed" per XDA; the Miyoo does not, in any practical sense. Accept the two-to-three-hour battery cost that comes with it.
• You want the two-card workflow. Emulators on one microSD, your library on the other — a real convenience for people who tinker, and a Miyoo can't do it with its single slot.
• You are buying an H700 model anyway. If your "RG35XX" is a Plus, H, SP, or Pro, you are getting Dreamcast, PSP-with-asterisks, Bluetooth controllers, and 1 GB of RAM — a different and more capable class of device, just not the one in a literal reading of this comparison.

Buy neither if…

If your list includes "PSP at full speed," "GameCube," "Saturn without caveats," or "Nintendo DS with a comfortable two-screen layout," both of these devices will disappoint you, and no firmware fixes a silicon ceiling. That is the moment to step up a bracket to something with an Allwinner-beating chip. The honest upgrade path runs through the mid-tier Android and Linux handhelds — start with our breakdown of the Retroid Pocket line, which is where the sub-PS1 crowd graduates when they finally want the fifth and sixth generations to run properly.

Migrating From One To The Other

People switch in both directions — Miyoo owners tempted by HDMI and DS, RG35XX owners tempted by OnionUI and battery. The mechanics are the same either way, and the one thing everyone gets wrong is save states. Read the save-state warning before you do anything irreversible.

Before you touch anything: back up your saves

There are two kinds of "save" and they migrate differently. In-game battery saves — the .srm files that hold your Pokémon party or your Final Fantasy file — are raw cartridge SRAM and are portable across devices and cores. Save states — the freeze-frame snapshots — are tied to a specific emulator core and often a specific version, and they will not reliably load on the other device. The migration rule: rely on in-game saves to cross the gap, treat save states as disposable, and load each in-game save once on the new device to confirm it took before you delete anything.

SD-CARD LAYOUT (both firmwares, simplified)
/Roms
  /GBA        <- put .gba here; .srm battery saves live in /Saves
  /SFC        <- SNES
  /MD         <- Genesis / Mega Drive
  /PS         <- PlayStation 1 (.bin/.cue or .chd)
/BIOS         <- PS1 needs a real BIOS (scph1001.bin etc.)
/Imgs         <- scraped box art (do NOT copy across; re-scrape)
/Saves        <- .srm in-game saves  = PORTABLE
/States       <- save states          = DO NOT TRUST across devices

Rule of thumb: copy /Roms, /BIOS, and /Saves. Re-scrape /Imgs.
Abandon /States. Load one save on the new device to verify.

Miyoo → RG35XX (chasing HDMI or DS)

1. Copy your .srm files off the Miyoo's card to your computer. If OnionUI kept them in /Saves, grab that whole folder.
2. Image a fresh RG35XX card with your firmware of choice — GarlicOS 1.x for the original, or an official/Knulli build for an H700 unit — using the imaging tool the firmware documents (balenaEtcher or Rufus).
3. Copy your ROMs into the matching per-system folders on the new card. Folder names differ slightly between firmwares; match the new firmware's structure, do not force the old one.
4. Drop your .srm saves into the RG35XX's saves location and your PS1 BIOS into its /BIOS folder.
5. Re-scrape box art on the device; do not copy the Miyoo's /Imgs across, the paths will not line up.
6. Boot one game per system and confirm the in-game save loads before you wipe the Miyoo.

RG35XX → Miyoo (chasing OnionUI and battery)

1. Pull your .srm saves and your ROM library off the RG35XX card.
2. Flash OnionUI to the Miyoo's microSD per the project's install guide — download the release from the OnionUI GitHub, extract to a freshly FAT32-formatted card, and boot the Miyoo once to let it expand.
3. Place ROMs into OnionUI's per-system folders under /Roms, and your PS1 BIOS where OnionUI expects it.
4. Copy your in-game .srm saves into OnionUI's saves folder; leave the RG35XX's save states behind.
5. Connect to Wi-Fi, log into RetroAchievements, and let OnionUI scrape art over the network — one of the perks the no-Wi-Fi original RG35XX could never offer.
6. Verify one save per system, then repurpose the RG35XX rather than selling it; it still makes a fine TV-out machine.

If you are building a library the clean way — dumping your own cartridges instead of trusting a stranger's ROM set — the target folders are the same ones described above; our walkthrough on dumping SNES and Genesis carts produces files that drop straight into either device.

Pros and Cons, Bluntly

No hedging. Here is each device's ledger, written the way you would tell a friend, not the way a product page would.

Miyoo Mini Plus

Anbernic RG35XX

The pattern in both ledgers

Read the two tables together and the shape is obvious: the Miyoo's cons are all hardware (no HDMI, one card slot, weaker chip, plastic shell) and its pros are all experience (battery, size, OnionUI, Wi-Fi). The RG35XX's pros are all hardware (HDMI, DS, dual slots, more RAM) and its cons are software and ergonomics (firmware fragmentation, no Wi-Fi on the original, shorter battery under load). You are choosing which category you would rather compromise on. Most people, most of the time, feel experience more than they feel a spec — which is why the weaker device wins the popularity contest.

The Verdict

The data-backed pick

For the average buyer asking the literal question — Miyoo Mini Plus, or the RG35XX that shares its name, the 2023 original — the answer is the Miyoo Mini Plus. Not because it is more powerful; it is measurably less. It wins because in a class where the chip is a commodity, the things that decide day-to-day satisfaction are software and ergonomics, and the Miyoo takes both: OnionUI is the better-loved firmware by consensus ("a far better custom OS"), the battery runs two to three hours longer, and the smaller body is nicer to hold. Two independent 9/10 reviews from XDA and an 8.5/10 from PropelRC put a floor under that recommendation. If your library ends at the PlayStation — and for most buyers it does — you will not miss the Anbernic's extra silicon.

The honest asterisk

Buy the RG35XX instead in three specific situations, and they are not close calls: you want HDMI output to a television (the Miyoo has none), you specifically want Nintendo DS at full speed (the Miyoo can't, practically), or you are actually buying an H700 model — Plus, H, SP, Pro — in which case you are getting a genuinely more capable machine and the comparison tilts toward Anbernic on raw ability. And heed DROIX's advice for existing owners: if you already own a Miyoo Mini Plus, an RG35XX Plus "is perhaps not worth the upgrade." The sideways move is a waste; if you want more, jump a whole bracket, not a half-step.

The one-line answer

Miyoo Mini Plus for the pocket, the battery, and OnionUI; an H700-based RG35XX for the television, the DS, and the second SD slot; the original 2023 RG35XX only if you find it cheap and you specifically want its finished GarlicOS. The spec sheet says 256 MB beats 128 MB. The people who actually use these things, by a clear margin, say otherwise — and for once, the people are right. Whichever you pick, keep your ROMs on the legal side of the line: emulators themselves are settled law thanks to Sony v. Connectix, but the software you feed them is your responsibility. For the fuller picture on what the Miyoo can actually run, our deep dive on the Miyoo's real game library and its PS1 performance in particular pick up where this leaves off.