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

Two plastic bricks, each roughly the footprint of a Game Boy that ate a protein shake, both under eighty dollars, both perfectly capable of running Chrono Trigger at a locked sixty frames per second. On paper the Anbernic RG35XX should win this fight without breaking a sweat. It has four CPU cores to the Miyoo's two, a dedicated PowerVR GPU where the Miyoo makes do with an integrated Mali, twice the RAM, two microSD slots, and a mini-HDMI port the Miyoo doesn't bother to include. It loses anyway.

This is the part of the retro-handheld hobby that the spec-sheet crowd never quite forgives: in the sub-$80 class, the firmware eats the silicon for breakfast. The Miyoo Mini Plus wins the day-to-day argument not because it is faster — it demonstrably is not — but because OnionOS is a more finished piece of software, the battery is bigger, the shell is smaller, and it has Wi-Fi. What follows is the full autopsy: every spec, every benchmark that actually exists in public, the pricing reality, who each device is genuinely for, and how to jump between the two without losing your saves. We will also correct several 'facts' the internet keeps copy-pasting, because precision is the whole job.

The Verdict, Up Front

We are not going to make you scroll seven thousand words for the answer. Here it is, with the caveats that matter.

The one-sentence answer

For most people, most of the time, buy the Miyoo Mini Plus. It is the better-built, better-batteried, better-softwared vertical handheld for everything up to and including PlayStation 1, and its OnionOS custom firmware is the most polished thing you can put on a device this cheap. XDA's Adam Conway scored it 9/10, and the review it earned that score in is not shy about the reason: 'Game Boy Advance titles run flawlessly, PlayStation 1 games are a treat to play anywhere.'

The counterintuitive part

The Miyoo wins with worse hardware. It carries 128MB of RAM against the RG35XX's 256MB, a dual-core Arm Cortex-A7 against a quad-core Cortex-A9, and no discrete GPU against the Anbernic's PowerVR SGX544. If you built a spreadsheet and stopped there, you would buy the RG35XX and feel clever. You would also be wrong, because none of that surplus silicon translates into a better experience at the systems these devices are actually good at. Firmware is the variable that moves the needle here, and OnionOS moves it further than GarlicOS does.

When the RG35XX is the right call

There are exactly two arguments for the Anbernic, and both are real. First, it has a mini-HDMI output and the Miyoo has none, so if you want to dock a vertical handheld to a TV without dongles, the RG35XX is the only one of the pair that can do it. Second, its beefier quad-core chip pushes slightly past PS1 into Nintendo DS — XDA got Pokémon Black 2 'at full speed' — a tier the Miyoo cannot reach in practice. If neither of those is on your list, the Miyoo is the pick. Now the detail.

Which RG35XX Are We Talking About?

Before a single spec gets compared, we have to disarm the biggest source of confusion in this entire matchup: 'RG35XX' is not one product. It is a naming family that Anbernic has stretched across two completely different chip generations, and half the bad advice online comes from people comparing the wrong one.

The original (Actions-based, 2022)

The original Anbernic RG35XX launched in October 2022 on an Actions ATM7039S — four Cortex-A9 cores clocked up to 1.6GHz with a PowerVR SGX544 GPU — paired with 256MB of DDR3, a 3.5-inch 640×480 IPS panel, a mini-HDMI port, and crucially no Wi-Fi and no Bluetooth. This is the machine the base comparison spec sheets describe when they say '256MB RAM' and 'no wireless.' Its community firmware is GarlicOS, developed by the pseudonymous Black Seraph. When this article says 'the RG35XX' without qualification, this is the unit we mean, because it is the one whose spec profile the research actually matches.

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

Everything Anbernic released afterward under the 35XX banner runs an entirely different chip: the Allwinner H700, a quad-core Cortex-A53 at 1.5GHz with a Mali-G31 MP2 GPU, 1GB of LPDDR4, Wi-Fi 5, and Bluetooth 4.2. That covers the RG35XX Plus, the horizontal RG35XX H (which swaps the 3.5-inch panel for a 4-inch display), the clamshell RG35XX SP, and the revised RG35XX 2024. These are meaningfully more capable — DroiX's review of the Plus notes bluntly that 'the H700 processor with GPU runs faster than the Miyoo processor' and pushes 'faster performance on PlayStation 1 and Dreamcast.' They also cost more and, on GarlicOS 2.0, run software that Retro Game Corps still describes as 'in an early alpha state.'

Why this article centers the original

We anchor the comparison on the original Actions-based RG35XX for one reason: it is the device whose specs line up with the '128MB vs 256MB, Wi-Fi vs no-Wi-Fi' framing that makes this matchup interesting. It is also the closest price and form-factor rival to the Miyoo Mini Plus — same 3.5-inch 4:3 screen, same sub-$70 street price, same vertical shell. Where a claim only holds for the H700 units, we will say so explicitly. If you are cross-shopping the H700 handhelds instead, the calculus shifts toward Anbernic on raw power, but you are then paying more and running less-mature firmware, and that is a different article.

Specs, Head to Head

Here is the sheet. Read it, then read the paragraph after it explaining which cells matter and which ones lie.

The spec table

Reading the table

Two things jump out if you know what you are looking at. The RG35XX wins every row that describes raw compute — more cores, more clock, a real GPU, double the memory — and the Miyoo wins every row that describes the experience: battery capacity, wireless, and a physically smaller shell. That split is the entire story of this comparison. The Anbernic is the better computer; the Miyoo is the better handheld. Both statements are true at the same time, and the reason is that emulating a Super Nintendo does not stress a 2022 mobile SoC in any way that 256MB versus 128MB can resolve.

Where the sheet lies

The row we most want to draw your eye to is the charging port, because you will find a startling number of spec sheets — including the brief that seeds this very comparison — claiming the RG35XX uses micro-USB. It does not. XDA's review is explicit that the original RG35XX charges and syncs over USB-C, the same as the Miyoo. Both devices are USB-C; the micro-USB claim is one blog copying another and none of them checking. Similarly, watch the battery row: the '2,100mAh' figure is the commonly listed capacity, but XDA's review unit measured closer to 2,600mAh, and Miyoo's 3,000mAh is quoted as 3,200mAh on some retail listings. These are not contradictions so much as the usual fog of budget-hardware datasheets, and we flag them rather than pretend the numbers are gospel.

The Silicon Lie: 128MB Beats 256MB

This is the thesis section. If you take one idea away from seven thousand words, take this one: in the class of hardware that tops out at PlayStation 1, the quality of the firmware determines the quality of the experience far more than the transistor budget does. The RG35XX has more silicon. It does not have a better answer for the games you will actually play.

On paper, the RG35XX walks it

Line the SoCs up and it is not close. The Actions ATM7039S gives the RG35XX four Cortex-A9 cores and a PowerVR SGX544 — XDA's review names the chip as 'ATM7039S with four Cortex-A9 cores and PowerVR graphics' — against the Miyoo's SigmaStar SSD202D, which Adam Conway describes as a 'SoC with dual Arm Cortex A7 cores and 128MB of RAM.' Two cores versus four. A7 versus A9, the latter being the older but wider, higher-clocked design. Half the memory. No dedicated GPU. If emulation scaled cleanly with these numbers, the RG35XX would be roughly twice the machine, and this comparison would be a formality.

In hand, the numbers stop mattering

They do not scale cleanly, because a Super Nintendo pushed 256 colors at 256×224 in 1990 and neither of these chips is remotely troubled by reproducing that. These were machines built for CRTs and cartridge ROMs; the entire computational world they represent fits inside the cache of a modern phone. Once both devices clear the bar for a system, extra headroom is invisible — a locked 60fps is a locked 60fps whether you reached it with 10% CPU overhead or 60%. XDA's verdict on the Miyoo's chip is the quiet truth of the whole category: it is 'not going to be setting benchmark records, but that's more than good enough for most retro titles.' PropelRC's independent testing backs it hardware-for-hardware — Chrono Trigger ran at a 'Perfect 60fps throughout my 12-hour playthrough' on the Miyoo. The RG35XX runs it perfectly too. Nobody wins a race that both cars finished at the speed limit.

What 128MB actually costs you

Here is the honest ledger of where the Miyoo's thinner spec bites. It costs you the very top of the emulation ladder — the RG35XX's four cores let it stumble into Nintendo DS via DraStic where the Miyoo's two cannot, and its GPU gives H700's successors a real Dreamcast story the Miyoo will never have. It costs you a little future-proofing. What it does not cost you is anything from the NES-through-PS1 span that constitutes about 95% of what people buy these devices to play. You are trading a capability ceiling you will rarely touch for a battery, a shell, and an operating system you will touch every single session. That is a good trade, and the market has quietly agreed — the Miyoo Mini Plus remains one of the most recommended handhelds at its price precisely because it optimizes for the median session, not the spec sheet.

Performance: What Actually Runs

Enough theory. Here is what public testing — XDA, PropelRC, Retro Game Corps, DroiX, and GBAtemp's community threads — actually reports these two doing, system by system. We will give you the plain-text ceiling matrix first, then the nuance.

8-bit and 16-bit: both flawless

From the NES up through the SNES, Genesis, Game Boy line, and Game Boy Advance, there is no daylight between these devices. Both hold full speed. PropelRC's Miyoo testing logged Chrono Trigger at a 'Perfect 60fps' across a twelve-hour run, and XDA's line that 'Game Boy Advance titles run flawlessly' is not marketing — it is the consensus. The RG35XX matches it. The same holds for 2D arcade: CPS1, CPS2, and Neo Geo MVS titles run comfortably on both, with only the heavier CPS3 boards (the Street Fighter III line) occasionally asking for more than either chip wants to give. If your library is 8- and 16-bit — and for most buyers it overwhelmingly is — then performance is a wash and you should decide on battery, software, and form factor, which is to say you should probably buy the Miyoo. For a sense of exactly how deep that library goes, our breakdown of what the Miyoo Mini Plus actually plays pulls apart the inflated '27,549 games' reseller figures into the few thousand titles that survive de-duplication.

PlayStation: the real ceiling

PS1 is where these chips start to sweat, and where 'runs it' needs an asterisk. Both handle the bulk of the library well — XDA calls PS1 on the Miyoo 'a treat to play anywhere' — but demanding titles expose the edges. PropelRC caught 'minor slowdown in Gran Turismo 2' on the Miyoo, which is exactly the sort of polygon-heavy, high-object-count game you would expect to tax it. The RG35XX's extra cores give it marginally more comfort here; DroiX's family testing notes 'faster performance on PlayStation 1' on the newer chips. But for the original Actions unit against the Miyoo, treat PS1 as 'largely playable, occasionally imperfect' on both, with the RG35XX holding a slim, mostly-invisible lead. This is the top of what either device does well.

N64, DS, and PSP: where they diverge

Above PS1, the two part ways and the picture gets ugly for both. On Nintendo 64, GBAtemp community testing pegs light titles near full speed on the Miyoo and demanding ones at roughly 70–85% — playable-ish, not good. Retro Game Corps is blunter about the whole tier on the RG35XX family, flagging N64, PSP, Saturn, and Dreamcast as systems that 'cannot play every game at full speed, and so performance may vary.' The one genuine divergence is Nintendo DS: the RG35XX's quad-core chip can run DraStic well enough that XDA got Pokémon Black 2 'at full speed', a claim the Miyoo cannot match in practice. PSP is a lost cause on both — DroiX's kinder H700 units only manage 'low demanding games... with some frame skipping,' and the original RG35XX and the Miyoo are weaker still. If DS or PSP is a requirement, neither of these is your device; skip to the section on stepping up.

SYSTEM SUPPORT CEILING (public testing consensus, 2026)

System        Miyoo Mini Plus     RG35XX (original)
-----------   -----------------   -----------------
NES/SNES      Full speed          Full speed
Genesis/MD    Full speed          Full speed
GB/GBC/GBA    Full speed          Full speed
Arcade 2D     CPS1/2, Neo Geo OK  CPS1/2, Neo Geo OK
PS1           Playable*           Playable* (edge)
Nintendo 64   70-85% demanding    70-85% demanding
Nintendo DS   Not viable          Full speed (some)
PSP           No                  No
Saturn/DC     No                  No

* minor slowdown in the heaviest titles (e.g. Gran Turismo 2)

Battery, Screen, and Build

Performance is a tie up to PS1, so the tiebreakers are physical: how long it lasts, how it looks, and how it feels in your hands. Two of these three go to the Miyoo, and the third is a genuine draw.

Battery: 3,000mAh vs 2,100mAh

The Miyoo carries the bigger cell and it shows. At 3,000mAh (3,200mAh on some listings) against the RG35XX's 2,100mAh, the Miyoo posts 5–7 hours on SNES per PropelRC, which also notes that the stock firmware 'only manages 4 hours regardless of system' — OnionOS is what unlocks the longer runtime, adding roughly three hours by PropelRC's measurement and pushing SNES to '6–7 hours at medium brightness.' XDA independently rates it 'up to six hours.' The RG35XX lands at 4–6 hours light, and here is the sting: push it into the Nintendo DS emulation that is its headline advantage and XDA got only 'roughly two to three hours of playtime,' extendable 'to four or five with an underclocked CPU.' XDA calls that battery drain 'the only downside of the gaming experience.' The Miyoo's one weak spot is charge speed — 'slow 5W charging' means 'up to three hours' to refill, per XDA — but you charge overnight and game all day, so it rarely matters.

The identical screen

Both devices use a 3.5-inch 640×480 IPS panel, and it is very nearly the same part — a 4:3 aspect ratio that is a near-perfect canvas for 8- and 16-bit games, which were themselves designed for 4:3 CRTs. That resolution is a deliberate sweet spot: 640×480 is an exact integer multiple of many classic outputs, so pixel-art scales cleanly without the shimmer you get on oddball panel sizes. PropelRC clocks the Miyoo's screen at '450 nits brightness, making it playable outdoors,' which is bright for the class. If you want a bigger canvas, note that the horizontal RG35XX H steps up to a 4-inch display — but that is a different form factor and a different (H700) machine, and the extra inch comes at the cost of the pocketable vertical shape that is half the Miyoo's appeal.

Build and weight

Both are all-plastic, and both weigh in around 162–165g, so anyone selling you a dramatic weight difference is inventing one. XDA is candid that the Miyoo's 'entirely-plastic build, aside from the glass screen' can 'make it feel cheap.' But in the head-to-head, hands-on opinion tilts Miyoo: gogamegeek's direct comparison found the 'Miyoo has more weight to it and doesn't rattle while shaking too,' and rated it 'much more premium.' The Miyoo's shell is also slightly smaller in footprint (108 × 78mm versus roughly 117 × 81mm) though a hair thicker at 22mm — it is the more genuinely pocketable of the two. One point back to Anbernic: the RG35XX has two microSD slots to the Miyoo's one, handy if you want to keep firmware and ROMs physically separated. Call the build a draw with the Miyoo edging ahead on hand-feel and size.

The Firmware War: Onion vs Garlic

We keep saying firmware decides this fight, so let us actually litigate it. Both devices have superb community operating systems that make the stock software irrelevant. They are not equally finished.

OnionOS: the mature one

The Miyoo's headline software is OnionOS, built by the OnionUI community project, and it is the reason people forgive the Miyoo everything else. It is the more mature of the two custom firmwares by a wide margin — PropelRC credits it with adding 'RetroAchievements support' and the extra three hours of battery life, and its Game Switcher quick-resume overlay, box-art scraping, per-game overrides, and theming are genuinely polished. The stable line sits at v4.3.1-1 (June 2024), with a v4.4.0-beta tagged January 2026 that adds netplay (including GBA link cable between two Minis), real-time-clock detection, and CPU overclock hotkeys. gogamegeek's comparison does not hedge: 'The miyoo has a far better custom OS.'

GarlicOS: powerful but stalled

The RG35XX's GarlicOS, by the pseudonymous Black Seraph, is very good on the original Actions hardware — fast, clean, and the community standard for that unit. But its next-generation successor, GarlicOS 2.0 (targeting the H700 family), has stalled. Retro Game Corps' current advice is unambiguous: the 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.' Development slowed while the developer stepped back for health reasons — an entirely human and sympathetic reason, but the practical upshot is that the RG35XX's software story has less momentum than the Miyoo's. gogamegeek's verdict, again, is direct: 'GarlicOS is not as good as OnionOS for a start.'

The frozen-firmware problem (both plateaued)

In fairness to Anbernic, both flagship firmwares have plateaued. OnionOS's stable release has sat unchanged since mid-2024 with only a beta since; GarlicOS 2.0 is stuck in alpha. This is what maturity looks like in a niche hobby — the low-hanging fruit is picked and updates slow. The difference is where each plateaued: OnionOS plateaued finished, a fully realized daily driver, while GarlicOS 2.0 plateaued unfinished. The H700 units at least have alternatives — Knulli (a Batocera derivative) and muOS are both viable — but those are not options for the original RG35XX's Actions chip, which lives and dies on GarlicOS. On software, this is not close, and software is what you touch every session.

Connectivity: Wi-Fi, HDMI, and the USB Lie

Three connectors, three small stories, and one of them is a myth we are going to shoot on sight.

Wi-Fi: Miyoo yes, original RG35XX no

The Miyoo Mini Plus has built-in 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi; the original RG35XX has none. That is a real, meaningful gap. Wi-Fi on the Miyoo means over-the-air box-art scraping, RetroAchievements login, NTP clock sync, and file transfer without pulling the microSD card. It is convenience, not necessity — you can sideload everything over USB — but it is the difference between a device that feels modern and one that feels like a 2010 media player. Remember the family split, though: the H700-based RG35XX Plus, H, SP, and 2024 all do have Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth. If wireless matters and you are set on Anbernic, buy an H700 unit, not the original.

HDMI: the RG35XX's real trump card

This is the one place the Anbernic decisively wins. The RG35XX has a mini-HDMI port — XDA describes it plainly: 'a mini HDMI port at a top, which you can use to output the display to a TV' — and the Miyoo Mini Plus has no video output whatsoever. DroiX makes the point in its own comparison: 'One thing lacking on the Miyoo is a HDMI port, something both RG35XX models have.' If your fantasy is a cheap vertical handheld that doubles as a couch console on the big screen, the Miyoo simply cannot do it and the RG35XX can. It outputs at 720p, which is plenty for content that was authored at 240p. This single port is the strongest argument in the RG35XX's favor, full stop.

The micro-USB lie (both are USB-C)

Now the myth. A depressing number of spec sheets — including the source brief for many of these comparisons — list the RG35XX's port as micro-USB. It is not. XDA's review confirms in plain text that the original RG35XX uses USB-C for charging and data, exactly like the Miyoo. This error propagates because bloggers copy each other's spec tables without touching the hardware, and once a wrong number is in the ecosystem it self-replicates. So let the record show: both the Miyoo Mini Plus and the Anbernic RG35XX charge over USB-C. Anyone who tells you otherwise is quoting a spec sheet, not a device. When you are sourcing a comparison, this is the kind of claim worth verifying against a primary source rather than trusting the aggregation — the same discipline that separates a real review from a re-skinned datasheet.

Pricing and Where to Buy

Both devices float in the same narrow price band, which means value is decided by what is on sale the week you buy and how much you trust the seller. Here is the lay of the land.

The price table

Where the money actually goes

The pattern is consistent across sources: both devices land roughly $56–$80 depending on model, storage, and retailer, with the Miyoo Mini Plus typically quoted at $60–70 and the RG35XX at $60–80. AliExpress is almost always the cheapest channel — one 2026 comparison video clocked the Miyoo at $66 from Miyoo's official AliExpress store and the RG35XX at $56 direct from Anbernic — at the cost of two-to-four-week shipping. Amazon charges a convenience premium of roughly ten to twenty dollars for the privilege of two-day delivery and painless returns. Bare-device pricing dips lower on sale; PropelRC framed its review around a '$53 price point' for the Miyoo. The takeaway: these are within a rounding error of each other, so price should not decide your purchase. The device that fits your use case should.

Bundle traps and the legal note

Nearly every listing bundles a microSD card 'preloaded' with thousands of games, and this is where we have to be the adults in the room. Distributing commercial ROMs is copyright infringement, and a card stuffed with them is a legal liability the seller is quietly handing you. Emulation itself is settled, legal ground — the Ninth Circuit established as much in Sony Computer Entertainment v. Connectix back in 2000 — but the software you run on it is your responsibility. The clean path is to dump your own cartridges; our guide to dumping carts and saves with a Retrode walks the whole legal workflow. Buy the handheld for the hardware and the firmware, wipe the card, and fill it yourself. The 'includes 30,000 games' pitch is a feature you should treat as a bug.

Who Each One Is For

Specs are abstract; use cases are not. Here are the concrete scenarios, and which device wins each. If your life looks like one of these, you have your answer.

Buy the Miyoo Mini Plus if…

You want a pocket SNES/GBA machine you carry everywhere. The smaller shell, the 5–7 hour battery, and the flawless 16-bit performance make it the definitive commuter and couch handheld for the systems most people actually replay. This is the median buyer, and the Miyoo is built for them.

You want Wi-Fi conveniences. If box-art scraping, RetroAchievements, and clock sync matter to you, the Miyoo has the radio and the original RG35XX does not. OnionOS turns that Wi-Fi into a genuinely useful feature set rather than a checkbox.

You want the smallest, most finished thing under $70. gogamegeek's summary is the whole pitch: 'the mini+ will be the ultimate winner for me… because of onion os and the size.' If polish and pocketability are your axes, stop reading and buy it.

Buy the RG35XX if…

You want to play on a TV. The mini-HDMI output is the single feature the Miyoo cannot answer. For a bedroom-TV retro box that also travels, the RG35XX is the only one of the pair that qualifies.

You want full-speed Nintendo DS. The quad-core chip earns its keep here — Pokémon Black 2 'at full speed' per XDA is a real capability the Miyoo lacks. Accept the 2–3 hour battery cost that comes with it.

You are a tinkerer who likes raw silicon and two card slots. More cores, a real GPU, double the RAM, and dual microSD — if you enjoy pushing hardware and want headroom to experiment, the Anbernic gives you more to work with, GarlicOS's limitations notwithstanding.

Buy neither if…

You need PSP, Dreamcast, or serious N64. Both of these top out at PS1 with a wobble. If your must-play list climbs higher, step up to a Retroid Pocket-class Android handheld, which has the horsepower these two lack. You mostly play docked or at a desk? A software emulation box like Batocera on a mini-PC will outrun both for the price of the peripherals you already own. And if you already own a Steam Deck, you own a better emulator than either — our look at how the Deck handles emulation covers exactly how much more it can do. These $60 bricks are precision tools for the 8-to-32-bit era, not do-everything machines.

Migrating Between Them

Say you bought one, lived with it, and want to switch. The good news: both run RetroArch under the hood, so your saves are portable if you know where they live. The bad news: the folder layouts differ, and save states are fussier than battery saves. Here is the clean way to move.

Saves are the only thing that matters

Your ROMs are trivially re-copied and your firmware is a fresh flash on either side — the only truly irreplaceable data is your saves. There are two kinds, and they behave differently. A .srm file is a battery/SRAM save (the in-game save slots the original cartridge used); these are highly portable because they mirror the real hardware's save format and do not care which device or core version wrote them. A .state file is a RetroArch save state (a full memory snapshot); these are core-version-dependent and can break if the destination device runs a different build of the same emulator core. Rule of thumb: trust your .srm files across the move, and treat .state files as disposable — finish anything mid-state before you migrate, then re-save in-game.

From RG35XX (GarlicOS) to Miyoo (OnionOS)

Pop both microSD cards into a card reader on a real computer. Locate your GarlicOS saves (GarlicOS keeps them in a saves directory alongside the ROM folders), copy the .srm files, and drop them into the matching per-system save location on the OnionOS card. Match the base filename to the ROM filename exactly — RetroArch pairs saves to ROMs by name, so Chrono Trigger (USA).srm must sit next to a ROM whose name resolves to the same base. Exact subpaths vary by firmware build, so verify against your version's documentation rather than trusting a hardcoded path.

# Illustrative SD-card layout (verify paths against your firmware version)

OnionOS (Miyoo Mini Plus) card root
  /BIOS/         system BIOS files
  /Emu/          per-system emulator configs
  /Roms/         one folder per system (SFC, GBA, PS, ...)
  /Saves/        .srm battery saves + .state save states
  /RetroArch/    RetroArch core configs

GarlicOS (RG35XX) card
  /Roms/         ROMs, one folder per system
  /Saves/        RetroArch-managed .srm and .state
  /BIOS/         system BIOS files

What actually transfers:
  GAME.srm    -> battery/SRAM save   PORTABLE (both use RetroArch)
  GAME.state  -> save state          FRAGILE  (core-version dependent)

Procedure:
  1. Copy GAME.srm from source /Saves/ to destination /Saves/
  2. Keep the base filename identical to the ROM filename
  3. Do NOT rely on .state files surviving the move
  4. Boot destination, load the ROM, confirm the in-game save loads

From Miyoo (OnionOS) to RG35XX

The reverse works identically — copy the .srm files off the OnionOS card and place them beside the matching ROMs on the GarlicOS card. The one extra consideration going this direction is BIOS: make sure any system BIOS files (for PS1, for instance) are present on the destination card, because a missing BIOS will make a game appear 'broken' when the real problem is a firmware gap, not a bad save. Boot the game, confirm the save loads, and only then delete the source. Migrating is genuinely a ten-minute job once you accept that .srm is your friend and .state is not.

Pros, Cons, and the Final Call

We have autopsied the silicon, the firmware, the battery, and the ports. Here is the whole thing compressed into two tables and a recommendation you can act on.

Miyoo Mini Plus: pros and cons

RG35XX: pros and cons

The final call

Buy the Miyoo Mini Plus. For the games these devices exist to play — the enormous, glorious span from the NES to the PlayStation — it is the better handheld, and it is not especially close. OnionOS is the most finished software in the price bracket, the battery lasts longer, the shell is smaller and feels nicer in the hand, and Wi-Fi makes it a genuinely modern little machine. That it accomplishes all of this while carrying half the RAM and two fewer CPU cores than its rival is the entire lesson of the budget-handheld category: in this class, firmware beats silicon, and the finished thing beats the powerful thing. gogamegeek's testers reached the same verdict without our theorizing — 'the Miyoo has a far better custom OS' and 'the mini+ will be the ultimate winner… because of onion os and the size.'

Buy the RG35XX only for its two real advantages: the mini-HDMI port, if docking to a TV is non-negotiable, and full-speed Nintendo DS, if Pokémon Black 2 on the go is the whole reason you are shopping. Both are legitimate; neither is common. And if you want either of them badly enough to give up OnionOS and a couple of hours of battery, go in with clear eyes about the software you are accepting. Everyone else: the smaller brick with the worse spec sheet is the one to own. The market figured that out a while ago. Now you have the receipts.