Miyoo Mini Plus vs RG35XX 2026: OnionOS Wins, $10 Gap

Here is the uncomfortable truth this whole comparison rests on: the Miyoo Mini Plus and the Anbernic RG35XX are both from 2022. There is no 2025 model. There is no 2026 model. Nobody re-spun the silicon, nobody moved the price, and the two custom firmwares that actually matter kept quietly improving while the internet argued about a fight that was settled two years ago. If you came here for a shiny new SKU, close the tab. If you came here to find out which fifty-to-seventy-dollar slab of plastic deserves your money in 2026, and why the weaker one keeps winning, stay.

This is a comparison of two legacy budget handhelds that refuse to die, judged by the only metric that has ever mattered in this class: what the experience is like once the custom firmware is flashed and the novelty has worn off. We will correct the specs the marketing copy keeps getting wrong, put real benchmark numbers from real reviewers on the table, and tell you which one to buy for which human being. No affiliate cheerleading. Just the lore and the law.

The Verdict, Up Front

We do not bury the lede here. You want the answer, then the reasoning. So: for most people, most of the time, the Miyoo Mini Plus is the one to buy, and the reason has almost nothing to do with its processor and almost everything to do with OnionOS. The Anbernic RG35XX is the better pick for a specific, defensible minority who want a bigger device in the hand, a real HDMI-out to a television, and stock that is easier to find on a given Tuesday.

The One-Sentence Answer

Buy the Miyoo Mini Plus if you want the most polished, pocketable, sub-$75 retro experience that exists, and you are willing to run community firmware to get it. Buy the RG35XX if you want a slightly larger, slightly more comfortable device that plugs into a TV over mini-HDMI and pushes a little further into demanding systems. Both are excellent. Neither will disappoint you at 8-bit through PlayStation 1. The tie-breakers are size, television output, and which firmware philosophy you prefer.

Why It Is Closer Than the Fanboys Admit

The two devices share a 3.5-inch IPS screen at 640x480 in a 4:3 aspect ratio. They both charge over USB-C. They both top out, realistically, at the PlayStation 1. On paper, the RG35XX actually out-specs the Miyoo: it has four CPU cores to the Miyoo's two, a dedicated GPU the Miyoo lacks entirely, and double the RAM. And it still does not clearly win. That is the entire story of this class of hardware in one sentence: firmware beats silicon, and OnionOS is the best firmware in the room.

Who Should Stop Reading Now

If your library is Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, PSP, Saturn, or anything with a polygon budget, neither of these devices is for you, and no amount of firmware witchcraft will change that. You want a modern Allwinner H700 or, better, a proper Android handheld with a real chip. We cover that upgrade path near the end, and if you already know that is you, jump to our look at how the Retroid Pocket 5 and 6 pull 70 percent more performance for the extra money. For everyone whose heart lives in the 8-, 16-, and 32-bit era, keep going.

The 2022 Elephant in the Room

Before we can compare anything, we have to clear away the fog that surrounds these two names, because the internet has spent three years muddying it. The Miyoo Mini Plus launched in September 2022. The original Anbernic RG35XX launched in October 2022. Neither has been meaningfully revised. What has changed is the software, the price of adjacent models, and the sheer volume of misinformation attached to both.

There Is No 2026 Model

Let us be blunt, because vagueness helps no one. There is no 2025 or 2026 hardware refresh, firmware version bump, or price event for these two specific SKUs that rewrites the comparison. The Miyoo Mini Plus you buy today is the same board that shipped in 2022 with a nicer default firmware pre-loaded. The original RG35XX is likewise unchanged. Anyone selling you a "2026 edition" of either is selling you old stock with a new sticker, or they are confusing the original with a newer cousin. The honest editorial angle in 2026 is not novelty; it is endurance. These two survived because they were priced correctly and because the community adopted them. That is rarer than it sounds.

The RG35XX SKU Swamp

Here is where most buyers get robbed of their sanity. "RG35XX" is not one device. The original RG35XX (2022) runs the Actions Semiconductor ATM7039S, a quad-core Cortex-A9. Then Anbernic released the RG35XX Plus (2023) on the Allwinner H700, a quad-core Cortex-A53 with 1GB of LPDDR4, Bluetooth 4.2, and a 3300mAh battery. Then came the RG35XX H (horizontal, with sticks), the RG35XX SP (a clamshell that apes the Game Boy Advance SP), and a "New RG35XX 2024" that is also H700-based. These are entirely different machines. When a spec sheet claims the "RG35XX" has 1GB of RAM and Bluetooth, it is describing the Plus, not the original. Retro Game Corps built an entire family starter guide precisely because the lineup metastasized. This article is about the original ATM7039S RG35XX. Keep that fixed in your head or every number that follows will seem wrong.

The Names People Get Wrong

Three corrections, because getting them wrong is how you end up buying the wrong thing. First: the Miyoo's SigmaStar SSD202D is a dual-core Cortex-A7, not a quad-core. Spec regurgitators love to double the count; the chip has two cores at 1.2GHz, full stop. Second: GarlicOS was written by a developer who goes by Black Seraph. There is no person named "Garlic." The name is a play on OnionOS, and crediting a mythical "Garlic" developer is a tell that a writer never touched the device. Third: both devices charge over USB-C. The persistent claim that the RG35XX uses micro-USB is simply false; the original shipped with a USB-C port rated 5V/1.5A, same connector family as the Miyoo. Get these three right and you are already better informed than half the listings selling these things.

Specs, Head to Head

Now the numbers, with the corrections baked in. This table is the reference you came for. Every figure below is drawn from hands-on reviews and manufacturer specifications, not from the telephone-game spec sheets that keep inventing quad-core Miyoos and micro-USB Anbernics.

The Full Table

Reading the Table

Notice what is identical: the screen, the aspect ratio, the charging connector, and the practical emulation ceiling. Notice what is genuinely different: the RG35XX carries more silicon and adds a television output; the Miyoo adds Wi-Fi and shaves off nearly fifty grams. The Miyoo is the pocket device; the RG35XX is the coffee-table device. Everything else is a rounding error dressed up as a decisive advantage by people trying to sell you one or the other.

The Spec That Is a Lie

You will see it claimed, repeatedly, that the RG35XX "emulates up to Dreamcast." This is marketing, not measurement. Both devices include emulator cores that will launch Dreamcast and Nintendo 64 titles. Neither runs them at a speed you would call playing. Including a core is not the same as running the system, and the gap between "technically boots" and "actually plays" is where budget-handheld marketing lives. The reliable ceiling on both machines is PlayStation 1. We will prove that in the emulation section with actual reviewer testing rather than a bullet point on a product page.

Silicon vs. Software

This is the intellectually interesting part, so we will spend real time on it. The RG35XX has more and beefier hardware than the Miyoo Mini Plus in every dimension that a spec-sheet gladiator would care about. And yet, in the systems that these devices are actually good at, the two are a wash, and the Miyoo frequently feels better. Understanding why is understanding this entire category.

On Paper, the RG35XX Wins

Count it up. The RG35XX has four Cortex-A9 cores against the Miyoo's two Cortex-A7 cores. The A9 is a wider, older-but-still-more-capable core than the little A7, and there are twice as many of them, clocked higher. The RG35XX has a real PowerVR SGX544 GPU; the Miyoo's SSD202D has no meaningful 3D graphics hardware at all and leans on the CPU to draw everything. The RG35XX has 256MB of RAM to the Miyoo's 128MB. By any honest reading of the datasheet, this is not close. The Anbernic should walk it.

In Practice, It Is a Wash

Except emulation of pre-2000 consoles is overwhelmingly a single-threaded, CPU-bound workload, and the frontends here do not parallelize an NES or SNES core across four threads to any useful degree. Two reasonably quick cores get you to the same place as four when the emulator only meaningfully uses one or two of them. The dedicated GPU sits largely idle emulating 2D systems that never needed a GPU in the first place. So the RG35XX's theoretical advantages evaporate right up until you reach the demanding end of the library, and the Miyoo's software does the rest. Adam Conway, reviewing the Mini Plus for XDA, put the ceiling honestly: it 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." That is exactly right, and it is also true of the RG35XX. Neither breaks records; both clear the bar.

The RAM Myth

The 128MB-versus-256MB gap sounds enormous, and for anything up to and including PlayStation 1, it almost never bites. A SNES core does not need a quarter-gigabyte of memory; it needs a fast enough core and a competent emulator. Where the RAM gap finally matters is in the systems both devices are bad at: Nintendo DS emulation via DraStic and heavier N64 titles genuinely benefit from the RG35XX's extra headroom. So the one place the RG35XX's superior specs cash out is precisely the place both machines are already compromised. It is a real advantage at the margins and a non-factor in the core library. File that under "true but oversold."

Where the Emulation Actually Stops

Let us replace vibes with a per-system reality check, because "it plays retro games" is useless as buying advice. Here is what each device actually does, system by system, according to people who measured rather than guessed.

The Sweet Spot: 8-Bit Through PS1

NES, SNES, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Master System, Genesis, PC Engine, Neo Geo, and the CD-based 16-bit add-ons run at full speed on both devices. This is the heartland and it is not a contest. Conway's verdict for the Miyoo was that "Game Boy Advance titles run flawlessly, PlayStation 1 games are a treat to play." Independent testing of the Mini Plus clocked Chrono Trigger at a locked 60fps and found PlayStation 1 largely smooth with only minor slowdown in a heavy outlier like Gran Turismo 2. On the Anbernic side, the DROIX RG35XX review reported that across "Tekken 3, Gran Turismo and Ridge Racer 4" the reviewer "did not spot any slowdown," with GBA emulation that "works great and also looks great on the screen." Two devices, same conclusion: this era is solved.

The Graveyard: N64, Dreamcast, PSP

Now the honesty. Nintendo 64 runs on both in the sense that a car with a flat tire still rolls downhill. Community testing pegs lighter N64 titles at near-full-speed on the Miyoo and the more demanding ones down in the 70-to-85-percent range, which is to say choppy. Dreamcast, Saturn, and PSP are marketing entries, not playable ones. Retro Game Corps says the quiet part plainly in the RG35XX family guide: the asterisked systems "cannot play every game at full speed, and so performance may vary." That is the polite industry phrasing for "do not buy this to play Ocarina of Time."

The One Place the RG35XX Pulls Ahead

There is a genuine exception, and it is the RG35XX's best argument. Nintendo DS via the DraStic emulator leans on RAM and cores, and here the Anbernic's beefier silicon finally earns its keep. XDA's original RG35XX review, which scored the device a 9 out of 10, reported "Nintendo DS at full speed, and Pokemon Black 2 runs at full speed," though it also warned that DS emulation buys you only "two to three hours of playtime." That is a real, measurable edge the Miyoo cannot match. It is also a niche edge with a battery tax, and it depends on the title. If DS is central to your library, that alone can decide this comparison in the Anbernic's favor. For everyone else, both machines live and die at PlayStation 1, and if you want to understand how far the software can be pushed on this kind of hardware, our walkthrough of installing and tuning RetroArch cores in 14 steps is the honest ceiling.

OnionOS vs. GarlicOS

This is the real battlefield, and it is where the whole comparison is decided. The stock firmware on both devices is forgettable at best. Nobody who takes these seriously runs stock. The question is not "Miyoo hardware versus Anbernic hardware," it is "OnionOS versus GarlicOS," and that is a closer fight than the tribalists claim but still has a winner.

OnionOS, Properly OnionUI

The firmware everyone calls OnionOS is really OnionUI, a community project maintained on GitHub by the OnionUI team, currently on the 4.2 development line. Be warned that budget retailers still ship SD cards preloaded with stale 1.x or 2.x builds; the current release is a different animal. OnionUI is the reason the Miyoo Mini Plus is beloved. It gives you a clean box-art frontend, near-instant game switching, a package manager for add-ons, per-system configuration, and, because the Mini Plus has Wi-Fi, over-the-air updates and RetroAchievements. One review credited OnionOS with adding roughly three hours of battery life and RetroAchievements support over stock. Installing it is not optional folklore; it is the point of the device. Conway's summary stands: it is "one of the best options available today." If you want the deeper story on how OnionUI organizes and inflates its game library, we took that apart in our piece on the Mini Plus's 6,041-game claim and why there is no real list.

GarlicOS by Black Seraph

GarlicOS, built by Black Seraph, was the RG35XX's salvation and is still an excellent, stable, set-it-and-forget-it firmware. It brought a familiar Miyoo-style interface, working sleep and resume, saner button mappings, and a broad set of RetroArch cores to a device whose stock experience was rough. The distribution page lives at rg35xx.com. The caveat is generational: Retro Game Corps warned that the GarlicOS 2.0 rewrite was, at the time, "still in an early alpha state" and advised waiting "until it is in a beta release state." The 1.x line is rock solid; the 2.0 line has been a longer road. GarlicOS wins on pure stability-per-simplicity. It loses on ambition, and it loses everything that depends on Wi-Fi, because the original RG35XX has none.

Save States, Shaders, Netplay

Under both frontends sits RetroArch, so the fundamentals are shared. Both do save states and auto-resume flawlessly; you can suspend a game mid-boss and pick it up tomorrow. Both support shaders and overlays, though on a 640x480 LCD you will use tasteful scanline overlays, not the heavy multi-pass CRT shaders that would strangle these CPUs. The divergence is Wi-Fi-gated features. RetroAchievements and over-the-air updates work on the Miyoo and are simply impossible on the original RG35XX. Netplay exists in RetroArch in theory, but neither device makes it a practical, headline feature, and the Anbernic cannot do it at all without a network radio it does not have. If online trophies and syncing matter to you, the Miyoo is not slightly ahead here; it is the only option.

Benchmarks, Battery, and Real Numbers

Enough prose. Here is the measured data, gathered from three independent hands-on sources so you are not taking any single reviewer's word for it. Where numbers conflict, we tell you they conflict rather than pretending to a false precision.

What DROIX Measured

The DROIX RG35XX review is the most useful because it put a clock on the thing. Running Tekken 3 on the PlayStation 1, the device managed 3 hours and 3 minutes before dying, with lighter systems projected closer to the five-hour mark. On performance, the reviewer's blunt line was that "overall the performance is decent" across a spread of PS1 racers and fighters with no slowdown spotted, and that GBA "works great." On comfort, the same review argued the larger body is an asset: "the RG35XX is not quite as small, but in my opinion it does feel a bit more comfortable to hold over longer gaming sessions as your hands are more free." That is the case for the Anbernic in one sentence, from someone who held it.

What XDA and Others Found

XDA's Mini Plus review put the Miyoo's real-world battery at "up to six hours" and named the genuine downside honestly: "the worst part of the experience is the charging time, which will take up to three hours." A big battery in a tiny shell recharges slowly; physics does not care about your enthusiasm. Comparison testing from other outlets lined the two up directly and gave the Miyoo a small edge on demanding PlayStation 1 titles thanks to OnionOS optimizations, while conceding the RG35XX's extra RAM helps on the heaviest ones. The community-aggregated read across gogamegeek's side-by-side was that the Mini Plus "feels like a much more premium device" while owners of both kept returning to the Miyoo for its OnionOS polish and its size.

The Battery Truth

Now the number everyone botches. The original RG35XX has a 2100mAh cell, per DROIX's hands-on figure, and that is why it only manages about three hours on PlayStation 1. You will see 2600mAh and even 3300mAh quoted for "the RG35XX," and both are wrong for the original: 3300mAh belongs to the RG35XX Plus, the H700 device this article is explicitly not about. The Miyoo Mini Plus carries roughly a 3000mAh cell (XDA measured 3200mAh) in a lighter body and simply lasts longer on the systems both devices actually play well. So despite the RG35XX's marketing leaning on "long battery life," the smaller Miyoo is the endurance champion in the 8-to-32-bit range. The Anbernic only wins the runtime argument if you never touch it, and a device you never touch does not need a big battery.

Pricing and Availability in 2026

Prices on these two have not moved on any official basis since 2022; what moves is the street. Here is the honest range you should expect to pay, and what shows up in the box.

The Pricing Table

Where to Actually Buy

The cheapest legitimate route for both is AliExpress direct from the vendors, where the RG35XX in particular drops into the $40-to-$50 band that MakeUseOf's review flagged, versus roughly $75 on Amazon for convenience and faster shipping. The Miyoo Mini Plus has historically suffered periodic supply droughts; when demand spikes, it vanishes and resellers gouge. The RG35XX, by contrast, is nearly always available because Anbernic manufactures at scale and keeps the channel stocked. That availability gap is itself a real buying factor: the best handheld you cannot purchase is worth less than the second-best you can.

What You Should Pay

Do not pay Amazon's ceiling for either unless you value your time at a premium and want it this week. The devices are functionally a $10-to-$20 spread at street prices, with the RG35XX the cheaper of the two, inverting its old $10 launch discount only because the Miyoo's scarcity props its price up. Neither is a bad deal at any price in this range. Both are absurd value measured against what a comparable experience cost a decade ago. If you find a Mini Plus at $60 and a card already flashed with a current OnionUI build, that is the sweet spot; buy it and stop optimizing.

Five People, Two Handhelds

Specs are abstract. People are not. Here is who each device is actually for, mapped to real scenarios rather than a bar chart.

Buy the Miyoo If You Are One of These

The pocket purist. You want the smallest capable device that disappears into a jacket, plays Game Boy and SNES and PS1 beautifully, and never asks you to think about it again. The ~118g Mini Plus is the answer. Nothing this good is this small.

The completionist. You care about RetroAchievements, want your progress tracked, and like the idea of over-the-air updates without ever touching a card reader. The Miyoo's Wi-Fi makes this trivial and the RG35XX makes it impossible. This is a one-device decision.

The OnionOS believer. You have watched the firmware comparisons, you value polish and a package manager and per-system tuning, and you have decided the software is the product. You are correct, and the Mini Plus is your device.

Buy the RG35XX If You Are One of These

The couch player. You want to drop the handheld into a mini-HDMI cable and throw Symphony of the Night onto the television at 720p. The Miyoo cannot do this at all. The RG35XX was built for it, and this single feature ends the argument for you.

The big-hands realist. Your hands cramp on the tiny Miyoo after an hour, and the DROIX reviewer's point about the larger body being "more comfortable to hold over longer gaming sessions" describes you exactly. Ergonomics are personal and the RG35XX simply fits more palms.

The DS holdout. Your library is Pokemon and other DS staples, and XDA's report of "Nintendo DS at full speed" on the RG35XX is the one benchmark you care about. The extra RAM and cores matter here. Just budget for the two-to-three-hour battery reality.

Buy Neither If This Is You

If your must-play list is Mario Kart on N64, anything on Dreamcast, or God of War on PSP, walk away from both. You will be miserable, and no firmware fixes a hardware ceiling. That money belongs in a modern handheld, and the honest move is to read how much further the current generation gets before you spend. Our comparison of the Retroid Pocket 5 and 6 is where that conversation starts, and if you would rather emulate on a laptop or a mini-PC, Batocera installs in about fifteen minutes and eats these systems for breakfast.

Migrating From One to the Other

Say you own one and covet the other, or you are switching camps. Here is how to move without losing your progress, and where the process will bite you. This is not seamless, because the two firmwares organize their worlds differently.

Moving Your ROMs and Saves

Both firmwares keep games on the microSD in a per-system folder layout, and both keep in-game battery saves next to the ROMs or in a saves directory. The ROMs themselves are portable; a SNES file is a SNES file. The folder names and structure differ, so you copy by system rather than blindly cloning the card. A typical OnionOS card looks like this at the root:

/Roms
  /FC      (NES / Famicom)
  /SFC     (Super Nintendo)
  /GBA     (Game Boy Advance)
  /PS      (PlayStation 1)
  /MD      (Sega Genesis / Mega Drive)
/Saves
/BIOS
/App

GarlicOS uses its own comparable per-system directories under a Roms folder. The clean approach is to pull your ROMs and your .srm battery saves off the source card by system, then drop them into the matching folders on the destination card. Battery saves (.srm) usually survive the trip because they are a RetroArch-standard format shared by both frontends.

Save States Do Not Transfer Cleanly

Here is the trap. In-game battery saves are portable. Save states — the full-memory snapshots you make with a button combo — often are not, because they can be tied to a specific emulator core version and, in some cases, to the device. A save state made in one core build may refuse to load in a different build on the other device. The rule: finish your current session by saving in-game (the game's own save menu) before you migrate, not by leaving a save state open. Treat save states as disposable and battery saves as permanent, and the move is painless.

The Clean-Slate Method

If you want zero drama, do not migrate the firmware card at all. Flash a fresh current firmware onto a new microSD for the destination device, then copy only your ROMs and your .srm saves across. Never move the whole card between devices; the firmwares are not interchangeable and you will brick the experience.

# Conceptual migration, source card -> destination card
# 1. On the OLD device: save IN-GAME, not just a save state
# 2. Flash CURRENT firmware to a NEW card for the destination:
#      Miyoo  -> current OnionUI (4.2 line)
#      RG35XX -> current GarlicOS
# 3. Copy ONLY these across, matched by system folder:
#      /Roms//*        (your games)
#      *.srm                   (battery saves - portable)
# 4. Leave behind:
#      *.state / save states   (core-version specific - unreliable)
# 5. Re-scrape box art on the new device; do not copy media caches

Follow that and you keep every hour of progress that matters while sidestepping the incompatibilities that ruin lazy card-cloning.

Pros and Cons, No Filler

The scannable summary, because you are going to scroll back to this part anyway. No hedging, no "it depends" in the cells.

Miyoo Mini Plus

Anbernic RG35XX

The Tie-Breakers

When the pros and cons balance, three questions break the tie. Do you need it in a pocket? Miyoo. Do you need it on a TV? RG35XX. Do you need online achievements? Miyoo, because the RG35XX physically cannot. Every other consideration is subordinate to those three, and if none of them apply to you, buy whichever is cheaper the day you shop and you will not regret it.

The Machine's Call

We have corrected the specs, measured the battery, weighed the firmware, and mapped the humans. Time to render judgment with the data behind it.

The Data-Backed Pick

The Miyoo Mini Plus wins the general recommendation, and the margin is OnionOS plus size plus battery plus Wi-Fi. It loses the spec sheet and wins the experience, which is the only scoreboard that pays out. The comparison writeups that put the two side by side landed the same way for the same reasons: the Miyoo feels more premium, its firmware is better, and it is the one owners of both keep reaching for. Buy it, flash a current OnionUI build, and you own the best sub-$75 pocket emulator that exists. That is not a close call in the aggregate; it is a clear call with one loud asterisk.

The Asterisk, and When to Ignore This Entirely

The asterisk is the RG35XX's three genuine wins: television output, hand comfort, and DS-via-DraStic. If any of those three is load-bearing for you, buy the Anbernic and enjoy it, because on those axes the Miyoo is not merely behind, it is absent. And if your library climbs past PlayStation 1 at all, ignore this entire article and buy up. Both of these are 2022 devices doing 2022 things extremely well; they are not miracle workers. A cartridge purist who wants to feed either device from real hardware should read our guide to dumping your own carts in about forty minutes, because the law is friendlier to a backup you made than to a folder you downloaded.

The Bottom Line

Two handhelds from the same year, sharing a screen and a charging port and a ceiling, separated by fifty grams, one video output, one radio, and two philosophies of firmware. The Miyoo Mini Plus is the default answer and the better pocket machine. The RG35XX is the better living-room machine and the easier one to buy. Nobody made a mistake building either. The only mistake available to you is overthinking a $60 decision that both companies already got right. Pick the one whose three tie-breaker answers match your life, flash the good firmware, and go play something from before the industry forgot how to make a 40-hour game fit on a cartridge.