Miyoo Mini Plus vs RG35XX 2026: Wi-Fi vs HDMI

There is a particular kind of internet argument that refuses to die, and the Miyoo Mini Plus versus the Anbernic RG35XX is one of its purest specimens. It has outlived two firmware generations, at least one hardware refresh, and several thousand Reddit threads that all reach the same conclusion and then start over the next morning. The reason it persists is not that the answer is unknowable. It is that the answer is conditional, and conditional answers are precisely the thing the internet is worst at holding in its head.

So let us hold it in our head. This is a comparison of two vertical, Game Boy-shaped Linux handhelds that share a 3.5-inch 640×480 panel and almost identical button geography, and yet diverge on the exact two axes that decide whether you are happy with a pocket emulator: how it connects, and how it feels. One has Wi-Fi and a reputation for the best custom firmware in the category. The other has HDMI output and, in its current form, the better chip and the bigger battery. Everything else is commentary.

Why This Fight Changed in 2026

If you read a comparison written in 2023, throw it away. Not because it was wrong, but because the device it was comparing no longer represents the fight. The most defensible current-generation framing is that this is no longer Miyoo Mini Plus vs original RG35XX. It is Miyoo Mini Plus vs RG35XX Plus, and the refresh materially changed the power, battery, and connectivity story.

What Anbernic actually changed

The RG35XX Plus is the 2025-2026-era member of the family that matters most for a current editorial comparison, and the reason is on the spec sheet. It adds 1GB of LPDDR4 RAM, Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 4.2, and a 3300mAh battery. The retailer DroiX describes it as a straightforward upgrade over the original RG35XX and rates battery life at up to 8 hours. Every one of those additions lands directly on a weakness the original had relative to the Miyoo.

Consider what that does to the old talking points. The Miyoo Mini Plus used to win the Wi-Fi argument outright, because the original RG35XX had none. The RG35XX Plus has Wi-Fi 5. The Miyoo used to win the battery argument, because its 3000mAh cell dwarfed the original's 2100mAh. The RG35XX Plus carries 3300mAh. The two cleanest numerical advantages the Miyoo enjoyed in 2023 were quietly erased by a hardware revision, and a great deal of the discourse simply never updated its priors.

What the Miyoo kept

This is not a story of the Miyoo Mini Plus being made obsolete. It kept the things that were never about the spec sheet: it is the more pocketable device, it has the D-pad people write love letters about, and it has OnionOS, which remains a major software reason buyers still choose it. Those are durable advantages. They do not show up in a benchmark, which is exactly why they survive a benchmark war.

The honest thesis

So here is the thesis this entire article is built to defend, stated up front so you can argue with it as you read: the Miyoo Mini Plus still wins on portability, Wi-Fi convenience, and the software reputation of OnionOS, while the RG35XX line wins on HDMI output and, in its newer Plus form, better raw hardware and battery capacity. If you already know which of those two clusters describes you, you can stop reading. Most people don't, which is why the rest of this exists.

Specs Head to Head

Tables are where comparisons go to be honest, so we will start there and editorialize afterward. Note the deliberate inclusion of three devices: where the original RG35XX and the RG35XX Plus differ, that difference is the news.

The full grid

Reading the table correctly

Two rows do most of the work. The CPU core row is the source of the perpetual "which is stronger" debate: a 2025-2026 comparison repeatedly cites the main hardware split as Cortex-A7 in the Miyoo Mini Plus versus Cortex-A9 in the RG35XX, and at least one article pairs that with 256MB of RAM on the original RG35XX against 128MB on the Miyoo. The A9 is a wider, more capable core than the A7. On paper, the RG35XX has the better processor, full stop.

The HDMI output row is the source of the perpetual "which is more flexible" debate, and it resolves cleanly in the RG35XX's favor. There is no firmware update coming that will add an HDMI port to the Miyoo Mini Plus. It is a physical absence.

Where the table lies by omission

What a table cannot show you is that the realistic system ceiling row is nearly identical in lived experience for the games most people actually play. Both devices run 8-bit and 16-bit consoles, GBA, and the bulk of the PS1 library at full speed. The gap between an A7 and an A9 is real, but it is concentrated in the top 5% of the most demanding cores — the exact games that are uncomfortable to play on a 3.5-inch screen anyway. Keep that in mind every time someone tells you the chip difference is decisive. It is decisive for a small, specific, sweaty-palmed slice of the library.

Hardware: A7 vs A9 and the Chin

Numbers describe hardware. They do not explain it. This section is the explanation.

The silicon, demystified

The Cortex-A7 in the Miyoo Mini Plus is an in-order, power-frugal core — the kind of design that prioritizes battery and thermals over peak throughput. The Cortex-A9 in the RG35XX is an older but wider out-of-order design that can extract more instructions per clock on the messy, branch-heavy code that emulators generate. For interpreters and dynarecs that thrash the pipeline — think the more aggressive PS1 and N64 cores — the A9 has a structural advantage that no amount of firmware tuning closes.

The RAM story is more interesting because it splits across the family. The original RG35XX's 256MB versus the Miyoo's 128MB is a modest, occasionally relevant gap; it gives the RG35XX a little more headroom for save states, rewind buffers, and shader pipelines before it starts swapping or stuttering. The RG35XX Plus's jump to 1GB LPDDR4 is a different category of change entirely. That is not a tuning advantage; it is the difference that lets the Plus chew on heavier content and run a more demanding frontend without feeling cramped. If you are comparing against the Plus, the memory argument is not close.

The chin, and why people care

Now the part that decides daily happiness. The Miyoo Mini Plus is consistently described as the more pocketable option, while the RG35XX is described as a bit taller with a larger bottom chin. This is not a rounding error in the discourse — it is a genuine "which feels better in hand" debate that the 2025-2026 coverage keeps relitigating because it is genuinely subjective.

The chin matters in two directions. For people with larger hands, the RG35XX's extra height gives the thumbs somewhere to live and makes long sessions less cramped. For people who actually carry the thing in a jeans pocket every day, the Miyoo's smaller footprint is the entire point of buying a vertical handheld instead of a horizontal one. There is no universal winner here. There is only your pocket and your palm.

The D-pad, where the Miyoo wins quietly

Community discussion in 2025-2026 still praises the Miyoo Mini Plus's D-pad specifically, and a video comparison highlighted the Miyoo's stronger handling of accidental diagonals — the bane of fighting games and any platformer that punishes an unwanted down-forward input. The RG35XX's D-pad is competent. The Miyoo's is the one people bring up unprompted. For a device whose primary job is 2D games where the D-pad is the controller, that is not a small thing, and it is one of the few hardware categories where the Miyoo simply outpoints the better-specced rival. If you want the full software-side picture of what that D-pad is feeding, our Miyoo Mini Plus game-list breakdown walks through exactly which 6,041 titles are realistic on the panel.

Software: OnionOS vs GarlicOS

If hardware were the whole story, the RG35XX Plus would win and we could all go home. Software is why we cannot. In this category, the firmware is not a bonus — it is half the product.

OnionOS, and why it sells the Miyoo

OnionOS remains a major software reason people still choose the Miyoo Mini Plus, and it earns the reputation. It is the community firmware built by the OnionUI project, and what it delivers is a frontend that looks and behaves like a finished consumer product rather than a Linux distro wearing a costume. Box art, themes, clean per-system organization, painless save states, RetroArch where you want it and hidden where you don't. The polish is the pitch.

The deeper point is momentum. OnionOS has had years of community iteration concentrated on a single, well-understood device. That focus produces a stability and a depth of documentation that newer or more fragmented firmware ecosystems struggle to match. When you buy a Miyoo Mini Plus in 2026, you are not just buying an A7 and a 3000mAh battery. You are buying access to a software project that has already solved most of the problems you were about to have.

GarlicOS, and what it actually offers

GarlicOS is the custom-firmware name most associated with the RG35XX family in comparison coverage, and it is genuinely good. It does for the RG35XX what Onion does for the Miyoo: a cleaner frontend, sane defaults, save states, box art, and a far better out-of-box experience than the stock Anbernic firmware. On the RG35XX Plus, the ecosystem has also widened — muOS and other community options give the newer hardware more than one credible firmware path, which is a quiet advantage the original RG35XX did not have.

The honest assessment is that GarlicOS is not worse software. The gap that the editorial coverage keeps citing is one of reputation and ecosystem maturity, not raw capability. Onion has the louder, larger, more documented community. For a first-time buyer who will lean on YouTube tutorials and Reddit threads to set the thing up, that ecosystem size is a real, practical benefit — it means your specific problem has probably already been answered. If you are coming from a desktop emulation background, our walkthrough of a 12-step RetroArch core setup covers the underlying machinery both firmwares are wrapping.

The thing nobody admits about firmware

Here is the deadpan truth: for 90% of buyers, both firmwares are good enough that the difference is aesthetic and tribal rather than functional. Both run RetroArch cores. Both do save states, shaders, and box art. The OnionOS advantage is real, but it is the advantage of a slightly more finished restaurant, not the advantage of a restaurant that serves food versus one that does not. Choose the Miyoo for Onion if firmware polish is genuinely your top priority. Do not pretend GarlicOS will leave you stranded, because it won't.

Performance and Benchmarks

There are no synthetic benchmark suites for these devices that anyone sane trusts, so "benchmarks" here means the converged real-world reports from three kinds of source: community testing on r/SBCGaming, firmware project issue trackers like the OnionUI and GarlicOS repositories, and the emulator documentation at the RetroArch/libretro docs. When three independent source types agree, that is as close to a benchmark as this category gets.

What both devices nail

Consensus across all three source types is boringly consistent: NES, SNES, Genesis/Mega Drive, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Master System, PC Engine, and Neo Geo run at full speed on both devices with the standard cores. PS1 runs at or near full speed across the great majority of the library on both, using the lighter PCSX-based cores. This is the 95% of real usage, and in this band the A7 versus A9 distinction is invisible. If your library is 2D and PS1, the performance comparison is a tie and you should make your decision on D-pad, firmware, battery, and ports instead.

Where the A9 pulls ahead

The divergence shows up exactly where the silicon discussion predicts. On the heaviest PS1 titles, on the playable-but-imperfect end of N64, and on early Dreamcast experimentation, the RG35XX's Cortex-A9 and larger memory pool give it more consistent frame pacing and fewer audio crackles than the A7-based Miyoo. The RG35XX Plus's 1GB of LPDDR4 extends that lead further on anything that benefits from headroom. Community reports frame the RG35XX line as the one to choose if you specifically intend to push past PS1 into N64 and beyond — with the caveat that both devices treat N64 as a "some games, with patience" platform rather than a solved one.

The benchmark nobody quotes

The most useful performance number is the one the marketing never prints: input latency and frame consistency on the games you will actually play for hundreds of hours. Both panels are 60Hz 640×480 IPS, both run the same lightweight cores for 2D systems, and both deliver the kind of responsive, low-drama 16-bit experience that made these devices popular in the first place. The performance ceiling is a real differentiator at the top of the library. The performance floor — the experience of playing Super Metroid or Symphony of the Night on a train — is functionally identical. Buy the chip difference only if you genuinely live at the ceiling.

Battery, Wi-Fi, and Portability

This is the section where the original-versus-Plus distinction matters most, because the battery story inverts depending on which RG35XX you put on the table.

The battery math, done honestly

Against the original RG35XX, the Miyoo Mini Plus wins decisively. The Miyoo carries a 3000mAh cell against the original's 2100mAh, and one 2025-2026 video comparison measured roughly 50% longer real-world playtime for the Miyoo — framed elsewhere as about 4-6 hours on the Miyoo versus about 4 hours on the original RG35XX. That is the single largest, cleanest advantage the Miyoo held in the old matchup, and it is genuine.

Against the RG35XX Plus, the math flips. The Plus jumps to a 3300mAh battery that DroiX rates at up to 8 hours. On capacity, the newer Anbernic now leads the Miyoo outright. This is the single best illustration of why the 2026 comparison had to move to the Plus: the headline number the Miyoo used to win is now a number it loses. We dug into the older head-to-head specifically in our 50% battery-edge breakdown, and the short version is that the edge was real right up until Anbernic decided to erase it.

Wi-Fi: the original split, now blurred

The Miyoo Mini Plus's Wi-Fi was historically its other clean win, enabling over-the-air ROM transfers, RetroAchievements, netplay, and scraping without pulling the SD card. A 2025-2026 YouTube comparison framed the whole device choice as the Miyoo having Wi-Fi but no HDMI out on top, versus the RG35XX having HDMI but (originally) no Wi-Fi — the creator treated that single tradeoff as the core of the decision. The RG35XX Plus complicates this cleanly by adding Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 4.2, so the connectivity gap that once favored the Miyoo is now mostly closed, with the Plus arguably ahead on paper thanks to Bluetooth.

Portability, the one constant

Through every revision, the Miyoo Mini Plus stays the more pocketable device, and the RG35XX stays the taller one with the bigger chin. This is the advantage that does not move, because it is dictated by the chassis, not the components. If your buying criterion is "the smallest thing that still has a real D-pad and runs PS1," the Miyoo wins and the spec sheet is irrelevant. If you want something with more in-hand presence for long couch sessions, the RG35XX's size is a feature, not a flaw.

Pricing and Availability

A standing warning before the numbers: these are vertical budget handhelds sold largely through AliExpress, Amazon marketplace listings, and specialist retailers, and their street prices fluctuate constantly with sales, coupons, and stock. The figures below are typical observed street ranges, not official MSRPs, and you should treat them as orientation rather than gospel.

Approximate street pricing

Availability realities

The Miyoo Mini Plus had a famous availability problem in its early life — periods where it was genuinely hard to buy at sane prices. By 2026 supply has broadly normalized, but it still moves through fewer official channels than Anbernic's catalog. The RG35XX family benefits from Anbernic's larger distribution footprint and from European-facing retailers like DroiX that stock the Plus with local warranty and faster shipping, which is a non-trivial advantage if you are outside Asia and do not want to gamble on a month-long AliExpress parcel.

The value verdict on price

On pure dollars, these devices are close enough that price should rarely be the deciding factor — a sale on either can swing the gap to nothing. The one firm recommendation: do not buy the original RG35XX at full price when the Plus exists. The Plus's RAM, battery, and connectivity upgrades are worth the modest premium, and the original is only the smart buy when it is heavily discounted as old stock. If you are weighing whether to spend more on something altogether more powerful instead, our Retroid Pocket 6 versus G2 comparison covers the next tier up.

Five Real-World Use Cases

Specs are abstract. Use cases are not. Here are five concrete buyers, each with a correct answer.

The pocket-everyday commuter and the bedside player

Use case 1 — the daily-carry commuter. You want the smallest device that still plays well, riding in a jacket pocket every day for 20-minute bursts on a train. Buy the Miyoo Mini Plus. Its pocketability is the whole reason this form factor exists, the D-pad is best-in-class for the 2D library you will actually play, and OnionOS makes the bursts frictionless. The chip deficit never surfaces because you are not pushing N64 on a moving train.

Use case 2 — the bedside / couch player. You play longer sessions at home, hands relaxed, and you occasionally want to throw a game on the television. Buy an RG35XX Plus. The larger chassis is comfortable for long holds, the 3300mAh battery goes the distance, and the HDMI output turns it into a competent little TV console — something the Miyoo physically cannot do.

The N64 dabbler and the connected collector

Use case 3 — the performance-curious tinkerer. You want to push past PS1 into N64 and early Dreamcast experimentation and you accept that it will be imperfect. Buy an RG35XX Plus. The Cortex-A9 and 1GB of LPDDR4 give you the headroom the A7-based Miyoo lacks, and this is the one band where the silicon difference is genuinely decisive rather than theoretical.

Use case 4 — the connected collector. You want RetroAchievements, netplay with a friend, and wireless ROM management without ever touching the SD card. Either device now works, but lean Miyoo Mini Plus if you also value OnionOS's mature handling of these features, or RG35XX Plus if you want Bluetooth 4.2 for a wireless controller and headphones in the same package. The Plus's Bluetooth is the tiebreaker the Miyoo cannot match.

The gift buyer who wants zero hassle

Use case 5 — the set-it-and-forget-it gift. You are buying this for someone non-technical and you want the best out-of-box experience with the least support burden. Buy the Miyoo Mini Plus with OnionOS preloaded. The ecosystem's documentation density means that when the recipient inevitably texts you a question, the answer already exists in a thousand forum posts, and the firmware's consumer-grade polish minimizes the questions in the first place.

What the Community Actually Says

You did not ask for one person's opinion; you asked for the converged read. Here is what the named outlets and the community consensus actually say, attributed honestly as paraphrase rather than invented verbatim quotes.

The retailer and review-blog view

DroiX, stocking and breaking down the RG35XX Plus hardware, positions it explicitly as an upgrade over the original RG35XX and stakes the battery claim at up to 8 hours — the source most directly responsible for the "the Plus fixed the battery deficit" line of argument. GoGameGeek and MechDIY, the spec-by-spec comparison blogs, are the outlets that surface the Cortex-A7-versus-A9 and 128MB-versus-256MB framing, and they consistently land on the same split conclusion: Miyoo for software and portability, RG35XX for connectivity and display output.

The hands-on video reviewers

The 2025-2026 YouTube comparisons are where the tradeoff gets crystallized into a sentence. One reviewer reduced the entire decision to Wi-Fi (Miyoo) versus HDMI out (RG35XX) — no HDMI on top of the Miyoo, but Wi-Fi present, and the creator treated that as the core choice. Another emphasized the Miyoo's larger battery delivering roughly 50% longer playtime than the original RG35XX, and singled out the Miyoo's stronger rejection of accidental diagonals on the D-pad. These are the hands-on impressions that the spec blogs cannot give you, and they consistently flatter the Miyoo on feel and the RG35XX on flexibility.

The firmware communities and the consensus

The two firmware projects speak through their work. The OnionUI community's output is the reason "OnionOS" is shorthand for "the polished one," and the project's documentation depth is itself the strongest argument anyone makes for the Miyoo. The GarlicOS community does the analogous job for the RG35XX, and on the Plus the emergence of muOS as an alternative shows a healthier, more competitive firmware scene than the original ever had. The net community consensus in 2026 is remarkably stable: the Miyoo Mini Plus is praised for its D-pad, OnionOS, and portability; the RG35XX Plus is credited with better build quality and a stronger chip. Five different source types, one converged verdict — which is exactly why the argument never ends, because both sides are right about their own device.

Migrating From One to the Other

Switching sides is common — people buy one, love the category, and want to try the other. The good news is that your games migrate trivially; only the surrounding furniture changes.

What transfers and what doesn't

Your ROM library is portable. These are the same systems on both devices, so the same ROM files work on either. What does not transfer cleanly is the device-specific scaffolding: save states are tied to the specific emulator core and frontend and should not be assumed to be cross-compatible, BIOS files live in firmware-specific folder structures, and box-art/scraping databases are firmware-specific. Plan to carry your ROMs and your in-game battery saves (the .srm files), and plan to rebuild save states, themes, and scraped art on the new device.

Miyoo (OnionOS) to RG35XX (GarlicOS)

The clean procedure, assuming a fresh microSD on the destination device:

1. Back up the Miyoo SD card entirely to your PC (image or full copy).
2. Copy out your ROMs by system, plus any .srm in-game saves.
3. Flash GarlicOS to a fresh SD card per the GarlicOS install guide.
4. Place ROMs into GarlicOS's matching per-system Roms folders.
5. Drop BIOS files into GarlicOS's BIOS folder (PS1, etc.).
6. Re-import .srm saves into the matching core save folder.
7. Boot, let it scrape box art over Wi-Fi (RG35XX Plus), rebuild states.

RG35XX (GarlicOS) to Miyoo (OnionOS)

The mirror image of the same process:

1. Back up the RG35XX SD card fully to your PC.
2. Extract ROMs by system and your .srm battery saves.
3. Install OnionOS to a fresh SD card per the OnionUI instructions.
4. Copy ROMs into Onion's Roms/ folders.
5. Place BIOS files into Onion's BIOS directory.
6. Restore .srm saves into the corresponding RetroArch save path.
7. Boot, scrape art over Wi-Fi, apply a theme, rebuild save states.

The whole operation is an afternoon, most of which is the SD card copy and the scrape. The single most common migration mistake is assuming save states will carry over — they generally will not across different firmware and core versions, so finish your current session at a natural battery-save point before you switch. If you want the deeper RetroArch-level context for why core versions matter to saves, the core-management walkthrough explains the moving parts.

Pros and Cons, Tabulated

The case for each device, stripped of prose.

Miyoo Mini Plus

RG35XX Plus

The original RG35XX, for completeness

The original RG35XX still has the A9 and HDMI, but its 2100mAh battery and lack of Wi-Fi are exactly the weaknesses the Plus fixed. Its only remaining argument is price-when-discounted. At full price in 2026, it is dominated by the Plus on one side and the Miyoo on the other, and there is no buyer for whom it is the clearly correct choice unless the discount is severe.

The Verdict

You came for a recommendation, not a shrug, so here is one with the conditions attached — because a budget handheld recommendation without conditions is marketing, and we don't do that here.

Buy the Miyoo Mini Plus if

Your priorities are pocketability, the best D-pad in the category, and OnionOS. This is the device for the daily-carry buyer, the 2D-and-PS1 purist, the person who values firmware polish above raw silicon, and the gift-giver who wants the lowest support burden. Its weaknesses — the A7, the 128MB of RAM, the absent HDMI — are irrelevant to that buyer, because that buyer never pushes the chip and never docks to a TV. For them, the Miyoo is not the compromise. It is the correct answer.

Buy the RG35XX Plus if

Your priorities are HDMI output, raw hardware headroom, connectivity, and battery capacity. This is the device for the couch player, the N64-and-beyond dabbler, the buyer who wants Bluetooth and Wi-Fi 5 in one box, and anyone who genuinely intends to throw games on a television. The 1GB of LPDDR4, the Cortex-A9, the 3300mAh battery, and the HDMI port are not specs for a sheet — they are the four things the Miyoo cannot answer.

The data-backed bottom line

The cleanest, most defensible conclusion the 2025-2026 evidence supports is the thesis we opened with: the Miyoo Mini Plus wins portability, the D-pad, and the software reputation of OnionOS; the RG35XX Plus wins HDMI, the chip, the RAM, and — against its newer self — the battery. The old comparison favored the Miyoo on Wi-Fi and battery, but Anbernic's refresh erased both of those edges, leaving the Miyoo's durable advantages standing on feel and firmware rather than on the spec sheet. If you forced us to name a single default for a buyer with no stated priorities, it is the RG35XX Plus, on the strength of doing more things competently for a near-identical price. But the Miyoo Mini Plus remains the better device for the specific, large, and entirely reasonable population of people who want the smallest thing with the best D-pad and the most polished firmware — and there is nothing second-rate about being the right answer for that question. Both devices are good. The internet argument continues precisely because that is true.