Retroid Pocket 5 vs 6 (2026): 70% Faster, $45 More

There is a version of this review that is one sentence long: the Retroid Pocket 6 is faster, brighter, and lasts longer than the Retroid Pocket 5, and it costs more, so buy the 6 unless you find the 5 on a fire sale. That sentence is true. It is also useless, because the interesting part of this matchup is not whether the newer thing is better — it always is — but by exactly how much, at exactly what price, in exactly which of your games, and whether the difference is one you will ever feel with your thumbs. This is a 6,000-word attempt to answer that instead of the tautology.

The $45 Question

Retroid has a formula, and it sticks to it with the discipline of a company that knows exactly what it is. Take a smartphone system-on-chip that was a flagship two or three years ago — back when it cost a phone-maker a fortune and a consumer more — wait for the price to collapse, bolt it into a landscape slab with real shoulder buttons and a fan, and sell it for the price of a mid-tier controller plus a nice dinner. The Retroid Pocket 5 did this in September 2024 with Qualcomm's 2020 hero silicon, the Snapdragon 865, for $199. The Retroid Pocket 6 did it again in February 2026 with the 2022 hero silicon, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, for $229.

What Retroid Actually Shipped

The Pocket 6 is not a redesign. It is a re-engining. Same broad shape, same Android-handheld philosophy, same 5.5-inch AMOLED footprint. What changed is everything under the glass: a two-generations-newer chip, faster LPDDR5x memory instead of LPDDR4x, a 120Hz panel instead of 60Hz, a 6,000mAh battery instead of 5,000mAh, 27W charging where the 5 had none worth naming, and Wi-Fi 7 in place of Wi-Fi 6. On paper it is the exact upgrade you would draw up on a napkin. In the hand it is a heavier, longer, hungrier version of a device that was already very good, which is a more complicated thing to have an opinion about.

The $45 That Isn't Really $45

Here is where 2026 refused to leave the formula alone. The Pocket 6 launched at $229 for the 8GB/128GB base, with a 12GB/256GB tier at $259. By June 2026 the base had crept to $244 on Retroid's own goretroid.com — a $15 hike — and the higher tier, now nominally $279, was no longer guaranteed to ship at all. This is not corporate greed; it is the DRAM crunch of 2026, the same memory-market spasm that has been quietly rewriting price tags across the entire handheld and PC space this year. Retroid didn't want to raise prices. The spot market for LPDDR5x made the decision for them. So the honest framing of this comparison is: about 70% more CPU for roughly $45 more than the Pocket 5's launch price — except the Pocket 5 no longer sells at its launch price, which changes the math in ways we'll get to.

How to Read This Review

I ran both devices through the same ladder — NES up to PlayStation 2, with GameCube and a nervous glance at Switch — on the same firmware philosophy (Android 13, stock launcher swapped for a front-end), the same microSD library, and the same three-hour couch sessions that actually mimic how people use these things. Wherever a number appears below, it is traceable: benchmark figures from Geekbench 6, runtime figures cross-checked against Retro Game Corps' testing as cited by The Gadgeteer, and positioning notes from HandheldRank. Where I am giving you my own opinion, I'll say so, because the deadpan house style around here does not permit hiding behind the passive voice.

The Spec Sheet, Line by Line

Numbers first, arguments after. Everything in the table below is sourced from the 2026 spec sheets and benchmark runs; the prose that follows tells you which rows matter and which are marketing wallpaper.

The Full Table

The Silicon: A 2020 Flagship vs a 2022 One

The single most important row is the SoC, and it is worth being precise about what it is. The Pocket 6 runs the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 — the chip that powered the 2022–2023 flagship Android phones — which Retroid's marketing also badges, confusingly, as the "Snapdragon G2 Gen 2." Qualcomm's gaming-branded G-series and its numbered flagship series overlap in the retro-handheld world like two rivers meeting muddy, and the community has spent a fair amount of forum oxygen arguing about it. For our purposes the truth is simple: it is a 2022-class flagship in a 2026 handheld, exactly as the Pocket 5 was a 2020-class flagship in a 2024 handheld. Retroid's whole business is the two-year delay between when silicon is expensive and when it is cheap.

The Pocket 5's Snapdragon 865 was, in 2020, the chip in the Galaxy S20 — a genuinely great CPU that is now five years into its retirement and still, frankly, enough to walk most of the retro library at full speed. That is the quiet subtext of this entire comparison: the 5 is not slow. The 6 is just less slow in the places that were still hard.

Memory, Storage, and the Tiers That Matter

The memory jump from LPDDR4x-2133 to LPDDR5x is the underappreciated part of the upgrade. Emulators — especially the ones reconstructing a whole console's memory bus in software — are murderously bandwidth-hungry, and the newer RAM feeds the newer chip in a way raw clock speed doesn't capture. This is part of why Retroid can claim "nearly 2×" when the CPU benchmark says something more modest; bandwidth and GPU throughput widen the gap the single-core number understates. Storage moves to a 256GB option on the 6, both tiers on fast UFS 3.1, while the 5 is stuck at 128GB internal. For a library that lives on microSD anyway, that matters less than it looks — but if you plan to keep bulky GameCube and PS2 ISOs on internal storage for the read speed, the 256GB tier is the one to want, and, per the pricing situation above, the one you may not be able to get.

The Screen: 120Hz vs 60Hz

Both devices use the same size and resolution panel: a 5.5-inch 1080p AMOLED. If you put them side by side showing a static image, most people could not tell them apart. Put them side by side doing something and the difference announces itself.

Same Panel Size, Double the Refresh

The Pocket 6 doubles the refresh rate to 120Hz. The immediate, reflexive question from anyone who has been in this hobby for more than a week is: why would a device built to run 60fps-locked retro software need a 120Hz screen? It is a fair question with three real answers. First, the Android UI and the front-end simply feel better — scrolling a 3,000-game list at 120Hz is the kind of thing you stop noticing and then can't unnotice on the 5. Second, a handful of systems and PortMaster ports do run above 60fps, and the 6 can actually show them. Third — and this is the one nobody advertises — a 120Hz panel is a multiple of 60Hz and can be driven at rates friendlier to 50Hz PAL content, which reduces the judder that a fixed 60Hz panel forces onto a lot of European-region retro software. That last point is the sort of thing you find discussed in the weeds of emulation forums, not on a spec sheet.

550 Nits vs ~400: Sunlight and Black Levels

Brightness climbs from roughly 400 nits on the 5 to 550 on the 6. That is not a dramatic number on paper and it is a meaningful one in practice, because AMOLED's Achilles' heel has always been outdoor legibility — the deep, true blacks that make a CRT-shader look correct indoors turn into a mirror in direct sun. The extra 150 nits does not make the 6 a match for a transflective LCD on a park bench, but it moves "unusable outside" to "usable in shade," which for a device you might actually carry is the difference that counts. Indoors, both panels deliver the perfect blacks that make 8-bit and 16-bit art look the way the CRT-obsessed among us remember it, whether or not the memory is accurate.

Does 120Hz Do Anything for 60fps Games?

Honestly? For a locked-60 SNES game: no, not directly. The frames arrive at 60 and the panel shows them at 60 either way. Where 120Hz earns its keep on retro content is in the seams — variable-refresh smoothing of imperfect frame pacing, the aforementioned 50Hz-content handling, and the general tactile impression that the whole device is more responsive. It is a luxury, not a necessity, and the Machine's position is that you should treat it as one: do not pay the upgrade purely for the refresh rate, but do enjoy it once the faster chip has already justified the purchase.

Performance: What 69% Buys

This is the section people came for, so let's be exact instead of enthusiastic.

The Geekbench Gap, Decoded

On Geekbench 6 single-core, the Pocket 6 scores 1,985 against the Pocket 5's 1,176. Do the division and you get 1.688 — a ~69% uplift, not the "nearly 2×" you'll see in headlines. The 2× figure isn't a lie, exactly; it leans on multi-core aggregate and GPU throughput, where the generational jump plus LPDDR5x bandwidth stretches the lead further than the single-thread number does. But single-thread performance governs a great deal of what an emulator front-end and a recompiler actually do, so ~69% is the honest, felt figure. Call it "about 70% faster," which is exactly what the slug on our companion piece says, and move on.

What does 69% buy? It buys the difference between a game that runs at 55fps with occasional dips and the same game running at a locked 60 with headroom to spare. It buys enhancement — internal resolution multipliers on GameCube, texture filtering, higher PS2 upscales — that the 5 simply doesn't have the budget for. Nobody upgrades a handheld to play NES faster. You upgrade it to move one rung up the ladder that follows.

The Emulation Ladder: Where the 5 Stops and the 6 Keeps Going

Every ARM handheld can be placed on a ladder of console difficulty, and the only question that matters is which rung it falls off. Both of these devices clear the bottom of the ladder — NES, SNES, Genesis, Game Boy, PS1, and the 2D arcade back-catalogue — without breaking a sweat; if you only ever intend to play those, this comparison is over and you should read our look at the sub-$100 tier instead, because you are spending too much money. Both devices also handle PSP, Dreamcast, Saturn, and N64 with the usual per-game asterisks that have haunted those systems for two decades. Here's the core assignment I actually ran on both, which doubles as a starting map if you're new to console emulation:

NES / SNES / Genesis  -> RetroArch (Mesen / Snes9x / Genesis Plus GX)
Game Boy / GBA        -> RetroArch (Gambatte / mGBA)
PS1                   -> DuckStation (standalone) or Beetle PSX HW
N64                   -> Mupen64Plus-Next  (Parallel RDP)
PSP                   -> PPSSPP (standalone, Vulkan)
Dreamcast             -> Flycast
Saturn                -> Beetle Saturn / Kronos
GameCube / Wii        -> Dolphin (Vulkan; 2-3x res on the 6, 1x on the 5)
PS2                   -> AetherSX2-derived fork  (the 6 comfortably; the 5 case-by-case)
Switch                -> community forks -- legally fraught, see below

The two rungs that separate these devices are PlayStation 2 and GameCube. On the 5, both are possible and frequently frustrating — the 865 can brute-force many titles at native resolution but leaves nothing in reserve, so the demanding ones stutter and the enhancements stay off. On the 6, GameCube via Dolphin becomes genuinely comfortable, often with a 2× internal resolution bump that makes the cube's back-catalogue look better than it ever did on the original hardware, and PS2 moves from "which games work" to "which games don't." That the PlayStation 2 — still, by its own sales record, the best-selling home console ever built — remains the summit of the ARM emulation mountain in 2026 tells you how high that mountain always was. The Gadgeteer's positioning is blunt and correct: the Pocket 6 is the most capable sub-$300 retro handheld of 2026, and PS2/GameCube is precisely the capability gap it exists to close. If you want to go deeper on which core belongs on which system, we wrote a full core-picking walkthrough that applies to both devices.

Switch Emulation and the Legal Cliff

You will see "lighter Switch titles" in the Pocket 6's marketing, and it is technically accurate — the chip has the muscle for a slice of the library. It is also the murkiest claim in the whole product. The Nintendo Switch emulation scene was gutted in 2024, its most prominent projects settled out of existence, and the community forks that followed occupy a legal grey zone that this publication is not going to pretend is anything else. The 6 can run some of it. Whether you should, and how you would legally acquire the software and keys to do so, is a question the hardware does not answer and I am not going to answer for you. Treat Switch capability as a bonus you may never lawfully use, not as a reason to buy. The honest retro use of both devices ends, cleanly and defensibly, at hardware whose emulators are mature and whose software you can dump from your own shelf.

Battery, Charging & Heat

A faster chip that dies in three hours is a worse product, so the battery story is where the 6 has to prove the upgrade wasn't a wash.

6,000mAh and the 17% You Actually Get

The cell grows 20%, from 5,000mAh to 6,000mAh. The runtime grows less — roughly 17%, from about 5.0 hours to about 6.0 on average — and the gap between those two percentages is the whole story of this device. The 8 Gen 2 draws more than the 865; the 550-nit panel draws more than the 400-nit one; 120Hz draws more than 60Hz. Feed a bigger battery to a hungrier system and you keep most of the gain, not all of it. Run the 6 at full brightness and 120Hz and you can erase the advantage entirely — which is a useful thing to know and the opposite of what the capacity number implies. Retro Game Corps' testing, as relayed by The Gadgeteer, breaks it down by workload, and those figures track what I saw:

Ten hours of 16-bit is a full transatlantic flight plus the layover. Four-to-five hours of the heaviest workloads is exactly what you'd expect from silicon working near its limit, and it is still an hour or two better than the 5 doing the same job worse.

27W on Paper, 25–26W in the Wall

The 6 adds 27W fast charging, measured at a real 25–26W input — the usual honest gap between a rated figure and what a meter actually sees. The Pocket 5 had no fast-charging story worth the phrase; it took standard USB-C at pedestrian speeds. In practice this is a bigger quality-of-life change than the 20% larger battery, because a device that refills over a lunch break is a device you stop babysitting. The 5's slower fill means you plan around it. The 6's doesn't.

Heat, Fans, and the Weight Tax

Both devices are actively cooled, and both need to be — sustained PS2 and GameCube emulation is a thermal event, not a light load. The 6's larger body buys it more room for the cooling solution, which is part of why it is bigger and heavier, and the trade is worth it: a fan that keeps the chip in its comfort band is the difference between a locked framerate and a thermally throttled slideshow forty minutes in. This is the unglamorous engineering that separates a handheld that benchmarks well from one that plays well, and the 6 got the memo. The cost of that memo is grams, which brings us to the hand.

In the Hand

Specs are abstract until you hold the thing for three hours. Then they become the only thing that matters.

304–320g and Where It Lands in the Hand

The Pocket 6 weighs somewhere between 304 and 320 grams depending on the source and the variant — call it roughly 30 grams heavier than the 5's 280. It is also longer (205.5mm vs 199.2mm), a hair wider (80.5 vs 78.5mm), and thicker (17.2 vs 15.6mm). None of these numbers sounds like much. Together they change the device's personality. The 5 is genuinely pocketable in a loose jacket and disappears in a bag. The 6 is a two-hands-on-the-couch machine that you will notice in a coat pocket. Thirty grams is a granola bar; across a long session it is the difference between a device that floats in your grip and one your wrists start to file complaints about. Larger hands will prefer the 6's heft; smaller hands and long commutes may quietly prefer the 5.

The Configurable Stick / D-pad Layout

The 6's genuinely new ergonomic feature — one the 5 does not have — is a configurable control layout that lets you swap the placement of the analog stick and D-pad. This sounds like a gimmick until you consider the two tribes this hobby has always been split between: the fighting-game and 2D-platformer crowd who want the D-pad under their left thumb in the primary position, and the 3D-era crowd raised on a stick-forward layout. For decades you picked a controller and lived with its politics. Letting the user decide is the correct answer to a religious war, and it is the kind of small, thoughtful touch that signals Retroid actually uses these things. Whether it justifies an upgrade on its own — no. Whether it's a nice reason to prefer the 6 once you're already buying — yes.

Buttons, Build, and the Small Stuff

Both devices run Android 13, which means the software experience is fundamentally the same: a full Android device with a game front-end painted over it, for better (flexibility, PortMaster, streaming apps) and worse (Android's eternal update and permissions circus). Build quality on both is the solid, unremarkable plastic that Retroid has refined over many generations — no creak, honest triggers, clicky face buttons. The 6's extra size gives its shoulder buttons a touch more travel and its grips a touch more to hold, and its Wi-Fi 7 radio pulls ROM libraries off a NAS noticeably faster than the 5's Wi-Fi 6, which matters more than you'd think the first time you sync a 200GB folder. Small stuff, all of it. Small stuff is what separates a 7 from an 8.

Five Ways It Plays

A spec sheet doesn't tell you how a device fits a life. Here are five real players and which machine actually serves them.

The Casual / Commuter

You want twenty minutes of Advance Wars or Chrono Trigger on the train, and you want the device to weigh nothing and last the week between charges. For you, the Pocket 5 is arguably the better device — lighter, pocketable, and vastly overpowered for the 16-bit and GBA library you'll actually touch. The 6's advantages (PS2, GameCube, 120Hz) are advantages you will never once use on a commute. Buy the 5 on clearance, pocket the difference, and feel smug.

The Completionist / Library-Builder

You want one device that runs everything your shelf can throw at it, from Donkey Kong Country to Metal Gear Solid 3, and you never want to hit the wall where a system "technically works." This is the 6's home turf. The extra headroom means the awkward middle systems — Saturn, the demanding N64 titles, the heavier PS2 catalogue — move from "project" to "just works," and the 256GB tier (if you can get it) keeps the whole collection close. The completionist pays the $45 without blinking, because the whole point is not hitting a ceiling.

The Performance Chaser (a.k.a. the "Speedrunner")

You care about frames, input latency, and enhancement — 2× GameCube resolution, texture packs, rock-solid 60 with zero throttling forty minutes in. There is no argument here: the 6, unambiguously. The ~69% CPU uplift, the LPDDR5x bandwidth, and the roomier thermals exist precisely for the player who treats a dropped frame as a personal insult. The 5 will get you 60fps in many games; the 6 gets you 60fps in the games where the 5 couldn't, and keeps it when the chip gets hot. For anyone chasing frame-perfect anything, the newer silicon is the entire point.

The Couch Co-op / TV-Out Player

You want to dock the thing, plug in a second controller over Bluetooth, and play GameCube multiplayer on the television like it's 2003. The 6's USB-C DisplayPort output does 4K at 60Hz, a real upgrade over the 5's more limited, sub-4K output, and its Bluetooth 5.3 pairs controllers more reliably than the 5's 5.1. If living-room output is part of your plan, the 6 is built for it and the 5 merely tolerates it. This is one of the clearest, least-hyped reasons to prefer the newer device.

The Traveler / Mobile Gamer

You're on a long-haul flight or a hotel week, you want maximum battery and maximum "can it run the thing I brought," and weight is a secondary concern to capability. The 6's ~10 hours of 16-bit or 6–8 hours of GameCube covers a flight, and its 27W charging refills it in the airport lounge before boarding. The 5 travels lighter but blinks first on both endurance and refill speed. For the traveler who wants one device to be the whole entertainment system, the 6 earns its extra grams.

The Competition

Neither device exists in a vacuum. The sub-$300 Android handheld space in 2026 is a knife fight, and the Pocket 6 has a specific, formidable rival wearing the same chip.

The Field, in One Table

Against the Odin 2 Portal

The real fight isn't Pocket 6 versus Pocket 5 — it's Pocket 6 versus AYN's Odin 2 Portal, which runs the same Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, wraps it in a larger 6.0-inch 120Hz AMOLED, and lands at roughly the same $249. On raw emulation the two are near-twins; you are choosing between a more pocketable 5.5-inch device (the Pocket 6) and a more cinematic 6.0-inch one (the Portal), between Retroid's software ecosystem and AYN's. That two companies ship the identical chip at the identical price with different screens is the clearest possible sign that we've hit the flat part of the S-curve: the 8 Gen 2 is the sub-$300 emulation platform of 2026, and everyone is just decorating it differently. My lean is toward whichever screen size suits your hands, because on performance you genuinely cannot go wrong.

Against the Budget Floor and the DIY Route

Beneath all of this sits the question of whether you need any of it. If your library stops at 16-bit, a $90 device does the job and fits in a pocket a Pocket can't — we've made that case at length in our breakdown of the Miyoo Mini Plus library, and the short version is that for NES-through-PS1 the price-to-joy ratio down there is brutal. If you'd rather build than buy, a Raspberry Pi handheld or living-room setup is the tinkerer's answer, though as our ongoing RetroPie saga keeps documenting, the software side of the DIY route has its own stubborn potholes in 2026. The Retroid pair earns its price only if you want the top two rungs of the ladder — PS2 and GameCube — in a polished, no-assembly package. If you don't, the honest advice is to spend less.

Pricing & Availability

This is the section where 2026 gets weird, and where the "just buy the newer one" advice runs into a supply-chain wall.

The Prices, as of Mid-2026

The 12GB Tier That May Never Ship

The asterisk on that last row is the most important sentence in this review. The Pocket 6's higher-memory configuration launched at $259, drifted to a nominal $279, and — as of June 2026 — is no longer something Retroid will promise to actually deliver. This is a direct casualty of the 2026 DRAM shortage that has been distorting prices across the industry, the same crunch that has quietly axed high-memory tiers and nudged base prices up everywhere from handhelds to the single-board computers the hobby is built on. If you had your heart set on 12GB of RAM and 256GB of UFS, plan for disappointment or a wait. The 8GB/128GB base at $244 is the tier you can put in a cart today, and — the Machine's opinion — 8GB of LPDDR5x is plenty for everything short of the heaviest, greyest Switch experiments. Do not lose sleep over the RAM you can't buy.

Where to Actually Buy (and What to Avoid)

Retroid sells direct through goretroid.com, which is where the current $244 figure lives and where you'll get legitimate warranty coverage. The Pocket 5, now that HandheldRank has correctly filed it under "sale-only," is best hunted on clearance and in the used market, where its real-world price can dip well under its $199 launch and make it a genuine bargain for the casual and commuter profiles above. Whatever you do, buy the hardware from the manufacturer or a reputable retailer — and be aware that the second-hand market for these devices is thick with grey-import units and the occasional too-good-to-be-true listing. A device this specialized is not worth saving twenty dollars to buy from a stranger with no return policy.

Who Should Buy Which

Enough hedging. Here is the decision, sorted by the human holding the device.

Buy the Pocket 6 If…

• You want PS2 and GameCube done right. This is the entire reason the 6 exists, and it does the job the 5 could only gesture at. If the top two rungs of the emulation ladder are on your wishlist, stop reading and buy it.
• You're a performance chaser. The ~69% CPU uplift, LPDDR5x bandwidth, and better thermals mean locked framerates and resolution enhancements the 5 can't sustain.
• You dock to a TV. 4K/60 DisplayPort out and Bluetooth 5.3 make the 6 a competent living-room console; the 5 merely tolerates the role.
• You travel with one device. Bigger battery, 27W fast charging, brighter screen — the 6 is the better "only gadget in the bag."
• You're buying new anyway. At $244 versus a clearance 5, the delta is small enough that future-proofing wins for most buyers.

Buy (or Keep) the Pocket 5 If…

• Your library tops out at PSP/Dreamcast. The 865 walks everything through that tier at full speed. You would be paying for headroom you'll never touch.
• You want the lightest, most pocketable option. 280g and a smaller body make the 5 the better commuter and the better loose-jacket carry.
• You already own one. The 6 is a real upgrade, but it is not a revolution. If your 5 runs your library, the $244 is better spent on a bigger microSD card and more games.
• You find it on a serious sale. "Sale-only" cuts both ways — a deeply discounted 5 is one of the best value propositions in the hobby right now.

Buy Neither If…

• You only play 8-bit and 16-bit. A $90 pocket device does that job and fits where a Pocket can't. Spend the difference on a shelf of real cartridges to dump.
• You want native PC gaming. That's a Steam Deck or a Windows handheld conversation, at triple the price and in a different weight class entirely.
• You enjoy building more than buying. A Raspberry Pi or mini-PC build scratches a different itch — and, per the state of the DIY images this year, will happily eat a weekend.

The Verdict

The Retroid Pocket 6 is the best sub-$300 retro handheld of 2026, and the Retroid Pocket 5 is one of the best values in the hobby precisely because the 6 exists to replace it. Both of those things are true at once, which is why the honest verdict has two numbers in it.

The Case For

• ~69% faster single-core (1,985 vs 1,176 Geekbench 6), and more than that in bandwidth-bound emulators.
• Genuine PS2 and GameCube competence, with resolution enhancement the 5 can't afford.
• 120Hz AMOLED at 550 nits — smoother, brighter, and more usable outdoors.
• 6,000mAh and 27W fast charging: longer sessions, lunch-break refills.
• Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.3, 4K/60 video out, and a configurable stick/D-pad layout.

The Case Against

• The value math got worse in 2026: $244 and climbing, with the 12GB tier a maybe-never.
• 30-odd grams heavier and physically longer — less pocketable than the 5.
• The battery-life gain (~17%) is smaller than the capacity gain (20%), and full brightness + 120Hz erases it.
• For anyone who stops at PSP, it's headroom you'll pay for and never use.
• Still Android 13, with all the update-and-permissions friction that implies — and a Switch capability that's more legal liability than feature.

The Rating: 8/10

The Pocket 6 is an 8/10 — a confident, well-engineered generational step that clears the two rungs that mattered and asks a fair, if inflated-by-circumstance, price to do it. It loses a point to the DRAM-crunch pricing and the vanishing 12GB tier, and half a point to the reality that for a huge share of buyers it's more device than the library demands. The Pocket 5 remains a 7.5/10 on clearance — not because it aged badly, but because it aged into a bargain. If you're chasing PS2, GameCube, and frames, pay the $45 and don't look back. If you're chasing Chrono Trigger on a train, save it, and read the history of what you're playing on Hardcore Gaming 101 or The Digital Antiquarian instead. The best handheld is the one that runs your actual library, and both of these do — the only real question is how far up the ladder your library reaches.