Retroid Pocket 6 vs 5 (2026): 8.5/10, +69% CPU

There are two ways to review a pair of handhelds that share a screen size, a chassis philosophy, an operating system, and roughly the same silicon family. One is to pretend the $45 between them is a chasm. The other is to tell you exactly where the money goes, which frames drop when, and which of these two devices you should actually put in a bag. We are going to do the second one.

The Retroid Pocket 5 shipped in September 2024. The Retroid Pocket 6 went up for pre-order on October 27, 2025 and reached wider retail in early 2026. In between, the entire handheld market got mugged by a memory-price crisis that killed one Retroid model outright and rewrote the price tags on the survivors. So this is not a clean generational comparison. It is a comparison conducted during a hardware recession, which is the only honest way to write it in 2026.

The Verdict, Up Front

We are not going to make you scroll past six tables to learn which one to buy. The Retroid Pocket 6 is the better handheld, it earns an 8.5 out of 10, and if you are the kind of person who wants GameCube and Wii to run properly, it is the only correct answer in Retroid's catalogue right now. The Retroid Pocket 5 earns an 8 out of 10 and remains a genuinely good machine that has been quietly orphaned by its own successor.

The one-sentence answer

Buy the RP6 if your emulation ambitions go past sixth-generation consoles or if you care about high-refresh Android games; buy the RP5 if PS2 and PSP are your ceiling and you would rather keep the $45. Neither device is a bad purchase. One of them is simply built for a taller wall.

What the $45 actually is

At sticker, the gap is the RP5's $199 launch price against the RP6's current $244 — the origin of the "$45" that every comparison, including our own earlier take on whether the 8 Gen 2 is worth $45, keeps circling. That $45 buys a newer 4nm chip, double the screen refresh, a fifth more battery, faster RAM, active cooling, and Wi-Fi 7. It does not buy a better panel, a newer Android version, or the ability to run PlayStation 3. We will litigate every one of those clauses below.

The two-second disqualifier

If you have read anywhere — and the internet is full of it — that the RP6 runs "nearly all PS3 and Xbox 360-era games," close that tab. It does not. The RP6 is a sixth-generation-and-earlier machine with a strong PS2 and GameCube ceiling and a handful of Switch titles on a good day. RPCS3 and Xenia are slideshows on it. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something, probably an affiliate link.

The Lineage: From 865 to 8 Gen 2

To understand what changed, you have to know what these two chips are, because the marketing name — "Snapdragon 865" versus "Snapdragon 8 Gen 2" — obscures a three-year gap in fabrication, architecture, and driver maturity.

Where the RP5 came from

The Retroid Pocket 5 runs the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865, internally the SM8250 "Kona," built on a 7nm process with an Adreno 650 GPU. This was a 2020 flagship — the chip inside the Galaxy S20 and the LG V60. By the time Retroid dropped it into a handheld in late 2024, it was a mature, cheap, well-understood part with five years of Android driver work behind it. That maturity is exactly why it emulates so cleanly: the Adreno GPU has open-source Vulkan drivers (the Turnip project) hardened by the entire phone ecosystem. Old silicon, in emulation, is not a liability. It is a feature.

What changed in 2026

The Pocket 6 moves to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, the SM8550 "Kalama," on a 4nm N4P process. The CPU layout is a Cortex-X3 prime core at 3.2GHz, four Cortex-A715 performance cores at 2.8GHz, and three Cortex-A510 efficiency cores at 2.0GHz. The GPU is an Adreno 740 running around 680MHz with Vulkan 1.3 and hardware ray tracing that no emulator will ever use. This is a 2023 flagship part — the chip in the Galaxy S23 — which means it, too, has years of Turnip driver optimization. That last point matters more than the clock speeds, and it is the entire reason the RP6 can attempt Switch emulation while cheaper handhelds with newer, unsupported GPUs cannot.

The RAMpocalypse subtext

None of this happened in a vacuum. Through 2025 and into 2026, DRAM fabs shifted capacity toward high-bandwidth memory for AI servers, and the price of LPDDR5X spiked hard enough to reshape the entire budget-handheld category — the same crunch we tracked while comparing the RP6 against the now-discontinued Pocket G2. Retroid's own words, delivered through Android Authority's Andy Walker on March 2, 2026: "The recent surge in memory pricing has reached a level that we are unfortunately unable to absorb." Steam Deck HQ's Shawn Wilkins was blunter: "The increasingly difficult RAM shortage continues to impact hardware companies across the industry." Every price in this review is a price during a shortage. Remember that.

The Spec Sheet, Line by Line

Here is the whole thing on one page. Read it, then let us tell you which rows are load-bearing and which are marketing.

Spec	Retroid Pocket 5	Retroid Pocket 6
Released	September 2024	October 2025 (pre-order Oct 27)
SoC	Snapdragon 865 (SM8250, 7nm)	Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 (SM8550, 4nm)
GPU	Adreno 650	Adreno 740 (~680MHz, Vulkan 1.3)
RAM	8GB / 12GB LPDDR4x	8GB / 12GB LPDDR5x
Storage	128GB UFS 3.1 + microSD (to 2TB)	128GB / 256GB UFS 3.1 + microSD
Display	5.5" 1920x1080 AMOLED	5.5" 1920x1080 AMOLED
Refresh rate	60Hz	120Hz
Battery	5,000mAh	6,000mAh
Charging	No fast charge	27W fast charge
Weight	280g	~320g (some listings 304g)
Dimensions	199.2 x 78.5 x 15.6 mm	210.4 x 86.6 x 17.2 mm
Wireless	Wi-Fi 6 / BT 5.1	Wi-Fi 7 / BT 5.3
Video out	USB-C DP (4K30; 4K60 via dock)	USB-C 3.1 DP (4K60)
Controls	Hall sticks + analog L2/R2	Hall sticks + analog L2/R2, removable caps
Cooling	Passive	Active fan (copper spreader, rear intake)
OS	Android 13	Android 13 (LineageOS 23.2 official)
Geekbench 6 (single-core)	1,176	1,985

The rows that matter

The SoC, RAM type, refresh rate, battery, and cooling rows are the real upgrade. The 8 Gen 2 with LPDDR5x is what unlocks GameCube at 3x and Wii at all; the fan is what lets it hold those clocks; the 6,000mAh cell is what keeps it alive while it does. Those five rows are the $45.

The row everyone oversells

Look at the display rows. Both are the same 5.5-inch 1920x1080 AMOLED. The only difference is 60Hz versus 120Hz. This is not a "better screen" — it is the identical panel at double the refresh. That distinction is worth making because reviewers love to describe the RP6's display as a leap, and Brandon Saltalamacchia at RetroDodo is right that "a 5.5\" AMOLED display makes the device feel incredibly modern" — but it is the same statement about both devices. If you want to know why 120Hz on a machine that mostly renders 60fps content is nice-to-have rather than transformative, we made the general argument in our breakdown of why 144Hz wins and the returns collapse after. It smooths the launcher and native Android titles. It does not make Twilight Princess run at 120fps.

The row that's a wash

Operating system: both ship Android 13. The RP6 does not get you a newer OS out of the box — a fact worth stating because the G2, oddly, shipped Android 15. If you were expecting the newer, pricier Retroid to also be the more current one, it is not. We will return to that in the software section, because LineageOS complicates it in the RP6's favor.

The '50% Faster' Lie

Somewhere in the churn of 2025 comparison content, the RP6 acquired a reputation for being "about 50% faster" than the RP5. That number is wrong in both directions, and getting it right tells you something real about how these chips behave.

What the number actually is

On Geekbench 6, the RP6's Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 posts a single-core score of 1,985. The RP5's Snapdragon 865 posts 1,176. That is a 69% increase, call it 70% — not 50. The lazy "50%" figure undersells the CPU gap by nearly twenty points. Retro Game Corps' Russ, testing the 8GB unit, framed the value cleanly: "Even at $245 it's the most affordable Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 handheld on the market." The compute is real, and it is what a demanding recompiler-heavy emulator like a PS2 or GameCube core actually leans on.

Why synthetic isn't felt

And yet — a 69% single-core benchmark bump does not mean your games run 69% better. A SNES game is capped at its original framerate on both machines; it will feel identical. A PSP game at 4x internal resolution runs great on both. The 69% only becomes visible where the RP5 was already at its limit: the moment a PS2 title needed more headroom than the 865 could give, the 8 Gen 2's extra compute is the difference between a locked framerate and a stuttering one. Benchmarks measure the ceiling. Most of your library lives well below it. This is why a device with a 70% higher score can still feel "the same" for 80% of what you actually play.

The GPU and the driver footnote

GPU-side, the Adreno 740 is roughly twice the Adreno 650 — a bigger multiple than the CPU gap, and the reason internal-resolution scaling (3x GameCube, 4x Dreamcast) is where the RP6 pulls decisively ahead. But raw GPU throughput is only half the story. Both Adreno parts benefit from mature open-source Turnip Vulkan drivers inherited from the Android phone world. That driver maturity is precisely what lets the RP6 attempt Switch emulation at all. As HandheldRank put it comparing the RP6 to the driver-starved G2: "The RP6 wins here, and it's not close. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 has years of driver optimization from the Android phone ecosystem." A fast GPU with immature drivers is a paperweight for emulation. The RP6 does not have that problem.

The Emulation Ceiling, System by System

This is the section that should decide your purchase, because it is the only one that describes what you will actually see on the screen. Emulation, for the record, is legal — the Ninth Circuit settled that in Sony Computer Entertainment v. Connectix, 203 F.3d 596 (2000), where the court called a clean-room PlayStation emulator "modestly transformative" and protected it as fair use. What you put in it is your own affair. What preserving these libraries is for is the kind of deep computing history chronicled at places like the Digital Antiquarian — these are cultural objects, not just ROMs.

PS1, PSP, Dreamcast, Saturn: a tie you should ignore

For the fifth generation and its handheld cousins, both devices are overkill. PS1 via DuckStation, PSP via PPSSPP, Dreamcast via Flycast — all run at 4x internal resolution on the RP6 and comfortably on the RP5. Saturn, historically the emulation gremlin, is playable on the RP5 and comfortable on the RP6. If this paragraph describes your entire library, the RP6's chip is a solution to a problem you do not have. A $54 Miyoo Mini Plus, whose ceiling is PS1, would arguably serve you better and cheaper — different tool, different job.

PS2 and GameCube: where the money appears

Here the gap opens. On the PS2, the RP6 runs most of the library at 1.5x to 2x native resolution — Saltalamacchia confirms "1.5x and 2x native" — with God of War II pushing near 2.5x and Gran Turismo 4 playable with minor tweaks. The RP5 does PS2, but nearer native, with less margin before a busy scene chokes. GameCube via Dolphin is the clearest divide: the RP6 holds a stable 3x internal resolution across hard titles; the RP5 manages the easier ones — Wind Waker, Luigi's Mansion, Melee — at lower settings. Techxreviews called the RP6's PS2 work "a significant achievement" in "such a small form factor," and it is.

The F-Zero test and the PS3 fantasy

The canonical GameCube torture test is F-Zero GX — Sega Amusement Vision's arcade-derived monster on the Triforce board, still the game emulator developers reach for when they want to break something. The RP6 runs it, along with Rogue Squadron. The RP5, generally, does not, at least not cleanly. On Wii, the RP6 is practical for the big ones — Super Mario Galaxy, Xenoblade Chronicles, Donkey Kong Country Returns — a whole generation the RP5 barely touches. Switch is a lottery on the RP6: select titles, driver-dependent, not a promise. And PS3 or Xbox 360? A slideshow on both, full stop. If cycle-accurate purity is what you are after rather than resolution scaling, that is a different philosophy entirely — the domain of FPGA hardware like the MiSTer Multisystem 2, not an Android SoC.

SYSTEM        EMULATOR         RP5 CEILING       RP6 CEILING
------        --------         -----------       -----------
PS1           DuckStation      4x  (native)      4x+ (native)
PSP           PPSSPP           3-4x              4x
Dreamcast     Flycast          native-3x         4x
Saturn        Kronos/Yaba      playable          comfortable
PS2           NetherSX2*       native-1.5x       1.5-2x (GoW2 ~2.5x)
GameCube      Dolphin          easy titles ~1x   3x (F-Zero GX, Rogue Sq.)
Wii           Dolphin          rare, low         practical (Galaxy, Xeno.)
Switch        Yuzu-lineage     no                SELECT titles, driver-dep.
PS3 / X360    RPCS3 / Xenia    no                slideshow (do not buy for this)

* AetherSX2 was discontinued; the community fork is what people actually run.

Software, Android 13, and LineageOS

Both machines ship Android 13, which in mid-2026 is not a new operating system. Retroid's software update history is, to put it charitably, thin. This is the one area where the RP6 has recently and decisively pulled ahead of the RP5, and it happened after launch.

The stock experience

Out of the box, both run Android 13 with Retroid's own front-end layered on top. It is fine. It boots, it runs your frontend of choice, it plays store games. Neither device's stock software is a reason to choose it over the other, and Retroid's track record means you should not expect the stock build to improve much. As 9to5Google noted, "given Retroid's poor history with software updates, you probably won't get many." That is the polite version.

LineageOS 23.2 changes the math

On July 1, 2026, the RP6 gained official LineageOS support. LineageOS 23.2 is based on Android 16 — four full Android releases ahead of the stock Android 13 build — and brings, per the porting coverage, "significant performance increases, arguably better battery longevity." For a device whose manufacturer will not update it, a community OS that vaults it four versions forward is a genuine, quantifiable upgrade to longevity. This is a real point in the RP6's column that did not exist when the earlier RP5-versus-6 comparisons were written.

Where that leaves the RP5

LineageOS development for the RP5 (and the G2, Nova, and various AYN Odins) is underway but not yet official as of this writing. So today, the RP6 is the one you can flash forward four Android generations with a supported build, and the RP5 is the one you wait on. If custom-OS longevity matters to you — and on abandonware-prone hardware it should — this widens the gap the spec sheet understates.

Pricing in the RAM Crunch

Pricing on these two devices is not a number, it is a timeline, and it is the most 2026 thing about the entire comparison. Follow the arrows.

Config	Launch price	August 2026	Status
RP5 8GB / 128GB	$199 (Sept 2024)	—	Superseded by refresh
RP5 12GB / 128GB (refresh)	—	$209	Current base (post Jul 14 2026)
RP6 8GB / 128GB	$229 (Oct 2025)	$244	Current base
RP6 12GB / 256GB	$279	—	Discontinued Mar 2, 2026
RP6 12GB / 128GB (returned)	—	$279	Limited; half the storage

The 8GB timeline

The RP6 8GB opened at $209 for pre-order, settled to $229 at retail, and was raised to $244 on March 2, 2026 as the memory crisis bit. The Gadgeteer confirmed the sticker on June 12, 2026 with the headline "Retroid Pocket 6 Is Now $244, Four Months In." That is the price you pay today. It is a $15 mid-life increase on a device that never went on a real sale — the opposite of how hardware pricing is supposed to move.

The 12GB tragedy

The premium 12GB/256GB tier launched at $279 and was discontinued outright on the same March 2 date. When a 12GB configuration returned in June 2026, it came back as 12GB/128GB at the same $279 — more money, or rather the same money, for half the storage. That is not a typo. In a RAM shortage, the memory got so expensive that Retroid could only bring the RAM back by cutting the flash and holding the price. Russ at Retro Game Corps mourned it accurately: the 12GB model "provides more headroom for PC gaming, and it's a bummer that it's discontinued."

The RP5's quiet inversion

And now the twist that makes this article worth writing in August 2026 rather than reprinting January's. After July 14, 2026, Retroid refreshed the RP5 to a 12GB base and raised it $10 to $209. Read that against the table: the older, cheaper RP5 now ships with more RAM (12GB) than the newer, pricier RP6's base (8GB), because the RP6's 12GB got eaten by the crunch. The budget pick out-specs the flagship on the one number everyone panic-bought over. The 8 Gen 2 is still the better chip and the LPDDR5x is still faster memory — but the marketing tidiness of "pay more, get more" is dead, and the RAMpocalypse killed it.

The Competition: Odin, Nova, a Dead G2

Neither Retroid exists alone. The 8 Gen 2 handheld bracket is crowded, and two of the most relevant rivals are Retroid's own.

Device	SoC	Screen	Battery	Price (Aug 2026)
Retroid Pocket 6	Snapdragon 8 Gen 2	5.5" 1080p 120Hz AMOLED (16:9)	6,000mAh	$244
Retroid Pocket 5	Snapdragon 865	5.5" 1080p 60Hz AMOLED (16:9)	5,000mAh	$209
AYN Odin 2 Portal (Base)	Snapdragon 8 Gen 2	7" 1080p 120Hz OLED	8,000mAh	$249
Retroid Pocket Nova	QCS8550 (IoT 8 Gen 2)	4.5" 1280x960 120Hz AMOLED (4:3)	5,000mAh	$229
Retroid Pocket G2	Snapdragon G2 Gen 2	5.5" 1080p 60Hz AMOLED	5,000mAh	$219 (discontinued)
Steam Deck OLED (512GB)	Zen 2 / RDNA 2 (x86)	7.4" 1280x800 90Hz OLED	—	$789

The Odin 2 Portal

AYN's Odin 2 Portal Base is the RP6's closest rival: same Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, same Adreno 740, a larger 7-inch 1080p 120Hz OLED, and a huge 8,000mAh battery — for $249, five dollars more than the RP6. The trade is size. The Odin is a two-handed slab; the RP6 is genuinely pocketable. If battery life and screen real estate top your list and pocketability does not, the Odin is the better machine. If you want the most portable 8 Gen 2 device, the RP6's $244 sticker makes it, in Russ's words, "the most affordable Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 handheld on the market."

The in-house rivals

Retroid competes with itself twice. The Pocket Nova, at $229, runs the QCS8550 — described by Notebookcheck's Onawole as "an IoT version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2" — in a 4:3 1280x960 body. It is the same silicon class in a different shape, and Saltalamacchia handed it a startling 9.7/10 as "the 4:3 endgame handheld," writing that "4:3 games have never looked this good on a portable retro handheld." If your library is pre-widescreen, the Nova versus the RP6 is a real decision — same chip, $244 versus $229, aspect ratio as the deciding vote. The Pocket G2, meanwhile, is a cautionary tale: discontinued on March 16, 2026, its raw GPU close to the RP6 but hamstrung by immature drivers on an unsupported Adreno. GamesRadar's headline wrote its epitaph: "Weeks after the Steam Deck disappeared, Retroid discontinues Pocket G2 'due to ongoing fluctuations in memory pricing.'" Retroid's recommended replacement for it? The Pocket 5. The company is now pointing budget buyers back at the older device in this very comparison.

The Steam Deck shadow

And looming over all of it is the Steam Deck OLED, an x86 machine that plays actual PC games and runs everything these Androids run and more — for $789 after its own May 2026 price hike, and at a size and weight that is not remotely pocketable. It is a different category. But it is worth naming, because the ceiling of Android emulation is the floor of what the Deck does casually. If PS3 and modern PC gaming are non-negotiable, no Retroid is your device.

How It Plays: Five Scenarios

Specs are potential energy. Here is the kinetic version — five real ways these devices get used, and how each one holds up.

The casual and the commuter

The casual player — an hour of SNES, GBA, or PS1 after work — will not perceive a meaningful difference between these two devices, and should buy on price and battery. Both nail this content effortlessly; the RP6's 120Hz makes the menus prettier and its 6,000mAh cell lasts longer (8–10 hours of SNES/GBA versus the RP5's roughly 5,000mAh worth), but the games are identical. The mobile / commuter user, playing on a train with a battery pack in the bag, tilts toward the RP6 for its 27W fast charge and larger cell — the RP5 has no fast charging at all, which on a device you top up in transit is a daily annoyance. Both are pocketable; the RP6 is 40g heavier and a centimeter taller, noticeable in a jacket pocket but not disqualifying.

The completionist and the speedrunner

The completionist grinding through a GameCube or Wii backlog — the 100-hour Xenoblade, the full F-Zero GX grand-prix ladder — needs the RP6 and nothing else. This is the exact workload the RP5 cannot sustain: the 865 runs out of headroom on Dolphin's harder titles, and the RP6's 3x-native GameCube and practical Wii support is the difference between a playable backlog and a stuttering one. The speedrunner is a more interesting case. Runners care about input latency and frame consistency, not resolution. Here the RP6's active cooling matters more than its clocks — a passively cooled RP5 will thermal-throttle in a long PS2 or GameCube session and introduce the exact frame-time variance a runner cannot tolerate. The RP6's fan holds the clock. For anything sub-PS2, both are equally deterministic and the RP5 is fine.

The couch co-op session

For local co-op, the deciding feature is video out, and here the internet has been lying about the RP5. Both devices output over USB-C DisplayPort — the RP5 does 4K30 natively and 4K60 through the official dock; the RP6 does 4K60 directly. Neither is "missing" video out, despite what several comparison sites claim. Plug either into a TV, pair two Bluetooth controllers, and you have a couch GameCube or PS1 multiplayer box. The RP6 is the better docked machine because it can push higher internal resolutions to a big screen without choking, but the RP5 is entirely capable of the job for lighter systems.

Who Should Buy Which

Translating all of the above into purchase advice. Find yourself in this list.

Buy the RP6 if...

• You want GameCube and Wii done properly. This is the single strongest reason. 3x-native GameCube and practical Wii are the RP6's whole pitch, and the RP5 cannot match it.
• You play in long sessions. The active fan and 6,000mAh battery are built for the completionist and the marathoner, not the ten-minute dabbler.
• You care about a device that ages well. Official LineageOS 23.2 (Android 16) support means you can flash it four OS generations forward — a real hedge against Retroid's non-existent update cadence.
• You want high-refresh Android games too. The 120Hz panel and 8 Gen 2 make it a competent modern Android gaming device, not just an emulator.

Buy the RP5 if...

• Your ceiling is PS2 / PSP / Dreamcast. The RP5 does all of it well, and the RP6's chip is money spent on headroom you will never touch.
• You want the most RAM for the least money. The refreshed 12GB RP5 at $209 out-specs the RP6's 8GB base on memory — the RAMpocalypse's strangest bargain.
• You value a smaller, lighter body. At 280g and 15.6mm thick, the RP5 is the more genuinely pocketable of the two.

Buy neither if...

• PS1 is your actual ceiling. A $54 Miyoo-class device does that job for a quarter of the price.
• You need PS3, 360, or real PC games. That is a Steam Deck OLED or a gaming PC, not an Android handheld — no amount of 8 Gen 2 changes it.
• You want cycle-accurate preservation. That is FPGA territory, a different philosophy with a different price and a different point.

Pros, Cons, and Fan Noise

The ledger, device by device, with the caveats reviewers tend to bury.

Retroid Pocket 6

Pros: The best emulation performance in Retroid's pocketable line; stable 3x GameCube and practical Wii; 120Hz AMOLED; 6,000mAh with 27W fast charge; active cooling that holds clocks; Wi-Fi 7; official LineageOS support; genuinely the most affordable 8 Gen 2 handheld on the market at $244.

Cons: The active fan is the caveat nobody mentions until they own one. Techxreviews found the "'Sport' fan mode is effective at cooling, [but] it generates audible noise that users will definitely notice." It ships Android 13 out of the box despite being the newer device; the 12GB tier is a discontinued mess; and it is 40g heavier than its predecessor. And there is Saltalamacchia's structural complaint — he scored it 8.4/10 as "a perfect, yet slightly dull Android handheld," arguing "Retroid have played it too safe to turn heads" and that "a $250 device should have something unique." The RP6 is excellent and completely predictable. Those are not the same virtue.

Retroid Pocket 5

Pros: Excellent value, especially refreshed to 12GB at $209; silent passive cooling; lighter and smaller; identical AMOLED panel; the same strong PS1/PSP/Dreamcast/Saturn performance as its successor; Retroid's own officially recommended budget pick.

Cons: The 865 runs out of road at GameCube and Wii; no fast charging; 60Hz; passive cooling throttles in long high-end sessions. Phil Retro's verdict at HandheldRank is the honest one: "In a vacuum... still a fantastic gaming machine. The problem isn't the device; it's the neighborhood it lives in." It has been "outpaced by its own shadow."

The shared caveats

Both inherit Retroid's poor software-update history, both ship Android 13, both require you to source and configure your own emulation front-end and — legally — your own games. Notebookcheck's summary of the RP6 applies to the pair: reviewers "praise its performance and value, but knock some of its design choices." Neither is a plug-and-play console. They are enthusiast tools that reward setup and punish the impatient.

Final Verdict and Scores

Two good devices, one clear winner, and a price war neither of them started.

Retroid Pocket 6 — 8.5 / 10

The RP6 is the most capable pocketable emulation handheld Retroid makes, and at $244 it is the cheapest way into the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 club. It runs GameCube and Wii the way the RP5 wishes it could, it holds its clocks with a fan, it lasts longer, and LineageOS gives it a future its maker will not. It loses half a point for the fan noise, the discontinued 12GB shambles, and Saltalamacchia's fair charge that it is a touch dull — a device that does everything right and nothing surprising. That is a very high 8.5, and for most buyers reading this, it is the one to get.

Retroid Pocket 5 — 8 / 10

The RP5 is not obsolete; it is out-positioned. As a PS2-and-below machine it is flawless, and the 12GB refresh at $209 gives it a bizarre RAM-per-dollar advantage over its successor. It loses to the RP6 only where the RP6 was built to win — the sixth-generation ceiling — and it wins on price, weight, and silence. Eight out of ten, no apologies, and a genuine recommendation for anyone whose backlog stops at the PlayStation 2.

The bottom line

Spend the $45 — or, in the current market, the $35 street gap — if and only if GameCube, Wii, or heavy PS2 is on your list, or if you want the longest-lived, highest-refresh device Retroid sells. Keep the money if your ceiling is lower; the RP5 will play everything you own and pocket more easily doing it. The 8 Gen 2 is worth it. It is simply not worth it for everyone, and the difference between those two sentences is this entire review.