Retroid Pocket 6 vs G2 2026: $244 vs a Dead $219

Every few weeks a fresh batch of comparison pages materializes to pit the Retroid Pocket 6 against the Retroid Pocket G2, complete with tidy spec tables, launch-date columns, and a breezy verdict about which is the smarter buy for the money. There is a problem with all of them. One of these two handhelds cannot be bought. It has not been buyable since spring. What follows is the comparison those pages should have written: honest about the silicon, honest about the benchmarks, and honest about the fact that half of it is an autopsy.

The Corpse in the Room

Let us dispense with the pleasantry that this is a fair fight. It is not. As of this writing — August 2026 — you cannot buy a Retroid Pocket G2. Retroid pulled it from sale on March 16, 2026, roughly five months after the first units shipped, and the storefront has read “Sold Out” ever since. So when a dozen comparison sites line the Pocket 6 up against the G2 as though they were two products a rational person might choose between at a counter, understand what you are reading: a beauty contest in which one contestant is in the ground.

The one-sentence answer

Buy the Retroid Pocket 6. At $244 it is the more powerful, longer-lived, better-supported, and — critically — purchasable of the two. The G2 was the more interesting object and, on paper, the shrewder value at $219. None of that survives the discovery that the “Add to Cart” button no longer functions. A dead product at any price is more expensive than a live one, because the price of the dead product is your time spent failing to acquire it.

Why this comparison is mostly an autopsy

This is not a hedge to make the article shorter. The G2's specifications, its performance envelope, and its personality are all worth understanding — because the reasons it died are the same reasons it was fascinating, and because plenty of readers arrive here having found a G2 on a resale listing and wanting to know whether to pounce. So we will treat the G2 seriously as an engineering artifact. We will simply refuse to pretend it is on sale, and we will refuse to recommend that you organize your life around chasing one.

What changed on March 16, 2026

Retroid's own statement was terse: the G2 was “temporarily discontinued” due to “ongoing fluctuations in memory pricing,” to return “when market conditions allow.” In the same breath the company recommended that shoppers buy the Pocket 5 instead — an extraordinary thing for a manufacturer to say about its own catalog. GamesRadar summarized the moment with a headline that has aged into an epitaph: “Weeks after the Steam Deck disappeared, Retroid discontinues Pocket G2 'due to ongoing fluctuations in memory pricing'.” We will return to the timeline in detail. For now, hold onto the date. It is the single most important fact in this entire comparison, and it is the one every spec-table aggregator conveniently omits.

Spec Sheet Showdown

Here is the full accounting, corrected against what these devices actually are rather than what the sloppier aggregators claim. A note before you read it: several published spec sheets get the Pocket 6's dimensions and launch date wrong, and we flag those below the table.

The full table

Specification	Retroid Pocket 6	Retroid Pocket G2
Preorder opened	Oct 27, 2025	Oct 28, 2025
Street price (8/128)	$244 (listed $249)	$219 — discontinued Mar 16, 2026
SoC	Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 (SM8550, 4nm)	Snapdragon G2 Gen 2
GPU	Adreno 740 (~680MHz, Vulkan 1.3)	Adreno A22
RAM	8GB LPDDR5X (12GB variant discontinued)	8GB LPDDR5X
Storage	128GB UFS 3.1 + microSD	128GB UFS 3.1 + microSD
Display	5.5″ AMOLED, 1920×1080, 120Hz	5.5″ AMOLED, 1920×1080, 60Hz
Battery	6,000 mAh / 27W	5,000 mAh
Video output	USB-C DisplayPort, 4K60	USB-C, 1080p60
Wi-Fi / Bluetooth	Wi-Fi 7 / BT 5.3	Wi-Fi 6 / BT 5.4
OS out of box	Android 13 (LineageOS 23.2 now official)	Android 15
Cooling	Active fan	Passive
Sticks / triggers	Hall-effect sticks + analog L2/R2	Hall-effect sticks + analog L2/R2
Dimensions	210.4 × 86.6 × 17.2 mm	199.2 × 78.5 × 15.6 mm
Weight	~320 g (some listings 304 g)	280 g
Geekbench 6 (single-core)	~1,985	~1,780
Status / score	On sale; RetroDodo 8.4/10	Discontinued / sold out

Reading the inversions

The interesting thing about this table is that it does not read like a straightforward good-better hierarchy. The cheaper, deader device wins three rows. The G2 shipped with Android 15 against the Pocket 6's Android 13, and it carries the newer Bluetooth 5.4 against the RP6's 5.3. The Pocket 6 answers with the newer Wi-Fi 7. These inversions are not accidents; they reflect the fact that the two devices were built around different system-on-chip generations with different reference platforms. The G2's newer chassis came with a newer Android BSP. It did not come with the one thing that actually matters for emulation, which we will get to shortly and which is the reason the whole spec sheet is a trap.

Where the published spec sheets lie

Two corrections, because precision is the entire brand here. First, the commonly copied dimension of “205.5 × 80.5 mm” for the Pocket 6 is wrong; the device is meaningfully larger at 210.4 × 86.6 × 17.2 mm and around 320 grams. It is a chunk. Second, the frequently repeated framing that the Pocket 6 “launched January 2026” while the G2 “launched October 2025” manufactures a three-month gap that did not exist. Both devices opened preorders one day apart — the RP6 on October 27, 2025 and the G2 on October 28, 2025. January 2026 is merely when the Pocket 6 reached wider retail shipping. The two were revealed as siblings, not as a device and its successor. That distinction matters for understanding why the G2 never found a place to stand.

The Silicon: 8 Gen 2 vs a Chip With No Drivers

If you read only one section, read this one. The processor difference between these two handhelds is not the story the raw numbers tell. It is the story the drivers tell, and it is the reason a chip that benchmarks within 8–10% of its rival can lose the actual games by a landslide.

Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 — a known quantity

The Pocket 6 runs the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 (SM8550, codename Kalama), a 4nm N4P part with a Cortex-X3 prime core at 3.2 GHz, four A715 performance cores at 2.8 GHz, three A510 efficiency cores at 2.0 GHz, and the Adreno 740 GPU running around 680 MHz with full Vulkan 1.3 support. This was a flagship phone chip in 2023. That heritage is the entire point. Millions of Android phones shipped with the Adreno 740, which means the open-source Turnip Vulkan driver — the Mesa driver that emulators lean on to avoid the glitches in Qualcomm's stock blobs — is mature, tested, and battle-hardened against exactly the workloads a GameCube or Switch emulator throws at it. Retro Game Corps' Russ noted the value bluntly on X: “Even at $245 it's the most affordable Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 handheld on the market.” That sentence is doing a lot of quiet work, and the word carrying the load is Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, not affordable.

Snapdragon G2 Gen 2 and the Adreno A22 — the great unknown

The G2 runs the Snapdragon G2 Gen 2, an eight-core part clocked between roughly 1.9 and 2.8 GHz with the Adreno A22 GPU. On paper this is a purpose-built gaming chip, newer than the 8 Gen 2, and in raw GPU throughput it lands only about 8–10% behind the Adreno 740 while roughly doubling the old Snapdragon 865 in the Pocket 5. That should be a triumph. It was, instead, the device's undoing. HandheldRank described the problem precisely in its head-to-head: the G2 uses “a brand new, gaming-focused chip that almost nobody has access to yet.” Nobody having access means nobody writing drivers for it.

The driver catch-22

Here is the trap in full. Emulators that stress a mobile GPU — Dolphin for GameCube, the various Switch emulators — frequently glitch on Qualcomm's stock proprietary drivers and require the open-source Turnip driver to render correctly. Turnip is exquisitely tuned for the Adreno 700 series because that hardware is everywhere. On the G2's Adreno A22, Turnip is immature: enable it to fix the visual glitches and performance collapses; leave it off and the glitches remain. The RP6 sidesteps the entire dilemma because its Adreno 740 has, in HandheldRank's words, “years of driver optimization from the Android phone ecosystem.” Their verdict on Switch specifically: “The RP6 wins here, and it's not close.” There is a second, uglier symptom. Because the G2's SoC is so new, HandheldRank reported that “some major Android apps straight-up don't work. Netflix games? Nope. Certain big Android games? Nope. Fortnite? Nope.” A brand-new chip is a liability when your device is, fundamentally, an Android phone that plays games. The lesson generalizes well beyond Retroid: in emulation, driver maturity beats raw silicon, which is exactly why purpose-built FPGA hardware like the MiSTer Multisystem 2 chases cycle-accuracy through a completely different door.

Benchmarks: What the Numbers Say

Numbers first, then the caveat that makes most of them irrelevant. Three independent sources — a head-to-head, a full RP6 review, and a full G2 review — converge on the same conclusion from different angles.

Synthetic: Geekbench and GPU deltas

In Geekbench 6 single-core, the Pocket 6 posts around 1,985, roughly 69% ahead of the Pocket 5's 1,176 — a genuinely large generational CPU jump that we broke down separately in our Pocket 6 versus Pocket 5 CPU analysis. The G2 lands near 1,780 single-core: about 50% clear of the old Snapdragon 865, but roughly 10% behind the 8 Gen 2. On the GPU side the story compresses further: the Adreno A22 doubles the 865's graphics throughput and sits, as noted, only 8–10% behind the Adreno 740. If you stopped reading the numbers here, you would conclude these are near-peers separated by a rounding error. You would be wrong, and the reason is not in the numbers at all.

The 8–10% that doesn't matter

A synthetic benchmark measures the chip running a controlled workload with a mature driver stack. It does not measure Dolphin fighting the Adreno A22's immature Turnip build at 3x internal resolution. The real-world spread between these devices on demanding emulators is far wider than 8–10%, because the G2 pays a driver tax that no synthetic test bills it for. HandheldRank's summary is the honest translation of the benchmark spread: “Demanding games that stutter on the G2 will hit better framerates on the RP6.” The synthetic gap says 10%. The playable-versus-stutter gap says something much larger, and it only ever moves in the Pocket 6's favor.

Three sources, one conclusion

RetroDodo's Pocket 6 review by Brandon Saltalamacchia landed the device at 8.4/10, praising that it “packs some serious power in a very small formfactor” while running PS2 “at 1.5x and 2x native resolution” and GameCube “at 3x native resolution.” On the other side, Noah Kupetsky's G2 review at Steam Deck HQ found the G2 handled PSP at 4x and PS2 at 2.5x, but called PS3 “not enjoyable,” and — tellingly — concluded the device was “let down only by the next handheld coming so soon.” The next handheld was the Pocket 6, its sibling by one day. Three reviews, three methodologies, one verdict: the G2 was a strong PS2/GameCube performer that the Pocket 6 out-ran everywhere it counted.

Real-World Emulation, System by System

Synthetic scores are a proxy. Here is what the two devices actually do with the libraries people care about, generation by generation.

8-bit through Dreamcast: both are overqualified

For everything up to and including the sixth console generation's lighter end, this comparison is a formality. NES, SNES, Genesis, Game Boy through GBA, PS1, and Dreamcast all run flawlessly on either device — the Pocket 6 chews through PS1, PSP, and Dreamcast at roughly 4x resolution with power to spare, and the G2 is not far behind. If your ambitions top out here, you never needed either of these Snapdragon parts; a $54 Miyoo Mini Plus clears the 16-bit-through-PS1 bar for a fraction of the money. You buy a Pocket 6 or a G2 for the ceiling, not the floor.

PS2 and GameCube: the real battleground

This is the tier that justifies the price of admission, and it is where the two devices are closest. The Pocket 6 runs PS2 at 1.5x–2x native (God of War II lands around 2.5x, Gran Turismo 4 is playable with minor tweaks) and GameCube at a clean 3x native — including the enthusiast's stress test, F-Zero GX, long the canonical “hardest GameCube game to emulate” thanks to its 60fps determinism and Amusement Vision's arcade-grade physics. Rogue Squadron, historically another Dolphin nightmare, also runs. The G2 reaches the same PS2/GameCube neighborhood — Kupetsky measured PS2 at 2.5x — which is precisely why some reviewers framed it as the value pick for exactly this workload. If a buyer's entire world was PS2 and GameCube, the G2 delivered most of that ceiling for $25 less. That framing was defensible in October 2025. It is a museum piece now.

Switch, PS3, and the ceiling

Above GameCube the devices diverge hard. Wii is practical on the RP6 (Super Mario Galaxy, Xenoblade Chronicles, Donkey Kong Country Returns). Switch is where the Pocket 6 pulls decisively ahead — select titles run driver-dependent, and “driver-dependent” is the operative phrase, because it is the mature Adreno 740 Turnip stack doing the heavy lifting that the G2's Adreno A22 cannot yet match. Neither device is a seventh-generation machine: PS3 (RPCS3) and Xbox 360 are a slideshow on both, and any spec page implying otherwise is selling you a fantasy. If you genuinely want PS3-and-up in your hands, you are shopping for a different, more expensive class of device, or you are building a small-form-factor PC and installing a dedicated emulation OS like Batocera.

Display, Battery, and Ergonomics

The Pocket 6 wins the spec war on the two panels that matter and loses the one contest the G2 was quietly better at: being a pleasant object to hold.

120Hz versus 60Hz

Both devices carry a 5.5-inch 1920×1080 AMOLED panel, which is a genuinely excellent display class at this price and, as Saltalamacchia noted, “makes the device feel incredibly modern.” The difference is refresh rate: the Pocket 6 runs the panel at 120Hz, the G2 at 60Hz. For the retro libraries these devices exist to play, most of which are locked at 30 or 60fps, the practical benefit of 120Hz is limited to menu fluidity, native Android apps, and a handful of unlocked-framerate emulator scenarios. It is a real advantage but an overstated one. Do not let a refresh-rate number be the reason you chase a discontinued device or, conversely, the reason you feel smug about the live one.

6,000 versus 5,000 mAh

This is the Pocket 6's cleanest, least-disputable win. Its 6,000 mAh cell with 27W charging is the largest battery Retroid has shipped in this form factor, against the G2's 5,000 mAh. In practice the RP6 delivers roughly 4–5 hours of PS2/GameCube work, 8–10 hours of SNES and GBA, and around 2.5–3 hours flat-out at maximum draw. That 20% capacity advantage is the kind of spec that quietly improves every session you will ever have, and it is not the sort of thing a firmware update can hand the G2 after the fact.

The G2 is the better object in the hand

Now the honest counterpoint, because The Machine does not shill. The G2 is the nicer thing to hold. At 199.2 × 78.5 × 15.6 mm and 280 grams, it is shorter, narrower, thinner, and about 40 grams lighter than the ~320-gram, 210.4mm Pocket 6. It also runs passively cooled — silent — where the RP6 carries an active fan whose “Sport” mode is, per multiple reviews, audibly present. For pick-up-and-play sessions, commuting, and anyone with smaller hands, the G2 was the more comfortable, more pocketable, quieter device. It is a genuine loss that this is the one that died. Ergonomics were the G2's argument, and it was a good one.

The Death of the G2: A Timeline

You cannot properly compare these devices without understanding how one of them ended. The G2's death was not a failure of the product. It was a failure of the market it was born into.

The timeline

Preorders opened October 28, 2025, at an introductory $199, settling to a $219 retail price. Reviews were warm. Then, on March 16, 2026, at 9 PM EDT, Retroid announced the G2's discontinuation and simultaneously raised prices on the Pocket Classic. The store listing flipped to “Sold Out” within minutes. Roughly two weeks earlier, on March 2, Retroid had already raised the Pocket 6's 8GB price by $15 to $244 and discontinued the RP6's 12GB/256GB configuration entirely. The whole lineup was under the same pressure at the same time; the G2 was simply the model that pressure crushed.

The RAM crisis

The cause was the 2026 memory-pricing spike — LPDDR5X prices surging as fabs shifted capacity toward high-bandwidth memory for AI servers. Retroid's public language was consistent across both events. On the Pocket 6 price hike, the company told Android Authority: “The recent surge in memory pricing has reached a level that we are unfortunately unable to absorb.” Steam Deck HQ's Shawn Wilkins put the industry context around it: “The increasingly difficult RAM shortage continues to impact hardware companies across the industry.” This was not Retroid mismanaging a product. It was a small manufacturer with thin margins getting squeezed by a commodity market it had no leverage over. Notebookcheck, RetroDodo, and PC Guide all corroborated the reasoning independently.

The lineup problem: it never fit

There is a second cause of death, subtler than the RAM crisis and, in the long run, more damning. The G2 never had a clear place to stand. Priced at $219, it sat in a $20 sliver between the Pocket 5 below it and the Pocket 6 above it, with a value proposition that required a shopper to weigh driver immaturity against a $25 saving. Retro Handhelds' Andrew named it directly: “Part of the problem with the Pocket G2 is that it never really seemed to 'fit' anywhere in Retroid's lineup.” When margins collapsed and Retroid had to cut something, the model with the least-defensible position on the shelf was the obvious sacrifice. A device squeezed into a $20 gap is a device with no room to survive a shock.

Pricing and Availability

The single row of this comparison that overrides all the others. One of these prices is real. The other is a historical footnote attached to an out-of-stock listing.

The pricing table

Model	Config	Preorder	Retail	Now (Aug 2026)	Status
Pocket 6	8GB / 128GB	$209	$229	$244 (listed $249)	On sale
Pocket 6	12GB / 256GB	$259	$279	—	Discontinued Mar 2, 2026
Pocket 6	12GB / 128GB	—	—	$279	Returned Jun 2026 (storage halved)
Pocket G2	8GB / 128GB	$199	$219	Sold out	Discontinued Mar 16, 2026
Pocket 5 (fallback)	8GB / 128GB	—	$199	~$209 (12GB base, Jul 2026)	On sale

The $25 that isn't real

Comparison pages love to headline the “$25 gap” between the $244 Pocket 6 and the $219 G2, and in European pricing the equivalent premium ran to roughly €30 — small enough to make the G2 look like a bargain. That gap is a fiction. You cannot pay $219 for a G2. You can pay $244 for a Pocket 6, or you can pay a resale-market premium for a used G2 that may exceed the Pocket 6's price outright, for a device with a worse chip, smaller battery, slower panel, and no manufacturer support pipeline. The “value” framing inverts the moment supply hits zero. A $25 saving on a product that does not exist is a $244 expense on the product that does.

What “sold out” means for you

Retroid's language was “temporarily discontinued,” with a promise to return “when market conditions allow.” Do not plan around that sentence. Memory pricing has not eased as of August 2026, the G2 has not returned, and a device that never fit the lineup is not a strong candidate for revival even if RAM costs normalize. If you want the experience the G2 offered, the actionable move is to buy something you can actually receive. That is the Pocket 6, or — following Retroid's own counsel — the Pocket 5.

Who Each One Is Actually For

Use cases, because “which is better” is the wrong question when only one is available. Here is how the decision actually breaks down by buyer.

Buy the Pocket 6 if…

You want Switch or Wii emulation. This is not close. The Adreno 740's mature Turnip drivers make the RP6 the only sane pick above GameCube, and it is “the safer long-term bet if you care about Switch and PC emulation,” in HandheldRank's phrasing. You want the longest battery. The 6,000 mAh cell is a 20% capacity lead that pays out every session. You want the device to still be supported in two years. The RP6 now has official LineageOS 23.2 support — an Android 16 base against the stock Android 13, jumping the software forward four full releases and, with it, performance and battery longevity that Retroid's own update cadence was never going to deliver.

You wanted the G2 for…

The smallest, lightest, quietest device. At 280 grams, passively cooled, the G2 was the superior handheld object — and this is the one legitimate reason to hunt a used unit, if and only if you find one at or below the Pocket 6's price. A pure PS2/GameCube machine on a budget. The G2 hit that ceiling for $25 less when it was on sale; that argument expired on March 16. Newer out-of-box Android. Android 15 versus 13 mattered to a small slice of buyers who wanted the latest app compatibility — ironically undercut by the fact that the G2's new SoC broke several big Android apps outright.

Buy neither if…

Your ceiling is PS1 or 16-bit. Save the money; a Miyoo-class device does that job for under $60. You want PS3, 360, or serious PC emulation. Neither of these is your device — look at a handheld PC or a dedicated build. You are cross-shopping the Pocket 5. Retroid literally recommends the Pocket 5 as the G2's replacement, and at ~$209 it is the value play; we weighed it directly against the Pocket 6 in our Pocket 5 versus Pocket 6 breakdown, and the short version is that the 8 Gen 2 is worth the $45.

Migration Guide: Escaping a Dead Product

Two migration scenarios matter here: you already own a G2 and are wondering whether to jump, or you were about to buy one and just learned it is gone. Here is how to handle both without losing your saves or your patience.

If you already own a G2

Keep it. The G2 did not get worse on March 16; it simply stopped being sold. It remains a perfectly good PS2/GameCube-and-below handheld, and its ergonomics still beat the Pocket 6's. There is no urgency to migrate. The only reasons to move are the ones this article has already listed: you want Switch, you want the bigger battery, or you want a device with a live software-support pipeline. If none of those apply, you own a fine machine and the market's opinion of its stock status is not your problem.

If you were about to buy a G2

Redirect to a device you can receive. Use this decision tree, which is the entire buying logic of this comparison compressed into monospace:

Do you already own a G2?
├─ Yes → Keep it. It didn't get worse. Jump only for
│         Switch, battery, or long-term OS support.
└─ No  → Do you want the G2 *specifically*?
         ├─ Yes → It's sold out. Only buy used at or below
         │         the Pocket 6's $244, never above it.
         └─ No  → Match your priority below.

Priority                     Buy
------------------------     ---------------------------
Switch / PC emulation ...... Pocket 6  (Adreno 740 + Turnip)
PS2 / GameCube ceiling ..... Pocket 6 or Pocket 5
Smallest / lightest / quiet  G2 (280g) — only if you find one
Longest battery ............ Pocket 6 (6,000 mAh)
Cheapest live option ....... Pocket 5 (~$209)
Latest software support .... Pocket 6 (LineageOS 23.2)

Moving your microSD and saves

Both devices are Android handhelds with microSD slots, which makes migration mercifully simple. Your ROM library lives on the card; move the card, or clone it to a larger one, and your games come with it. Save states and battery saves live inside each emulator's data directory — in RetroArch, that is the saves and states folders under the RetroArch data path, plus your per-core and per-game config overrides. Copy those directories from the old device to the new one before you launch anything, sync your frontend's scraped artwork and gamelist files alongside them, and your playlists survive intact. Because both run standard Android, there is no proprietary save format to fight; this is a file-copy operation, not a conversion. The one thing that does not transfer is muscle memory — the Pocket 6 is a physically larger device, and your thumbs will need a day.

Pros and Cons, Tabulated

The full ledger for each device, so you can see exactly what you gain and give up either way.

Retroid Pocket 6

Pros	Cons
Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 with mature Adreno 740 Turnip drivers	~320 g and physically large — the chunkier device
120Hz 5.5″ AMOLED	Ships on Android 13 (dated, though LineageOS fixes it)
6,000 mAh / 27W — biggest battery in the class	Active fan is audible in Sport mode
Wi-Fi 7, 4K60 video out, official LineageOS 23.2	“Plays it too safe” — no standout design flourish
Best-in-class Switch and Wii emulation	12GB/256GB config was discontinued; $15 costlier since March
Actually in stock at $244	Same PS2/GameCube ceiling as far cheaper devices

Retroid Pocket G2

Pros	Cons
280 g, compact, best-in-hand ergonomics	Discontinued and sold out — you cannot buy it new
Passively cooled — completely silent	Brand-new SoC with immature Adreno A22 drivers
Ships on Android 15, Bluetooth 5.4	60Hz panel and smaller 5,000 mAh battery
Strong PS2 (2.5x) and GameCube performance	1080p-only video output; Switch/PC emulation notably worse
Was $25 cheaper when it existed	Some big Android apps (Fortnite, Netflix games) don't run
Genuinely good hardware that reviewed well	“Never really fit” the lineup; no support pipeline

The tiebreakers

Strip away availability for a second and the honest tiebreakers are these: the Pocket 6 wins on power, battery, panel, and software longevity; the G2 wins on size, weight, and silence. In a world where both were on sale at $244 and $219, a buyer whose ceiling was PS2/GameCube and who valued pocketability could rationally pick the G2 and be happy. That world ended on March 16, 2026. Reintroduce availability and every tiebreaker collapses into one: the Pocket 6 is the device you can own.

The Machine's Verdict

A comparison is supposed to end in a recommendation. This one is easier than most, because the market already made the decision and merely neglected to tell the aggregators.

The recommendation

Buy the Retroid Pocket 6 at $244. It is the most affordable Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 handheld on the market, it out-emulates the G2 everywhere above GameCube, it carries a larger battery and a faster panel, it now has an official LineageOS pathway that outlives Retroid's own patch cadence, and it is sitting in stock while you read this. Ban at Retro Handhelds asked the plainest possible question in his G2 review — “If it were my money, would I buy the G2? No.” — and that was written while the G2 was still on sale. Post-discontinuation, the answer is not merely no. It is that the question has no valid form.

The Pocket 5 asterisk

If $244 is more than you want to spend, take Retroid's own advice and buy the Pocket 5 at around $209. It is the value pick the G2 was supposed to be, it is in stock, and it does not carry the driver liability of a bleeding-edge SoC. Saltalamacchia's gentle knock on the Pocket 6 — that “a $250 device should have something unique,” that Retroid “played it too safe to turn heads” — is fair criticism. But safe is exactly what you want from the device you are going to load a decade of ROMs onto, and safe is precisely what the G2's exciting-but-unproven silicon was not.

The legal footnote

Because The Machine knows the law as well as the lore: none of this hardware is legally interesting, and that is the good news. Emulation itself is settled U.S. law — in Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. v. Connectix Corp., 203 F.3d 596 (9th Cir. 2000), the Ninth Circuit called a PlayStation emulator “modestly transformative” and protected it as fair use. The Snapdragon in either Retroid is a legal device. Your exposure, as ever, lives entirely in the ROMs and BIOS files you feed it. Buy the Pocket 6, supply your own dumps, and the only thing you will have to answer for is the $244 — which, unlike the G2's phantom $219, is a price you can actually pay.