Retroid Pocket 3
(Currently $120 direct from GoRetroid)
So, I was one of the suckers that bought the Retroid Pocket 3 when it was first announced; the Retroid Pocket 3+ came out two months later at a similar price point with better internals. Like other Retroid Devices, it takes some work to set up and doesn’t come pre-loaded, but it’s still really powerful for the price point.
They went a little off-book with the design so the controls are a little odd: You’ve got a PS1 button layout, with two analog sticks at the bottom, a D-pad on the left and ABXY cluster on the right. You have two sets of trigger buttons. The Start and Select buttons are a rocker on the top of the device, with the volume buttons on the left and a menu button on the right.
The system is running Android, which has its issues but I see some great advantages if you’re willing to put the effort into it. It doesn’t do “pick up and play” nearly as well as the various Linux/custom firmware devices. Right out of the box, most older emulation is using stock RetroArch, which I’ve noted isn’t my favorite. The realization that the Android emulators packed in with the RG552 were available on the Play Store was a lovely revelation, because I really like the flexibility those offer and the ease of using cheats and save states versus RetroArch. (Especially when you have a touchscreen to work with, which this does.) Snes9x EX+ is free and I installed it right away, but the full set (published by Robert Broglia) is on the RG552 so I got a “try before you buy” experience with them (NES.emu, GBA.emu, MD.emu). I ended up buying NES.emu and MD.emu, then MyBoy and MyOldBoy because they have a few features I think are superior.
In terms of things you actually want the greater power for: This has M64Plus FZ for N64 emulation. It’s beautiful and smooth. Tut the controller setup isn’t optimized for this device; I needed to assign a custom control scheme to avoid needing virtual buttons. PPSSPP remains the best PSP emulator on any platform I’ve seen; and ditto to DraStic for DS. Both run great; and the screen is wide enough that side-by-side of two DS screens is a decent way to play. Disappointingly, I had some real issues with DuckStation, specifically playing Symphony of the Night, when the visuals would spontaneously go black for a few seconds or the action would have slowdown. I’m guessing it’s a software/settings issue, because much weaker devices can play that fine. I did some preliminary tests with Dolphin (Gamecube) and Citra (3DS), but the internals here aren’t really strong enough to run those well.
In terms of non-emulation, this is running Android so you can go into the Play Store and get whatever you want. I tried Adventures of Mana and Romancing SaGa 3 and they are lovely to play with physical controls. (You are kinda locked into landscape view, though.) I also tried out Steam Link from my gaming PC, and that works great, I love it.
It occurred to me as I was testing this that I hadn’t done a proper test of the battery life of the RP2+, especially playing on Snes 9x. Turns out it can get about 7 hours of SNES playtime on a single charge over a three-day weekend. (Which is very good; that’s better than the RG350.) My only previous test had been having a second controller and HDMI out hooked up for playing 2-player via Retroarch, and that only got me two hours and change.
I was on target to get 5-7 hours of battery life when I did my first test of the RP3, but then dropped from 68% to dregs in a little over an hour of playing StarTropics on NES.emu. (I’m guessing something else was burning power in the background.) I’m going to run another test in airplane mode.
I was also inspired to finally build my “ideal rom collection”, as I have multiple directories filled with old roms, new roms, hacks, translations and the like for every system. And most of the handhelds I’ve purchased have come with their own rom collections, often a scattershot mix of duplicate titles and Japanese-language games that I don’t need. Because the Retroid Pockets don’t come with any roms, they’re a clean slate for putting on my ideal list. (And the emulators I’m using support “recent” and “favorite” lists, so putting 400 games in alphabetical order is perfectly sensible.) It turns out that my combined list of SNES games is about 550 files, dwarfing any other system’s list. I haven’t finished a NES list (I have the entire NOINTRO set, plus various hacks and things) but I need to decide whether I want the ~100 games I actually care about, or a full list of all ~1,000 games I could conceivably play.
The thing is, in my current ecosystem, the RP3 is directly competing against the RG552: Powerful enough to play N64 and PSP, wide enough to play DS, and with the Android emulators that make it easy to use cheats on the fly. Besides the weird Start/Select locations, the RP3 is more ergonomic. Because it’s just running plain Android and the wi-fi works, I can use the Play Store to get Android games on it (and Steam Link works, too). And it charges from a standard USB-C instead of the C-to-C high-power. Assuming the battery life issue doesn’t become an ongoing problem, I can see this getting longterm use. I’m not dealing with the upgrade kit this time, but I suspect that if you’re buying new you’ll want to jump straight to the 3+.
