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The NeoGAF Open Handheld Thread
- Thread starter Bullet Club
- Start date
Rodolink
Member
glad you got it, enjoy! i always carry mine in my jacket.The thing is here and it's pretty cool. I never had snes, ps1 or any of the consoles prior aside from bootleg nes.
So this is very interesting. Crazy deal too. You get sd card full with games, carrying case and even sd usb adapter
next thing I'm looking forward is the retro pixel pocket
Last edited:
Killer8
Member
I got a Miyoo Mini Plus last week from AliExpress and have been having a blast.
First of all I am very pleasantly surprised by the overall build quality. The plastics don't feel cheap at all and my main concern with the buttons ended up being unfounded. They feel great and i'd go as far as saying that the shoulder buttons feel better than my Analogue Pocket's. The d-pad is also surprisingly serviceable - how a $70 handheld can do what Xbox still can't after two decades, I will never know.
The IPS screen generally looks nice. Don't go in expecting top tier OLED quality, but it's bright and colorful and when you see retro games running on it pixel perfectly, it's hard not to be a little impressed. The only negative point was the horribly muffled built-in speaker but I found a cheap mod on Etsy which swaps it out for a better one. As a side note, the packaging it came in was slick and they are kind enough to throw in an SD card and cables, although I personally threw mine away to use a 128gb Samsung SD.
At first I was disappointed with the performance of the device. Lots of frame drops, screen tearing, ugly filters on the games. I heard that the aftermarket Onion OS was practically a mandatory install though, so that was my first port of call. I'm happy to report that it resolves basically every issue. Once i'd done a bit of tinkering with each Retroarch core (only a bit as OnionOS does most of it for you), I now have great emulation of NES, SNES, Game Boy Color, GBA, Genesis + Sega CD, NeoGeo + CD and PlayStation 1. It's capable of other pre-PS1 consoles too but those are personally what interest me. There are some very minor performance dips on PS1 but a lot of that is present on a real PS1 too. Mild overclocking via Retroarch seems to resolve most of it so I don't think it's a case of the device being underpowered.
The game changing feature though (and in a lot of ways I mean that literally) is OnionOS's Game Switcher. This functions like Quick Resume on Xbox Series X. With the press of the home button on the Mini, suddenly I can scroll through snapshots of exactly where I left off in a dozen games. Right now I have: Pepsiman, Gunstar Heroes, Metal Slug, Crash Bandicoot 2, Tetris Blast, Super Mario Bros 3, Wario Land 4, Silent Hill, F-Zero, Chrono Trigger and Advance Wars, all running and ready to dive back in. The feature is fast and to put it into perspective you can swap between games in less than 5 seconds.
The question people may ask is: why did I buy this device? After all, I have numerous handhelds. I've poured money into PSPs and IPS modded GBAs and an Analogue Pocket. I'm a certified Switch soy boy™. The simple answer is that the Miyoo Mini Plus does a lot of things really well. It's a swiss army knife of retro systems. The convenience of just being able to pick it up when I have a spare 15 minutes and resume exactly where I left off in seconds cannot be overstated. It punches well above it's weight, yet it's also cheap, so if I lose it I won't feel particularly bad. Just throw it in your bag and head out, which is what handheld gaming should be about.
First of all I am very pleasantly surprised by the overall build quality. The plastics don't feel cheap at all and my main concern with the buttons ended up being unfounded. They feel great and i'd go as far as saying that the shoulder buttons feel better than my Analogue Pocket's. The d-pad is also surprisingly serviceable - how a $70 handheld can do what Xbox still can't after two decades, I will never know.
The IPS screen generally looks nice. Don't go in expecting top tier OLED quality, but it's bright and colorful and when you see retro games running on it pixel perfectly, it's hard not to be a little impressed. The only negative point was the horribly muffled built-in speaker but I found a cheap mod on Etsy which swaps it out for a better one. As a side note, the packaging it came in was slick and they are kind enough to throw in an SD card and cables, although I personally threw mine away to use a 128gb Samsung SD.
At first I was disappointed with the performance of the device. Lots of frame drops, screen tearing, ugly filters on the games. I heard that the aftermarket Onion OS was practically a mandatory install though, so that was my first port of call. I'm happy to report that it resolves basically every issue. Once i'd done a bit of tinkering with each Retroarch core (only a bit as OnionOS does most of it for you), I now have great emulation of NES, SNES, Game Boy Color, GBA, Genesis + Sega CD, NeoGeo + CD and PlayStation 1. It's capable of other pre-PS1 consoles too but those are personally what interest me. There are some very minor performance dips on PS1 but a lot of that is present on a real PS1 too. Mild overclocking via Retroarch seems to resolve most of it so I don't think it's a case of the device being underpowered.
The game changing feature though (and in a lot of ways I mean that literally) is OnionOS's Game Switcher. This functions like Quick Resume on Xbox Series X. With the press of the home button on the Mini, suddenly I can scroll through snapshots of exactly where I left off in a dozen games. Right now I have: Pepsiman, Gunstar Heroes, Metal Slug, Crash Bandicoot 2, Tetris Blast, Super Mario Bros 3, Wario Land 4, Silent Hill, F-Zero, Chrono Trigger and Advance Wars, all running and ready to dive back in. The feature is fast and to put it into perspective you can swap between games in less than 5 seconds.
The question people may ask is: why did I buy this device? After all, I have numerous handhelds. I've poured money into PSPs and IPS modded GBAs and an Analogue Pocket. I'm a certified Switch soy boy™. The simple answer is that the Miyoo Mini Plus does a lot of things really well. It's a swiss army knife of retro systems. The convenience of just being able to pick it up when I have a spare 15 minutes and resume exactly where I left off in seconds cannot be overstated. It punches well above it's weight, yet it's also cheap, so if I lose it I won't feel particularly bad. Just throw it in your bag and head out, which is what handheld gaming should be about.
El Muerto
Member
Kinda wish i got the Miyoo but it was never in stock. Really wanted wifi for scraping game art. Got tired of waiting so i bought the RG35xx and installed Garlic OS which is basically a clone of Onion OS and it's pretty great as it does what you describe the miyoo does. I recently installed Koriki on my RG35xx and can play 3d systems like the Nintendo DS on it now. I also bought a Powkiddy X55, installed JelOS and it gives you the option to start a new game or quick resume. Device can also play up to Dreamcast but n64 performance is poor. Thinking about getting a Retroid Pocket 2s for PS2 and GC games but hate android.
Killer8
Member
The original Miyoo Mini was hard to find apparently because of difficulties sourcing the tiny screen. It got to the point where i'd see them going at 2x, sometimes even 3x the price because of scalpers. Paying that much for one really defeats the point of the device to me though (ie. dirt cheap but punching above its weight).
The Miyoo Mini Plus in comparison is a lot easier to buy. The larger size has meant Miyoo could source the screens easier and so it's pretty much always in stock on AliExpress now.
The Mini Plus and RG35XX seem pretty comparable. The RG35XX seems to even have better specs on paper, but these devices are both pretty good at emulation anyway so maybe it only has an advantage in some games that are performance heavy edge cases. I don't think you can really go wrong with either as they're similarly priced.