Android Emulation - Best Handheld Hardware

[GruntParty]

Hello All,

After building out my full arcade cab, I have yet to dive into the world of handheld emulation. Recently, I been looking around at the current selection of hardware for handheld emulation and see a wide variety of devices and manufactures.

 

Is there a manufacturer or specific device that folks in the LB community like over all of the rest?

What are some common pitfalls to avoid in this area?

 

As always, thank you LB community!

GP

[CLE]

Here's a suggestion. I game on both Android and Windows. To make this short, Windows based handheld is far easier to have a pleasurable gaming experience but that comes at a cost. Android just sucks on so so so many levels. That's not bias, that's just fact due to Windows emulators being developed over a much longer period of time.  

Everyone will scream Steamdeck - and that's OK. Nothing wrong with that other than the technology is now aged and it's huge in size.  

Android "loose" buying guideline: 
Anything "current" priced up to $100 -generally plays everything console related before PS1 well and handheld well before NDS  (Miyoo mini plus)
Anything "current" priced at ~$150 - $400 - generally plays everything however the higher priced unit offers a slight performance increase on GB and PS2 games but even this class doesn't do a fantastic job with those consoles (Retroid RP3+ or Odin Pro)
Anything "current" priced  ~$425-$550 generally plays the harder to emulate stuff like 3DS, GB and PS2 substantially better than the previous class.
$600+ has the latest snapdragon chipset and is a workhorse, but no way in hell would I spend that kind of money on an Android gaming machine. 
 

[DaveC1964]

On 2/27/2023 at 10:46 AM, GruntParty said:

Hello All,

After building out my full arcade cab, I have yet to dive into the world of handheld emulation. Recently, I been looking around at the current selection of hardware for handheld emulation and see a wide variety of devices and manufactures.

 

Is there a manufacturer or specific device that folks in the LB community like over all of the rest?

What are some common pitfalls to avoid in this area?

 

As always, thank you LB community!

GP

It kind of depends on what your priorities are.  Does it need to be small and pocketable? do you want long battery life?  Is cost an issue?  Up to what system do you want, is up to Dreamcast OK or do you want Gamecube and PS2?

I kind of agree with the other poster that Android kind of bites.  The stand alone emulators are spotty and are full of ads or DRM.  You can find some that are "clean" but you need to hunt them out.  There will be holes on systems emulated such as Lynx.    That leaves Retroarch. It is free and emulates a lot but it is not optimized.  It mostly works OK on today's hardware but the UI for RA is pure crap. Luckily there is Launchbox to help with that issue.

Nothing is perfect so you will need to hunt and compare specs.  Windows devices have good emulators but often have weird UIs that don't work good on handhelds without physical keyboards.  You need to mess around with a lot of settings on some emulators and again there is Retroarch for which you will want to use Launchbox for to make it simple to use.  Units are usually bigger and have poor battery life but good emulators.  Most of those will run up to and including Gamecube and PS2.  Also usually higher priced.

Android: A lot of choice but some emulators aren't great and will need RA for missing systems:

For Android Retroid 3+ is pretty powerful, as is Odin pro.  I think Odin pro is said to be the king of Android devices.

There is the RG 353M which is compact and pocketable, has hall sticks, is metal cased, has a rare 4:3 screen that matches most older systems, and HDMI out.  It is also dual boot so you can use the Linux OS if you want (Batocera) instead of Android. It will only emulate through and including Dreamcast though.  No Gamecube, 3DS,  or PS2.  This one seems to get the better reviews for pocket sized units.

There are tons of these Chinese handhelds but you need to look at reviews, some have poorly designed D-pads and buttons that just don't control well.

Edited March 3, 2023 by DaveC1964