Anbernic is releasing a new emulation handheld called RG34XX. Here are the details:
- Supported Platforms: Over 30, including PSP, N64, DS, DOS, Dreamcast, PS1, etc.
- Screen: 3.4-inch IPS with a resolution of 720x480
- OS: 64-bit Linux
- Features: 5G Wi-Fi, HDMI-out, and Bluetooth 4.2
The RG34XX will be available in four colours: indigo, green transparent, red transparent, and black.
What do you think about the fact that they’ve mimicked the design of the GBA so closely?
The detail that stands out the most about this is its screen resolution: 720x480 is both a perfect 3x integer scale of GBA’s 240x160 and a good 1x fit (with small black bars) for NTSC video.
GBA games scale particularly poorly on most of their other devices’ screens. On 640x480, the closest integer scale is 2x which makes the image fill only 50% of the screen area, otherwise you can use 2.667x scaling to fill the width (11% of height being letterboxing) at the expense of blurriness from non-integer scaling.
The last time Anbernic released a screen well-suited for GBA games was four years ago with RG351P/RG351M. Their 480x320 screens are a great 2x fit for GBA but an awful fit for every other system. 720x480 is a lot better for NTSC content while still being integer scale for GBA.
Unfortunately the lack of analog sticks ruins the compatibility improvements it’d otherwise have over RG351 thanks to the screen and newer CPU. Best to see this as like a GBA that can also play SNES games and not much else. I’d rather have a system that includes the inputs it needs than one that imitates a classic system’s design.