Anbernic RG34XX Review
Better than a real GBA
Retail Price: $79.99
The retro handheld gaming market just loves to feast on millennial nostalgia. I mean it makes a lot of sense as those people who grew up in the 90’s and 2000’s are now in the prime of their careers and thus have spending power to waste on the economy. Anbernic knows this and that’s why they produce new models of handhelds in what feels like every few months. I’ve had the RG34XX for a very long time now and I’m finally getting around to reviewing his Game Boy Advance knock-off. While the Game Boy Advance wasn’t my favorite Nintendo handheld growing up, I did spend many years with it out in the real world. How close does the RG34XX come to modernizing that legendary device?
Better than the OG?
Appearance-wise, this handheld looks like a dead ringer for the original Game Boy Advance. At first glance when you open the box a wave of nostalgia definitely floods through the body. This is a form factor that is tried and true. While many other Chinese companies have sold knock-offs of the Game Boy Advance over the years since its release in 2001, I’m making the claim that this is the best of them all as of the publishing of this article. We’ll get to the materials and feel in your hands soon, but just know that this thing simulates what the original GBA felt like in your hands pretty darn well.
I’ve come to own many different retro emulation handhelds to be used for specific consoles. It’s a luxury for sure, but I know many of you reading this are also handheld addicts who own many different products. If I’m being 100% honest, I prefer using this to play GBA titles, over the Anbernic RG35XXSP. Ironically when I was a kid, I saw the original Game Boy Advance SP as my perfect handheld. With that said, I actually think this RG34XX does a better job at replicating the Game Boy Advance than the RG35XXSP did the SP. No matter how much I enjoy that flipping form factor, something just never felt right about the Anbernic SP clone. That’s not the case with this here. Once again, if I’m being honest, I might prefer using this clone over the real GBA even if it was modded to be backlit.
Different colors
This handheld gaming device is sold in five color options: Black, Glacier, Green,indigo, and red
One of the reasons for that is that there’s a sharp 3.4-inch 720 x 480p display that looks absolutely terrific to look at. It’s vibrant and really helps make especially Game Boy Advance games pop. The great thing about emulation is that you can make it look exactly the way you want it to look to suit your play style. If you’re looking to simulate what the experience was like on the original hardware, you have the option to add scan lines to your display experience. If you want to experience it as digitally clear as possible to take advantage of this brighter IPS screen for GBA content, you have that option too.
New Additions
Like the SP clone, this GBA clone is significantly bulkier and larger than its original counterpart. Not only is the display larger, the overall size is wider than a GBA. This works out fine as most of us who grew up with a GBA are adults now and our hands are larger than they were back in 2001. The RG34XX fits comfortably in my hands and I feel less cramped holding this than some narrower handhelds in the horizontal landscape like this. It’s a good size and weight. An extra row that houses an extra L2 and R2 shoulder trigger behind the L and R buttons contribute the most to the modernizing of the GBA layout. This uses a 3500 mAh rechargeable battery instead of disposable AA batteries like the original. Anbernic says it will survive up to 8 hours of gameplay, but I clocked it in around 6 hours with reasonable brightness and a majority of gameplay focusing on GBA and below. The standby battery life isn’t quite as healthy as I’d like to see, averaging a relatively heavy drain when left sleeping. It’ll only survive about a maximum of under 2 days on standby.
There’s a bevy of additional buttons on here that the original GBA didn’t have since this is an emulation console that requires more input. On the top frame are two small buttons that flank the USB-C port and a mini-HDMI port. The small button on the R button as it’s symbolized is a quick soft reset that reboots the entire system. The M button opens up the emulation settings menu where you can exit out of a rom or adjust options for that emulator. There are two microSD card slots behind that row that can expand the 32 GB of internal memory on the hardware and house the software.
On the face of the system, the buttons are laid out basically identically to the GBA with the directional pad, start, and select buttons on the left side of the display. The A and B buttons are on the right with a single speaker under them. What was added to this layout are an additional X and Y button on top of the A and B. I think Anbernic made a terrific choice choosing buttons that match the color of the system for these two added buttons as they blend right in with the shell as if they didn’t exist. It’s a phantom button when playing GBA titles, but available to use when on a different emulation console. Rounding out the bottom frame is a volume scroller, a headphone jack and the power button.
Additional buttons blending in with the casing
Performs like a Game Boy Advance
The directional pad was a tad too mushy for my liking. Membrane switches are what they are and the ones on this Game Boy clone feel just alright. It’s not a high bar to set as the 25 year old Game Boy Advance didn’t have the best performing dome switches back in the day either. Still, I think the RG34XX will hold up just fine for gamers throwing down on a GBA title. After all, you’re not button mashing much if at all on a GBA title, unless it's Wario related.
From a performance standpoint, this was catered to play GBA titles. Using the same H700 Quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 CPU powering Anbernic’s SP clone, The RG34XX runs GBA titles like a champ. Gameplay is stable and runs well powered by this Linux operating system. 1 GB of ram is plenty enough emulating this era of handheld gaming and you really shouldn’t run into any issues whatsoever playing games up to the GBA. In fact, while I don’t personally use this as my go to for PS1, this handheld can actually run and handle many PS1 titles relatively well. As a modern piece of technology, it's also capable of multiplayer connection through Wi-Fi. If you really wanted to, you could even stream PC games onto the handheld as an extension of a gaming PC.
Pick your GBA
It’s a bit ironic to say this about a gaming handheld, but there really isn’t much to talk about. From my experience with both devices, the RG34XX is literally a RG35XXSP in another body. I’ve played the same roms with the same emulators and I genuinely have not noticed a difference at all in performance. Buy this because the GBA was your favorite handheld and you are extremely nostalgic to have one back in your hands. Likewise buy the RG35XXSP if the GBA SP was your favorite Game Boy Advance. At this point, Anbernic literally spits out Game Boy clones for every single nostalgic itch imaginable so there’s something for everyone. Occasionally I feel like reliving my childhood memories with this particular form factor so I love pulling it out and playing a quick session here and there. If you plan on using the RG34XX as your main emulation console, I think it can handle most expectations as long as you are aware of the limitations of the hardware and the era it caps out in emulating.
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