ANBERNIC RG351M Retro Gaming Handheld

Great product and good customer service from Droix

Great build quality, performs very well and the battery life is insane. Would definitely buy from Droix again

ANBERNIC RG351M Retro Gaming Handheld

Just a great thing to have

The device itself is great build quailty and the pad/keys are all very responsive. Once i worked out how to upload new games and consoles for MAME, etc it became even better. It npw feels very personalised and I'm very pleased with my purchase. Service from DroiX was also excellent 👍

The RG351M, is a superb hand-held After a little research and reading reviews both on here and elsewhere I took the plunge and went In and got one and have to say I wasn't disappointed great little machines. Also Droix have been great to communicate with and answered any questions I had and was very helpful. Delivery was fast to. So if your looking for a great hand-held with tons of games this is the one for you I highly recommend Droix to all. 5 star plus

Great product, appears to be so well made. I have seen other similar handheld devices and they seem like they were cheaply made. This has a premium look and feel to it. I am impatient and so purchased this. If you are wanting to have something which does a very good job of emulating N64 and PSP and a better job emulating Dreamcast then I would perhaps recommend waiting. I suspect that either late 2021 or early 2022 there will be an updated model which could have the processing power to do a reasonably good job with games on these systems.
I installed 351Elec (I would highly recommend installing this over the stock programme, it is quick and easy to do) and tweaked it to try to get the best out of the software (like PPSSPP etc) and have most Dreamcast games I've tried, working pretty much fine and definitely nearly all playable. Challenging PSP games like the 3D Grand Theft Auto games run about 13-15 frames per second and occasionally up to 30 frames per second and are just about playable if you set up PPSSPP with a frame rate cap of 30 frames per second, frame skipping to 1 and mode set to frames, not percentage and make a few other tweaks (these being the main ones that help, also in the settings, turn on 'best performance'). N64 generally works well if you select the Retrorun/Parallel64 option (generally, when choosing emulators for specific systems, rather than just leaving it on 'auto', the Retrorun versions seem to work better in my experience than the Libretro versions). Some games crackle a bit at the start as the game, but generally run well after that, others run well throughout and some, like Goldeneye struggle to run and are barely playable. These and the PSP games which are demanding (like God of War and the GTA games) are what I think will play well on optimised software if Anbernic releases a new, more powerful version of this device next year and programmes are optimised for the new device (which will likely take 6 months after launch for this to be the case).
The other thing to note is that the device comes with a microSD which contains software and games. When I installed 351Elec some consoles wouldn't play, stating 'missing bios'. You can search for these, but to solve the problem quickly, I copied the bios files in the bios folder that was on the microSD which came with the device into the bios folder created when you install 351Elec and everything works fine.
Overall, this is a great little device which I would recommend. It is the same size as my mobile phone, so easily fits in a pocket. I know there are hints Anbernic are working on a 5.5 inch screen version. That would probably be a compelling purchase in the future, but obviously the larger screen would impact battery life and portability. Going back to the higher screen resolution of the previous model would be nice too. The screen looks great and is bright, but I'm sure it would look much better if they raised the resolution a little. I know many have mentioned the dimensions of the screen being wrong for retro gaming as most systems were closer to 4:3 screen dimensions so when playing on the RG351M, you either have black bars at the sides or stretch frames to fill the screen, which may not be to everyone's tastes. Since owning mine, I have thought about this a lot. I like the form factor and think that if the screen was squarer then the device would have to be wider and would no longer be so portable, so I would have to see what the end product would look like. It could be that they have less device around the screen and drop the black section around the screen which has Anbernic written on it which would allow the screen to stretch slightly higher and lower without changing the device dimensions, meaning that the screen could be as wide as it currently is, but also a bit higher and lower, and so closer to 4:3.
The other thing for me is that the L2 and R2 buttons are harder to get to when playing games which require them. This is rare to need on a device like this, but for me personally, because I have been so used to modern controllers where these buttons are one behind the other, it feels strange to have to either move my fingers from one to the other, or push with different parts of the finger which is across both buttons. But, this is a small issue and changing it would change the whole devices form, which I love. This is more a getting used to thing, modern gaming largely has similar controller layouts across consoles, whereas in the past this was the norm, that you would have to get used to that consoles controls, especially for consoles like N64 and Gamecube, so it is more just something to learn and get used to than a complaint.

The perfect travel companion if you want to enjoy some mobile retro gaming. The price is about right for what is a relatively low powered device but the quality of the build makes it seem like a premium device. It will comfortably play everything up to Playstation 1 and also play many N64 and some Dreamcast games. In effect, you can have 25 years of games in your pocket.

Yes, you can get a better handheld. Yes, you can get a cheaper handheld but you cant get a better cheaper handheld. I think this is the current sweet spot for handheld retro gaming. 1,000s of games on a device that both looks and feels high quality that fits in your pocket and comes in at around £120 cant be grumbled at.

This will outlast many of the cheaper devices so its definitely worth paying the little extra for a non plastic shell.

Build quality is outstanding, Feels very premium. Display could have been higher resolution and makes some systems look strange due to the pixel count and strange 3:2 aspect ratio but you can change aspect ratio for each system on RetroArch and use various filters which makes things look amazing. Does require a bit of tinkering though, games don’t look great out of the box other than GBA, Lynx and WonderSwan which are pixel perfect. I also advise installing ArkOS as the installed operating system isn’t as good.

Specs say 256Gb SD card is max but I am using a 512Gb with no problem at all. This handheld runs any system without issue predating the PS1. N64 games do run but suffer slowdown and audio crackling. Dreamcast works but same applies.

Overall this is one of the best consoles I’ve ever owned and it feels great to be able to play thousands of games on one system. As an owner of the older RG350 this is a big upgrade.

Can’t recommend it enough.

RG351M Handheld Retro Gaming Console by ANBERNIC