Best Handhelds for Pokémon

No franchise tracks the handheld market as closely as Pokémon. It started on the original Game Boy in 1996 and it has shipped on every Nintendo handheld since — the Game Boy Color, the Game Boy Advance, the DS, the 3DS and the Switch. Nine generations, five systems, thirty years. If you want to play the whole series in one place, the machine you need is defined by exactly one thing: how far up that ladder you want to climb.

That makes Pokémon a useful buying question, because the answers are not evenly priced. The Game Boy games run on a handheld that costs as little as a takeaway. The 3DS games are the wall, and the Switch games cost more than everything below them combined. Our capability index grades every device on all five of those systems, so the ladder is measurable rather than a matter of opinion — and this guide walks it, rung by rung, from the cheapest Game Boy clone to the cheapest machine that plays all nine generations.

The five systems Pokémon has run on

Every mainline Pokémon game maps to one of five systems, and each has a price floor in our catalogue. These are the numbers the rest of this guide unpacks:

Two things are worth stating up front, because they are easy to get wrong. The first is that our index grades Game Boy as a single system, and it covers the Game Boy Color titles through backward compatibility — so Gold, Silver and Crystal count against the Game Boy grade, not a separate one. The second is the shape of the table: the floor barely moves across the first four generations and then jumps four-fold at the 3DS, because the two handheld systems that carry the most Pokémon games are also the two cheapest to emulate.

Generations I–II: the Game Boy era, from $15

The cheapest device in the whole catalogue that takes a straight A on the Game Boy is the GB300 at $15. It is a Data Frog vertical, and fifteen dollars buys you a perfect score on the system that carried Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver and Crystal — plus an A on the NES, the Sega Genesis and the Game Boy Advance at a playable B. If your Pokémon library is the first two generations and nothing else, there is no cheaper way to play it at full quality, and it is not close.

The GB300 is also the cheapest device that runs a Game Boy Advance game at all. It grades the GBA a B, which is playable rather than perfect — enough for Ruby and Sapphire, with a little of the frame-pacing looseness that a B implies. If that is where you draw the line, the GB300 is the whole answer for under twenty dollars.

Generation III: the Game Boy Advance, from $30

The third generation is where the first real step up appears. The GB300 runs it, but only at a B. The cheapest handheld that takes a straight A on the Game Boy Advance is the G28 at $30 — a horizontal Dealbay running EmuELEC — and the U8 at $30 matches it on the GBA at the same price.

This is the first rung that is worth paying for, because the GBA library is where Pokémon's modern shape begins: Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald, the remakes FireRed and LeafGreen, and one of the deepest back-catalogues of any handheld console. Thirty dollars is the least anyone needs to spend to run all of it perfectly, and there is no reason to spend more if the GBA is your ceiling.

Generations IV–V: the Nintendo DS, from $40

The DS is the heart of the Pokémon series — four mainline games across two generations, plus HeartGold and SoulSilver, the remakes that many players still consider the high point. It is also where the emulation gets harder, and the ladder shows it.

The cheapest device that runs a DS game at all is the U8 at $30, which grades the Nintendo DS a B — playable, with four of the five earlier systems at a straight A alongside it. That is the cheapest entry into Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, Black and White.

The cheapest device that takes a straight A on the Nintendo DS is the R39S at $40 — a vertical that grades the Game Boy, the Game Boy Advance and the DS all at a straight A. Forty dollars for the first five generations at full quality is the value point of this entire guide, and it is worth pausing on: the whole handheld-era Pokémon canon, Generations I through V, runs perfectly on a forty-dollar device. The X35H at $60 matches that triple-A and adds a better screen, but the R39S gets there first.

The wall: the Nintendo 3DS, and its $160 floor

Here is the finding that decides the top of the ladder. Generations VI and VII — X, Y, Sun, Moon and their Ultra versions — run on the Nintendo 3DS, and the 3DS is by far the hardest of the five systems to emulate on a cheap handheld.

Only 116 of the handhelds we grade reach a straight A on the 3DS, against 209 on the DS — the stack that runs 3DS games is a full class heavier, and the price ladders reflect it. The cheapest device that runs a 3DS game at all is the Pocket Air Mini at $70, which grades the 3DS a B while taking the Game Boy, GBA and DS all at a straight A. That is the cheapest way into X, Y, Sun and Moon.

The cheapest device that takes a straight A on the 3DS is the Mangmi Air Y Pro at $160. That is a four-fold jump over the $40 DS floor, and it is the single steepest step in the whole Pokémon ladder — steeper than the move from the GBA to the DS, and steeper than anything below the Switch. The Gameforce ACE at $162 matches the 3DS at a straight A two dollars later, and the Retroid Pocket Classic at $114 gets halfway there at a B.

Generations VIII–IX: the Nintendo Switch, from $299

The last two generations are the expensive ones, and the reason is architectural. Sword, Shield, Legends: Arceus, Scarlet and Violet all run on the Nintendo Switch, and Switch emulation needs x86 or a modern high-end ARM chip that no cheap handheld carries.

Not one handheld in the catalogue is playable on the Nintendo Switch below $299. At that price the AYANEO Next Lite — a Windows 11 machine on a Ryzen 4500U — grades the Switch a B, with the Game Boy, GBA, DS and 3DS all at a straight A alongside it. The Odin 3 at $299 lands on exactly the same numbers.

The cheapest handheld that takes a straight A on the Switch is the Steam Deck at $399, and it is the device that turns the ladder into a single purchase: the Steam Deck grades all five Pokémon systems at a straight A. If you want every generation — Red and Blue through Scarlet and Violet — running perfectly on one machine, $399 is the floor, and nothing below it does the job.

Why the Mangmi Air Y Pro wins

The pick is the Mangmi Air Y Pro, and the reason is the 3DS. Everything up to and including the Nintendo DS is cheap: the whole handheld-era canon, Generations I to V, runs at a straight A for $40. The 3DS is the one system that breaks that, and the Mangmi is the cheapest handheld in the catalogue that clears it at a straight A.

At $160 it grades the Game Boy, the Game Boy Advance, the Nintendo DS and the Nintendo 3DS all at a straight A — which is every mainline Pokémon game from Red and Blue in 1996 through Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, at full quality, on one device. It is a vertical on Android 13 with a Snapdragon 865, and it undercuts the next straight-A 3DS handheld by only two dollars, but it gets there first and it is the honest recommendation for anyone whose Pokémon library ends where the Switch begins.

The counter-argument is worth stating plainly, and it is the Switch. The Mangmi grades the Nintendo Switch a D — not playable. If your library includes Sword, Shield or Scarlet and Violet, the Mangmi is the wrong machine, and no amount of money below $299 fixes that. The 3DS generations and the Switch generations are served by two different classes of hardware, and there is no cheap device that does both.

The honest counterpoint: you may not need the wall

It would be dishonest to write this guide without the number that cuts against the winner. Most Pokémon players do not have a Switch-emulation requirement, and if you do not, the Mangmi is $120 more than you need to spend.

If your library is Generations I to V — the Game Boy, Game Boy Advance and DS games — the R39S at $40 plays all of them at a straight A, and the GB300 at $15 covers Generations I to III at a playable grade. If you want Generations I to VII and can live with the 3DS at a B rather than an A, the Pocket Air Mini at $70 gets you there for less than half the Mangmi's price. And if your Pokémon library stops at the Game Boy and the GBA, you can spend fifteen dollars and be finished.

The Mangmi Air Y Pro earns its $160 only when the 3DS games have to run perfectly — which, for a great many Pokémon players, they do, because X, Y, Sun and Moon are the last mainline games before the series went to the Switch.

How to choose

Read the Pokémon ladder as three questions. If your library is the Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games, the GB300 at $15 runs Generations I to II at a straight A and Generation III at a playable B, and the G28 at $30 takes the GBA to a straight A when you want it perfect.

If your library runs through the DS — Generations I to V, the deepest part of the series — the R39S at $40 is the value pick: a straight A on the Game Boy, the GBA and the DS for forty dollars, and the cheapest way to play the handheld-era canon at full quality. The X35H at $60 is the same triple-A with a better screen.

And if you want the 3DS games at their best, the answer is the Mangmi Air Y Pro at $160, the cheapest handheld that takes a straight A on all four classic-Pokémon systems. If your library also includes the Switch generations, no device below $299 is even playable on the Switch: the AYANEO Next Lite at $299 is the cheapest way to reach them, and the Steam Deck at $399 is the cheapest to run every generation from Red and Blue to Scarlet and Violet at a straight A.

The pattern that runs through this series holds one more time: the buying decision is decided by the single system your hardware cannot emulate, and for Pokémon that system is the one that sits between the DS you can run for $40 and the Switch you cannot touch for less than $299. Pick the generation where your library ends, and the ladder tells you the price.

Sources

• The Pokémon Company — the mainline game generations and their original platforms: pokemon.com
• Nintendo — Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo Switch hardware history: nintendo.com
• Data Frog — the GB300 and the Data Frog handheld line: datafrog.cc
• PowKiddy — the X35H and PowKiddy's Linux handheld range: powkiddy.com
• AYANEO — the Pocket Air Mini and Pocket line: ayaneo.com
• Retroid / Moorechip — the Retroid Pocket Classic and Pocket family: goretroid.com
• Mangmi — the Air Y and Air Y Pro vertical handhelds and their Snapdragon platforms: mangmi.com
• AYN Technologies — the Odin 3 and its Snapdragon platform: ayn.com
• Valve — the Steam Deck, the cheapest handheld to grade every Pokémon system at a straight A: steamdeck.com
• mGBA — the open-source Game Boy Advance emulator referenced for that system's grades: mgba.io
• melonDS — the open-source Nintendo DS emulator referenced for that system's grades: melonds.kuribo64.net
• Retro Handhelds — community reference used to cross-check device identities and form factors: retrohandhelds.gg

Method: the per-system grades in this guide are the frozen values published on each device's page in the Lost In Consoles capability index, and the price floors ($15 GB300 on the Game Boy, $30 G28 and U8 on the Game Boy Advance, $40 R39S on the Nintendo DS, $70 Pocket Air Mini on the Nintendo 3DS, $160 Mangmi Air Y Pro on the straight-A 3DS tier, $299 AYANEO Next Lite on the Nintendo Switch, $399 Steam Deck on the all-five-straight-A tier) are computed directly from that dataset. The index grades Game Boy as one system, which covers the Game Boy Color titles by backward compatibility. Prices are the tracked street price at publication and move with the market.