Anbernic Vs Retroid: Four Of Sixty Handhelds Clear The GameCube, Eleven Of Twenty

A question that gets answered with vibes

Ask whether Retroid is better than Anbernic and the answer you get is usually a review, a Reddit thread, or a spec-sheet comparison of whichever two devices the two people happen to own. The question gets treated as a matter of taste, in the same category as asking which console had the better controller.

It is not a matter of taste. Both brands publish what they sell, and we grade every handheld we track against the same eighteen systems on the same scale. That turns the brand question into something measurable, though not the question people think they are asking. Not "which brand is better" - a brand does not play anything. The answerable version is: at what price does each brand's catalogue stop being able to run the library you actually own?

We track 592 handhelds. Of those, 445 carry a verdict on every system from the Game Boy to the Wii U. Sixty are Anbernic devices, twenty are Retroid devices, and those two catalogues are what this piece compares. Not two flagships. Every device either brand sells that we can grade.

What a grade means here

Every handheld in our index gets a verdict per system: A means full speed with no noticeable issues, B means fully playable with minor compromises, C means playable but with visible glitches or slowdown, and F means not realistically playable on that device. The scale also carries the intermediate marks - A-, B+, B-, C+, C- - where a device sits between two bands on a specific system.

Two things follow from how these are built, and both matter for everything below.

First, a grade is per system, not per device. The same handheld that grades an A on the Dreamcast can grade an F on the 3DS. That is not a contradiction, it is the whole reason this comparison is worth doing: brand-level claims average across exactly the distinction a buyer cares about.

Second, a grade is about emulation, not about hardware. It says what the chip and the emulator do with a system's library at default settings. It says nothing about the d-pad, the panel, the battery, the standby drain or whether the shoulder buttons rattle. A device can grade A and still be unpleasant to hold. We are answering one question here and not pretending it is the only one. If you want the scale in more detail, how to read emulation grades before buying sets out what each band was built to mean.

The share of A grades, system by system

Here is the aggregate view. For each system, the table counts the devices in each catalogue that grade A or A- on it.

Up to the PlayStation the two catalogues are close to indistinguishable: nearly everything either brand sells runs a 16-bit library without argument. The DS is where the lines separate, and by the GameCube the gap is not a nuance. Four of Anbernic's sixty handhelds clear the GameCube. Eleven of Retroid's twenty do.

That is a strange result to read as "Retroid is better", because Anbernic's catalogue is the one with three times the devices in it. The explanation is not marketing and it is not build quality. It is which chips each brand puts in the box.

Anbernic's sixty tracked devices are built mostly on Rockchip and Unisoc parts: seventeen Rockchip SoCs, eleven Unisoc, three MediaTek, two Qualcomm, with the remainder not documented in our rows. Those Rockchip parts - the RK3566, the H700 family, the RK3576 - are excellent at everything through the PSP and then hit a wall. They are not slow, they are finished. Retroid's twenty include ten Qualcomm chips, and a Snapdragon or a recent Dimensity does not hit that wall until the Wii U.

Anbernic does sell GameCube-capable handhelds. It sells exactly four: the RG477V, the RG477M, the RG557 and the RG DDS. Every one of them is a MediaTek Dimensity machine. The rest of the catalogue, the sixty that make Anbernic the volume brand, tops out where the Rockchip parts top out.

The price ladder, read off the makers' stores

The share table answers "which brand can run what". It does not answer the question a buyer has, which is what the cheapest device that runs a given system costs in each catalogue.

So we took, for each system, the cheapest device in each brand that grades A or A- on it, and read its price on the maker's own store today, 10 November 2026. These are maker's store prices, and every device here ships from outside the EU, so import VAT and any duty are charged on delivery and are not in these figures.

AYN is in the table as a control, because the AYN catalogue has the same shape as Retroid's and none of the cheap end. The cheapest AYN we can buy today is the Thor at $259, which grades A on everything through the PlayStation 2 and A- on the Wii U. That is not a knock on AYN - it is a catalogue that starts where the budget brands stop.

The crossover is $99, and it is visible

Below the Saturn, Anbernic wins on price in every row, and the wins are larger than the headline gap suggests.

The RG 35 at $35.99 grades A on the Game Boy, the NES, the Genesis, the Game Boy Advance, the SNES and the PlayStation. The cheapest Retroid that grades A on that same set is the Pocket Classic at $99. That is $63 for the same six verdicts.

Move up to the Nintendo 64, the Dreamcast and the PSP and Anbernic's answer is the RG Rotate at $78.76 - A on all three. Retroid's is still the $99 Pocket Classic. Anbernic is $20.24 ahead and the RG Rotate's party trick is a screen that physically rotates between vertical and horizontal.

On the DS the gap narrows to almost nothing and still goes to Anbernic: the RG DS Plus grades A on DS at $93.52, against the Pocket Classic at $99. That is the dual-screen clamshell, the one that sells on the DS library - and if you are buying it for the 3DS because it has two screens, read the next section first.

Then the Saturn. The Pocket Classic grades A on it at $99. Anbernic's cheapest Saturn A is the RG VITA Pro at $133.79. For the first time Retroid is cheaper, by $34.79, and from this point on the ordering never flips back.

Above the Saturn, the gap becomes $100

The GameCube is where the two strategies stop being comparable.

Retroid's cheapest GameCube A is the Pocket 4 Pro at $159, a Dimensity 1100 device that also grades A on the Wii, A on the 3DS and A- on the PlayStation 2. Anbernic's cheapest is the RG 477V at $258.59. Both are honest A grades. The difference is $99.59 for the same verdict, and the Pocket 4 Pro additionally carries the Wii U at a D, which is at least a verdict rather than an absence.

On the 3DS the Pocket 5 at $179 grades A, and Anbernic's answer is still the RG 477V at $258.59 - nearly $80 more for a verdict you can buy cheaper. On the PlayStation 2 the Pocket 5 grades A- at $179, the Pocket 6 grades A at $244, and Anbernic's only A is the same $258.59 device. On the Wii U there is no Anbernic answer at any price: the RG 477V's best is a C+, and nothing else in the sixty comes close. Retroid's Pocket 6 grades A- at $244; the AYN Thor matches it at $259.

The sharpest single comparison in the whole set is the one nobody makes. The RG 477V costs $258.59 and the AYN Thor costs $259. Both are A on everything through the PlayStation 2. On the Wii U the Anbernic grades C+ and the Thor grades A-. On the Switch the Anbernic grades a D+ and the Thor grades a B. For fifty-nine cents more, the AYN buys a newer chip and two systems the Anbernic cannot reach.

What Anbernic's catalogue is actually for

None of this makes the Anbernic catalogue a bad one, and it would be a mistake to read it that way. What the numbers describe is a brand that has spent the last three years building the cheapest possible path to the systems most people actually emulate, in as many shapes as it can tool.

If your library stops at the PSP - which is where most retro libraries stop - Anbernic is the cheaper answer on every single system, by $20 to $63, with a wider choice of form factors. It is the only one of the two that will sell you a $35.99 handheld that runs six systems at A, a $78.76 device with a rotating screen, or a $93.52 dual-screen clamshell for the DS library. Retroid's cheapest device is $99 and it is not a clamshell.

The trap in that catalogue is the one worth naming, because it is being marketed right now. A dual-screen device graded A on the DS does not grade A on the 3DS, or even a C. The RG DS Plus grades A on the DS and F on the 3DS. Two screens, one of the two systems those screens exist for, and no path to the other. If the 3DS is why you want two screens, the shape is not the signal and the grade is.

The honest limits of this comparison

Four caveats, in order of how much they should change your mind.

The counts are devices, not sales. Anbernic's sixty include regional variants and revisions of the same machine, and a brand that ships sixty SKUs will always look broader than one that ships twenty. We counted what is in the index, which is what you can buy, not what sold.

Grades measure emulation, not ownership. A C grade on a system you will play four games on is not a reason to spend $100 more, and a B+ device with better sticks, a better panel and a battery that lasts a week is usually the better purchase than an A device with none of those. The grade is one column in a decision, not the decision.

Prices are today's maker's store prices and they move. The Pocket 6 is $244 on Retroid's store as we write this, the Pocket 5 is $179 and the Pocket 4 Pro is $159 in the one SKU still listed as available. Anbernic's numbers are the entry configuration on each listing - the RG 477V starts at $258.59 and climbs with RAM and storage.

And a brand is not a purchase. The reason to read a table like this is to find out which two or three devices are worth comparing at your budget, then go and compare those - ideally on the systems you will actually play, which is the one thing a brand-level table deliberately blurs. Our comparison pages do that pair by pair, and the capability index lets you sort the whole catalogue by the system you care about rather than by brand.

The short version

• Library ends at the PSP: RG Rotate at $78.76, or the RG 35 at $35.99 if you stop at the PlayStation.
• DS specifically, and nothing above it: RG DS Plus at $93.52.
• Saturn: Pocket Classic at $99 - the cheapest A on that system in either catalogue.
• GameCube, Wii or 3DS: Pocket 4 Pro at $159.
• PlayStation 2: Pocket 5 at $179 for an A-, Pocket 6 at $244 for an A.
• Wii U: Pocket 6 at $244 or the AYN Thor at $259. Anbernic has no answer here at any price.

The brand question is real, but it is a question about price brackets rather than about quality, and the bracket boundary is the Saturn. Below it, Anbernic has spent years making the case. Above it, Retroid is selling a chip the other catalogue mostly does not buy, and the difference between the two positions is about a hundred dollars per system.

Sources

• Anbernic - maker's store listings, prices read 10 November 2026: RG 35, RG Rotate, RG DS Plus, RG VITA / VITA Pro, RG 477V
• Retroid (goretroid.com) - maker's store listings, prices read 10 November 2026: Pocket Classic, Pocket 4 / 4 Pro, Pocket 5, Pocket 6
• AYN Technologies - maker's store listing, price read 10 November 2026: Thor
• Lost In Consoles - the per-system grades quoted here are the values published on each device page and aggregated in the capability index, which covers 592 tracked handhelds and 445 devices with a verdict on every system through the Wii U.