RG40XXV vs RG35XX Pro: $10 for half an inch

Two vertical handhelds from one maker, half an inch apart, and almost nothing else between them. That is not the conclusion of this page, it is its subject. The Anbernic RG40XXV and the Anbernic RG35XX Pro carry the identical letter on all eighteen systems this site grades, the same Allwinner H700, the same 1 GB of LPDDR4 and the same 3200 mAh cell. Of the verticals in our catalogue they are the only two that pair that chip with that much memory and that cell, which makes them about as clean a test case as the index offers: hold everything above the glass constant and see what half an inch actually costs.

Both are on sale at Anbernic's own store today, $59.66 against $49.31, and both are stocked by the same European shop at €89.95 against €79.95. Ten dollars, or ten euro, is the entire question.

Eighteen cells, one answer

Start with the sheet, because on most pairs it settles the page.

Nine playable systems each, using the B-or-better line every page on this site applies: Game Boy, NES, Genesis, Game Boy Advance, SNES, PlayStation 1, Nintendo DS, Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast. Above them both machines sit in the same three shallow bands - PSP at C, Saturn at C-, GameCube at D- - and both fail everything from the Wii upward. There is no system on this sheet where one device is better than the other by so much as a single band. If you came here to find out which one plays more, the answer is neither.

That identity is not a quirk of these two. Twelve machines in our catalogue carry this exact eighteen-cell row, every one of them Anbernic. The RG35XX 2024, the RG35XX Plus, the RG40XX H and the RG34XX are four of the twelve; the row they share is the signature of one chip family in a dozen different shells. We have walked the same sheet on sibling pairs before, most recently the RG40XXV against the horizontal RG40XX H and the RG35XX Pro against the RG34XXSP, and the pattern repeats: inside the family, the letters separate nothing.

One platform, two shells

Put the two specification sheets side by side and the reason for that becomes obvious. Both run an Allwinner H700, four Cortex-A53 cores at 1.5 GHz, with a dual-core Mali G31 MP2 for graphics. Both carry 1 GB of LPDDR4. Both ship with 16 GB of TF storage and accept two cards, up to 512 GB. Both run 64-bit Linux. Both have 2.4 and 5 GHz WiFi, Bluetooth 4.2, a high-fidelity speaker, dual card slots, 5V/1.5A charging with C2C support and a 3200 mAh lithium-polymer cell.

The H700 is the budget ceiling of this hobby, and it is worth being blunt about what that means. It handles the 8- and 16-bit era without argument. It runs most Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast software, which is more than the price suggests. It is asked a real question by PSP and Saturn and answers with a C and a C-. GameCube is a D-, comfortably below the playable line. If PlayStation 2, GameCube, Wii or 3DS is the reason you are shopping, this is the wrong shelf entirely and neither of these two devices is worth further reading.

Neither maker publishes a weight for either device on its product page, and we will not invent one. What the two sheets do show is a difference in one line only: the panel.

Half an inch, and twenty-nine pixels the wrong way

Both screens are 640 x 480 IPS panels with OCA full lamination. The RG40XXV's is 4.0 inches diagonal; the RG35XX Pro's is 3.5. Same frame, same aspect ratio, so nothing gets letterboxed differently and no game renders in a different shape.

What changes is density. A 640 x 480 panel measures 800 pixels corner to corner on the diagonal, so at 4.0 inches it resolves 200 pixels per inch and at 3.5 inches 229. The smaller screen is fourteen percent denser, which is why the RG35XX Pro is the sharper of the two on a pixel grid, and the larger one is the easier to read - bigger characters in a menu, bigger sprite edges, more comfortable when a 4:3 RPG puts its dialogue in eight-pixel text.

That trade is the honest description of the choice, and for most buyers it is a preference rather than a verdict. Both panels are laminated to the glass and both are IPS, with the viewing angles that implies. Neither maker publishes a brightness figure, so there is no measured ground to separate them on that line either. The half inch is worth having if you play text-heavy games or hold the device at arm's length; it is worth skipping if you want the crispest picture in the family.

The hour the bigger panel costs

Anbernic ships the same 3200 mAh cell in both, and makes different claims about what it delivers. The RG35XX Pro's page says the battery lasts seven hours. The RG40XXV's says six.

Same chemistry, same capacity, same chip, same firmware family - the only variable left is the panel, and a 4-inch panel with the same backlight budget eats more of the cell. We have not measured either runtime, so treat the gap as the maker's own arithmetic rather than a test result, and treat the direction as reliable even if the magnitude is not. Charging is identical on both: 5V/1.5A, with C2C charger support.

If you play in one sitting and charge overnight, an hour is nothing. If you fly, it is the difference between finishing a book of a game and watching the last third of it on a laptop.

What the sheets list differently

Two lines do not appear on both. Anbernic lists 16-million-colour RGB joystick lighting on the RG40XXV, with constant, breathing, rainbow, marquee and chasing modes and adjustable brightness. It lists a vibration motor on the RG35XX Pro. Neither line appears on the other device's sheet, which is weaker evidence than it looks - makers omit what they do not market - so read it as "this is what each sheet advertises", not as "this is what each device has".

The colour ranges differ outright. The RG40XXV comes in white, transparent black and indigo blue; the RG35XX Pro in white, black and transparent teal. On Anbernic's own store the RG40XXV carries 120 customer reviews at 4.8 and the RG35XX Pro 92 at 4.8, which tells you which one sells more and nothing whatever about which one is better.

What the makers charge

The sale prices are $10.35 apart. At the makers' regular prices the same two devices are $13.00 apart. In Europe, at a shop that has to include VAT in the number it shows, the gap is exactly €10.00 today.

The catalogue figures this site carries are $60 and $50, which land between the sale and the list price on both devices - closer to the sale. That makes today's ranking statements about these two true and tomorrow's fragile: Anbernic's sale calendar moves constantly, and the honest reading of a "$50 handheld" is the regular price, not the week's discount. Read the live number before you order rather than trusting any figure on any site, including this one.

What a European can actually buy

Both devices have a verified EU listing, which is not something this site can say about most of the catalogue. RetroGear, a Dutch shop, stocks the RG40XXV from €89.95 and the RG35XX Pro from €79.95, VAT included, with a European warranty and no import paperwork. Both were in stock when we read the pages on 5 November 2026.

One practical detail: that shop ships free from €100 to the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany and charges €8.95 elsewhere in Europe, and neither device on its own reaches €100. A single-unit order may therefore carry a shipping line on top of the figure above, which is why the euro prices here are the shelf price rather than a landed total.

Anbernic also offers an EU shipping origin next to China and the United States on both product pages, but the price shown there is in dollars and the page does not state whether the EU-warehouse figure includes VAT. That is why the euro figures on this page come from a shop rather than from a conversion, and why a European should read the checkout before concluding anything about the final price.

Verdict: buy the smaller one unless the panel is the point

The RG35XX Pro is the better buy for most people. It is playable on the same nine systems, it is $10.35 cheaper at Anbernic today and €10.00 cheaper in Europe, its panel is the denser of the two at 229 pixels per inch, and Anbernic's own sheets claim an hour more runtime from the same 3200 mAh cell. Nothing in the grade table gives the RG40XXV a single system the RG35XX Pro cannot run.

Buy the RG40XXV instead if the half inch is the reason you are shopping: bigger menus, larger text, a screen that fills more of the device and suits long RPG sessions and older eyes, plus the RGB lighting and the indigo blue shell. It is a real difference in use, just not a difference in capability.

What neither device will do is PSP comfortably or anything above Dreamcast at all, and no amount of memory card or firmware will change the letters. If GameCube, PlayStation 2, Wii or 3DS is on your list, this is the wrong price bracket and the honest answer is to spend more or wait.

Sources

• Anbernic - ANBERNIC RG 40XXV product page, for the 4.0 inch 640 x 480 IPS panel, the H700 at 1.5 GHz, 1 GB of LPDDR4, 16 GB of storage, the 3200 mAh cell with its six-hour claim, the 5V/1.5A charging, the RGB joystick lighting, the colours, the $59.66 sale price against $67.99 and the 120 reviews, read 5 November 2026: anbernic.com/products/rg-40xxv
• Anbernic - ANBERNIC RG 35XXPro product page, for the 3.5 inch 640 x 480 IPS panel, the same H700 and 1 GB of LPDDR4, the 3200 mAh cell with its seven-hour claim, the vibration motor, the colours, the $49.31 sale price against $54.99 and the 92 reviews, read 5 November 2026: anbernic.com/products/rg35xxpro
• RetroGear - Anbernic RG40XXV, the verified EU listing at €89.95 including VAT, in stock, read 5 November 2026: retrogear.gg/en/products/anbernic-rg40xxv
• RetroGear - Anbernic RG35XX Pro, the verified EU listing at €79.95 including VAT, in stock, read 5 November 2026: retrogear.gg/en/products/anbernic-rg35xx-pro
• Lost In Consoles - the eighteen-system capability index and the A to F grade definitions used throughout this page: lostinconsoles.com/compatibility
• Lost In Consoles - RG40XXV specification sheet, for the form factor, the screen size and the tracked price quoted above: lostinconsoles.com/consoles/rg-40xxv-anbernic
• Lost In Consoles - RG35XX Pro specification sheet, for the form factor, the screen size and the tracked price quoted above: lostinconsoles.com/consoles/rg35xx-pro-anbernic