General Information
With the Anbernic Cube releasing on Jun 8th of this year, the RG40XX H comes barely one month after the 1:1 scale-screened device. Notably, the price of the Anbernix 40XX H is $69.99, but the OS is Linux as opposed to Android, and it packs a meagre 1 GB of RAM, meaning there will be cuts all around.
The RG40XX H series is said to be the last in the H700 series CPU lineage. Therefore we should see newer, more powerful models come to fruition after this one, but can it live up to its moniker of being cost-effective while remaining high-performance?
Technical Specs:
- Colour: Black/Blue/Gray
- Screen: 4.0-inch IPS screen, OCA full lamination, resolution: 640*480
- CPU: H700 quad-core ARM Cortex-A53, 1.5GHz frequency
- GPU: Dual-core G31 MP2
- RAM: LPDDR4 1GB
- Storage: 64GB TF/MicroSD
- System: Linux 64-bit
- Games: Supports ported games and other 30+ emulators; Supports users to download relevant format games themselves.
- WIFI/Bluetooth: 2.4/5G WIFI 802.11a/b/g/n/ac,Bluetooth 4.2
- Multi-media: Video player supports formats such as "wmv", "avi","rmvb", "flv", "mp4", "3gp", "asf", "mov", "mpg","mkv" etc. Music player supports formats such as "flac", "mp3", "wav", "ape", "aif", "aiff", "ogg", "wma", "aac", "m4a", "m4r" etc. file manager, and e-book reader (supports txt format)
- Language: Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, Russian, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish,
- Speaker: High-fidelity speaker
- TF card: Dual card slots, support TF card expansion, maximum 512GB. 64GB (5000+ games) , 64GB+128GB (13000+ games), 64GB+256GB (16000+ games).
- Battery: Li-polymer battery 3200mAh, lasting 6 hours
- Charging: 5V/1.5A, support C2C charger
- RGB lighting effect: 16 million colour RGB joystick lighting, support constant light, breath, rainbow, marquee, chasing, gaming and other light effects, support customising the colour and adjusting the brightness.
- Other functions: Supports 2.4G wireless controller and wired controller connection, HDMI connection to TV, vibration motor, WIFI online pairing, streaming
- Accessories: USB charging cable, protective case, user manual
- Console specification: Length 16.3cm, Width 7.9cm; Height 1.6cm; Weight 0.208kg
First Impressions
The Anbernic RG40XX H sports a crisp 4" diagonal IPS screen within its relatively small frame, and packs in a 3200 mAh battery to give you the most it can on the go. The dual Micro SD card slots are a nice touch, meaning you can chop and change ROM setups on a computer quickly and easily, though you can set up an FTP server and drag and drop ROMs using WinSCP or the like.
HDMI output is super nice, though you have to obtain your own HDMI mini converter or an HDMI mini to HDMI cable to use it. Games look good and vibrant in 720p output, but on a 65" 4K OLED TV it could certainly look a whole lot better, especially if it were 1080p at least. At this point, I'm also wondering whether they should sack off one of the SD card slots in favour of a full-sized HDMI socket for ease of use.
The shoulder buttons are wonderfully tactile, with the smaller shoulder buttons and larger triggers clicking perfectly every press. They feel nice in-game, and don't feel mushy or have too much travel for quick-fire arcade blasting.
The face buttons are small but perfectly formed, with a menu button on the bottom left that takes you into RetroArch's quick menu, or each emulator's backend so that you can use save states or change filters mid-game etc. To the bottom right are the select and start buttons which are just big enough that you don't accidentally hit both at the same time, and the four main face buttons are decent overall and don't get too slippery when sweaty.
The analog sticks are akin to the Nintendo Switch ones, but they too are sadly not Hall Effect-based. Why though, when the extra cost involved would be mere pennies? I genuinely don't understand why but regardless, the analog sticks performed well and the RGB effect is pretty funky, if a little over the top when playing at night. Thankfully, you can turn the LEDs off in the settings menu, saving both your eyesight and your battery life in one swoop.
Settings-wise, you also have built-in scanline filters, you can adjust the brightness, and you can use savestates with the swift click of the "M" (menu) button, which is pretty handy to have access to without needing to memorize bindings.
The console's ergonomics are not the best. The analogue sticks sit relatively low on the front elevation, and the net result is that I was left with my hands feeling fatigued after just one hour of play on the N64 and Dreamcast emulators. Using the D-Pad is more comfortable anthropometrically, but the D-Pad doesn't feel great. There is some kind of weird seating to the directions whereby pressing right with even a smidgeon of an upward inflexion causes the input to change as if you're pressing directly up on the D-Pad.
Play Testing:
Emulation works to a point, as with any other H series CPU-based systems. I was hoping to see something more from this iteration given how good the 28XX was, but this is effectively the 2.83" screened $39.99 28XX with a bigger 4" screen, 3.2% bigger battery, flashy analog sticks, and a $30 increase in price.
MAME, GBA, NES, SNES, SMS, Megadrive, GG, GB/GBC, Atomiswave, NeoGeo, and even VB work phenomenally, with all games looking fantastic and playing excellently, but most devices handle this, so let's quickly move into something more taxing.
DS games look blurry, but perform brilliantly well via DraStic, with the screen select button on R2 and the left analogue stick controlling the stylus. I had a particularly good time playing DS games on the go, and it performed well with zero configuration.
PSP works okay but has the usual sub-30FPS bottlenecks with games such as GOW: Chains of Olympus, or GTA: Vice City. Simpler 2D games are more than serviceable for titles like Patapon and LocoRoco, but you should temper expectations for all 3D games.
N64 games vary in mileage, with most looking slightly off, regardless of the core selected (Parallel or Mupen64plus_next), thanks to transparency issues and rather odd core settings that are hit-and-miss per game. For example, the default overlay for Mupen has CRT scan lines, whereas Parallel looks sharp and clean with no filter. I also noticed that ROM hacks, such as the English-patched Wave Race 64 Shindou edition wouldn't run on either core, yet it even runs on real hardware just fine.
Dreamcast runs decently because Flycast is now brilliantly optimized, but the dead zoning of the analogue stick is horrendous by default. Attempting to play Silent Scope was frustrating and infuriating, so I would give it a wide berth unless you know how to remap and calm down that angry little stick.
Ports get a special mention here too, with Quake, Wolfenstein, Cannonball, Stardew Valley and even GTA3 working shockingly well overall. You can, of course, add other ports to the SD cards, but notably, there are no Super Mario 64 or Lara Croft ports bundled as standard now, because they recently got in a spot of bother over sharing unlicensed files and copyright material.
Let's get real, 2D gaming works brilliantly. The real issues here stem from this device just not being up to par when it comes to pushing polygons at a reasonable, acceptable rate. But how could it with just 1 GB of RAM at its disposal?
Conclusion:
I think Anbernic needs to drill down into one idea, perfect it, and then run with it rather than seemingly throw darts at a board covered in ideas, swinging for each of them with a new product every month. The idea that consumers will buy multiple devices is ludicrous, and how they repackage the same core tech repeatedly is tiring now, even with hardware refinements.
I would rather have solid performance with a couple of extra GBs of RAM overhead, a full-sized HDMI socket, and reliable and long-lasting hardware such as Hall Effect sticks (and D-pad issues ironed out!) than have two gimmicky, poorly positioned, light-up sticks that gave my hands cramps within the hour, and potentially just e-waste being created. Too much to ask?
$69.99 is technically a reasonable price point, but it's just not powerful enough to live up to its projected promises, so reigning in your expectations is advised, especially for any complicated 3D emulation above the level of PlayStation One, which in itself is nothing new for any other budget device. The fact they include PSP and N64 emulators, with crazy demanding games like GOW and GTA, for example, makes no sense to me when you're only ever going to have a sub-native experience with their frame rates and loading times.
During my time testing it, I noticed that even when idle, the 40XX H tends to heat up a lot on the left-hand side at the back of the device. I'm not sure why this would be the case as it was just sitting at the main menu. I tested leaving it on and idle a couple of times, for just 20-30 minutes, and the same thing happened both times.
The D-Pad, as stated before, needs addressing. Though I didn't notice it at all on the 28XX, the D-Pad inaccuracy does exist there too, though the D-Pad is so small on the 28XX that you would be forgiven for thinking it operated perfectly because it's hidden by its fiddliness.
The RG40XX H is not a game changer, but then it isn't even attempting to get close to the performance of their $150-$200 devices so this one is a bit of a mixed bag for me. It may prove the perfect handheld for beginners dipping into the retro handheld market, with the option to hook it up to a TV (and inversely stream games wirelessly from PC via moonlight). Despite all of its shortcomings, it is still a pretty handy little device to cure boredom.
For seasoned retro-handheld gamers, this is about as unspectacular as it gets for your money; so hold on until something bigger and undoubtedly better comes along. The RG40XX H is the best in a line of antiquated budget devices, so I look forward to seeing how big the next step up in technology will be and what it can offer Anbernic in the not-so-distant future. Hopefully, it's something unique and more demanding of our attention.
