Blog

TL;DR — the picks

• Best Mega Drive handheld I sell — in stock: Anbernic RG405M — £199.90, a 4.0″ 4:3 panel that fills the screen edge to edge with the Mega Drive’s picture, an aluminium body, and a UNISOC T618 chip that runs the full Mega Drive library at full speed. It is the best-built 4:3 device I sell, and it is selling through with no restock planned.
• The value pick: BATLEXP G350 — from £94.90, and here is the honest surprise of the Mega Drive: its RockChip RK3326 chip runs the full library at full speed too. On this platform the cheapest device I sell matches the most expensive, at less than half the price, on a 3.5″ 4:3 panel at the same 228 PPI as the pricier devices, which fills just as cleanly. In stock now.
• The still-stocked clamshell: Anbernic RG DS — £144.90, a RockChip RK3568 chip and a 4.0″ 4:3 top screen — one of the two devices I am actively stocking (alongside the G350), though it is purpose-built for the Nintendo DS.
• Final-stock sharp-screen options: Anbernic RG353V (£149.90) and Anbernic RG353M (£169.90) — the same full-speed Mega Drive on the same sharp 3.5″ 228 PPI 4:3 panel as the G350, in a metal body (RG353M) or vertical pocket shape (RG353V) — in final stock with no restock.

Every device here is dispatched from the UK. Prices are correct on the day this was written.

What actually makes a good Mega Drive handheld

On the Mega Drive the usual logic — more money buys more power — breaks down completely, and that is the whole point. For the PS1, the Dreamcast, the N64 and the PSP, each step up in price bought a real step up in what the chip could emulate. The Mega Drive is a 16-bit cartridge console from 1988, and emulating it is light work by modern handheld standards. Every chip I sell — from the entry-level RockChip RK3326 in the BATLEXP G350 to the UNISOC T618 in the RG405M and the Retroid Pocket 3 Plus — runs the full Mega Drive library at full speed. There is no power gradient on this platform. The cheapest device I sell and the most expensive one play the Mega Drive identically.

That single fact reorders the comparison. If power is not the differentiator, the decision collapses to two things that are not power — the screen, and the controls — and to which of those matters most to you.

Screen fit is the first decision, and for the Mega Drive it favours the 4:3 devices. The Mega Drive’s picture was drawn for a 4:3 television, so a 4:3 panel fills the screen cleanly, edge to edge, with no wasted space. Most of the range is 4:3 — the G350, the RG353V, the RG353M, the RG405M and the RG DS — and on any of them a Mega Drive game sits in the panel as it was meant to be seen. The two widescreen devices are the exception: the Retroid Pocket 3 Plus (4.7″, 16:9) and the PowKiddy RGB10 Max 2 (5.0″, 16:9). On a 16:9 panel a 4:3 Mega Drive image pillarboxes, with black bars drawn to the left and right of the picture to pad the wider frame. The game still plays, but you are giving up horizontal screen real-estate to empty black space that a 4:3 panel would have filled with the picture itself.

Controls are the second decision, and on the Mega Drive the pad itself is part of the story. The Mega Drive’s signature controller is the six-button pad — three face buttons in a row plus a second row of three — built for the fighting games that made six buttons necessary. None of the handhelds here replicates that exact layout; every one uses the modern four-face-button design with shoulder buttons on top. That is not a shortfall, because the modern layout covers the six Mega Drive buttons through a combination of face buttons and shoulders, and every device here carries a directional pad, four face buttons and four shoulder inputs (L1, L2, R1, R2). What differs is the feel: the RG405M and RG353M are horizontal metal bodies with a substantial, gamepad-like weight; the RG353V and G350 are vertical, pocket-sized devices held in two hands; the RG DS is a clamshell; the Retroid Pocket 3 Plus is a horizontal plastic body with curved grips. Pick the shape that feels right to you — none of them is wrong for the Mega Drive on the controls.

Power, for once, is not a decision at all. Because the Mega Drive is light to emulate, you cannot buy a device here that runs it badly, and you cannot pay extra for a device that runs it better. That is what makes the Mega Drive the honest place to spend less: a budget buyer loses nothing on this platform that the premium devices offer, and the money saved buys the same Mega Drive experience on a device that also handles the Game Boy, the SNES and the PS1 well.

The picks in detail

Best Mega Drive handheld I sell — Anbernic RG405M (£199.90, selling through)

If you want the best-built 4:3 device in the range and the headroom to reach well past the Mega Drive, this is the pick. The RG405M has a 4.0″ 4:3 IPS panel that fills the screen with the Mega Drive’s picture edge to edge — no letterboxing, no pillarboxing — and its UNISOC T618 chip runs the full Mega Drive library at full speed, as you would expect of a chip that comfortably reaches the Dreamcast and the PSP. The aluminium body and the Hall Effect sticks give it a solid, finished feel in the hand, and for the six-button Mega Drive library the modern four-face-button-plus-shoulder layout covers everything the original pad offered. It is the device to buy if the Mega Drive is one system among many and you want the premium experience across all of them.

I will be straight that I am selling the last of these with no restock planned. The T618 chip reaches a long way past the Mega Drive — into PS1 with double-resolution rendering, Dreamcast, the N64 and the PSP — so the headroom is real if 16-bit Sega is your starting point rather than your endpoint.

• 4.0″ 4:3 IPS screen, 640×480, 200 PPI, multi-touch (Mega Drive fills it edge to edge)
• UNISOC T618 — full Mega Drive library at full speed; reaches PS1, Dreamcast, N64, PSP
• Replacement GammaOS Lite firmware with Daijishou frontend
• See the Anbernic RG405M

The value pick — BATLEXP G350 (from £94.90, in stock)

This is the value pick for the Mega Drive, and the reason is simple: the G350’s RockChip RK3326 chip runs the full Mega Drive library at full speed, exactly as the RG405M’s T618 does. On this platform there is nothing the £225 device does that the £95 device does not. Its 3.5″ 4:3 panel fills with the Mega Drive’s picture just as cleanly — same 4:3 shape, slightly smaller and, at 228 PPI, sharper than the RG405M’s larger 200 PPI screen. The four face buttons and shoulders cover the six-button pad the same way. If the Mega Drive is the reason you are buying, the G350 is the honest answer: you keep the full experience and you keep more than £100 in your pocket.

What the lower price buys out of is everything that is not the Mega Drive. The RK3326 is a 2D-first chip — it is excellent for the Game Boy, the SNES and the Mega Drive, good for the PS1, and it is honest about where it stops. There is no HDMI output and no video out. If your interest is 8- and 16-bit gaming rather than 3D consoles, that is not a compromise at all; the G350 is built for exactly that library, and on the Mega Drive specifically it is the equal of anything here.

• 3.5″ 4:3 IPS screen, 640×480, 228 PPI (Mega Drive fills it edge to edge — the same sharp panel as the pricier RG353V and RG353M)
• RockChip RK3326 — full Mega Drive library at full speed; 2D-first, PS1-capable
• Replacement dArkOS firmware (Linux)
• See the BATLEXP G350

The still-stocked clamshell — Anbernic RG DS (£144.90, in stock)

The RG DS runs the Mega Drive on its RockChip RK3568 chip at full speed, on a 4.0″ 4:3 top screen that fills with the picture as cleanly as any device here. It is one of the two devices I am keeping in stock — alongside the BATLEXP G350 — while the RG405M sells through and the RG353V and RG353M are final stock, and it carries the full set of controls the Mega Drive library expects. The honest caveat is that the RG DS exists for the Nintendo DS: its second screen and its touch hardware are there for dual-screen games, and the Mega Drive makes no use of them. If the DS is a draw for you alongside the Mega Drive, the RG DS does both well and is one I am keeping in stock; if the Mega Drive is your only priority, the same money goes further elsewhere.

• 4.0″ 4:3 IPS top screen, 640×480, 200 PPI (Mega Drive fills it edge to edge)
• RockChip RK3568 — full Mega Drive library at full speed
• Replacement GammaOS Next firmware with Daijishou frontend; clamshell, dual-screen, touch
• See the Anbernic RG DS

Final-stock sharp-screen options — Anbernic RG353V and RG353M

The RG353V (£149.90) and its metal-bodied sibling the RG353M (£169.90) share the same RockChip RK3566 chip and — worth saying plainly — the same 3.5″ 4:3 panel: 640×480, 228 PPI — the same sharp panel as the BATLEXP G350. On the Mega Drive that panel is a genuine strength, filling edge to edge and rendering the 16-bit artwork crisply. The RK3566 runs the full Mega Drive library at full speed with room to spare, and both devices ship dual-boot — ArkOS on Linux and GammaOS-RK3566 on Android — each with its own configured library.

The difference between the two is build, not screen or performance: the RG353V is a lightweight vertical pocket device, the RG353M is a heavier horizontal aluminium body with drift-resistant Hall Effect sticks. I should be straight that both are final stock — I am not restocking either, and only a handful of variations remain across the two. If the sharp 3.5″ 4:3 panel is what you want for 16-bit gaming, these are the devices, and they are worth acting on.

• 3.5″ 4:3 IPS screen, 640×480, 228 PPI, multi-touch (the same sharp panel as the G350, plus touch)
• RockChip RK3566 — full Mega Drive library at full speed
• Dual-boot ArkOS + GammaOS-RK3566
• See the Anbernic RG353V · See the Anbernic RG353M

What about the widescreen devices?

The two 16:9 devices in the range — the Retroid Pocket 3 Plus and the PowKiddy RGB10 Max 2 — both run the Mega Drive at full speed, and both pillarbox it. Because the Mega Drive’s picture is 4:3, a 16:9 panel draws black bars to the left and right of the image to fit the wider frame, and that is simply the wrong shape of screen for this platform. On the PSP, in the previous article, those same 16:9 panels were the correct fit; on the Mega Drive they are the wrong one.

The Retroid Pocket 3 Plus (£214.90) is also the device I am closest to selling out of: Retroid sourcing is blocked, and I am down to a single unit. Its UNISOC T618 chip and its 4.7″ 1334×750 panel are superb — the best screen and the best PSP experience in the range — but for the Mega Drive specifically the widescreen shape works against it, and it is final stock besides.

The PowKiddy RGB10 Max 2 (£159.90) has a comfortable 5.0″ 16:9 panel and the same RockChip RK3326 chip as the G350, so the Mega Drive performance is identical — but it pillarboxes the 4:3 image the same way, and it is down to a single Ice Special Edition unit. The RGB10 Max 2’s real strength is its ergonomic grip and its RetroOZ firmware rather than its fit for 4:3 consoles; for the Mega Drive, the 4:3 devices above are the better match.

How to choose

• You want the best-built 4:3 device and the headroom for more: RG405M. The aluminium body, the 4.0″ 4:3 panel and the T618 chip — the premium Mega Drive experience, in stock but selling through.
• You are buying for the Mega Drive and you want to spend less: G350. Full-speed Mega Drive at £94.90, on a sharp 3.5″ 4:3 panel — the device that proves power is not the story on this platform. In stock.
• The Nintendo DS is a draw alongside the Mega Drive: RG DS. Full-speed Mega Drive on a 4.0″ 4:3 top screen, dual-screen and touch for the DS, and one of the two devices I am keeping in stock.
• You want a metal body or a step up in power from the G350: RG353M (metal) or RG353V (vertical pocket). The same sharp 228 PPI panel, plus multi-touch, dual-boot firmware and the RK3566’s headroom — final stock, while it lasts.
• You are drawn to the Retroid Pocket 3 Plus or the RGB10 Max 2: both run the Mega Drive at full speed, but both pillarbox the 4:3 image on their 16:9 panels — buy them for the PSP, not the Mega Drive.

Why a configured handheld plays the Mega Drive better than a factory one

Because the Mega Drive does not ask for power, the configuration work shows up here in the places that are easy to overlook on a factory device. Every device on this page runs a replacement firmware rather than the stock operating system it ships with — dArkOS on the G350, GammaOS Lite on the RG405M, GammaOS Next on the RG DS, dual-boot ArkOS and GammaOS-RK3566 on the RG353V and RG353M, RetroOZ on the RGB10 Max 2, and the Daijishou frontend in place of Retroid’s own launcher on the Retroid Pocket 3 Plus. The Mega Drive runs through mature, full-speed emulation cores, and I have each platform tuned and tested rather than left at the defaults a direct import arrives with. The Mega Drive’s 8-bit predecessor, the Master System, is configured on every device here too.

Beyond the software, each device has had the factory SD card removed and replaced with a brand-name card from SanDisk, Samsung or Kioxia, and every one is covered by my Lifetime SD Card Guarantee — if the card fails or its data corrupts, for the life of the device I replace the card or restore it. A failed card is the single most common way a retro handheld dies, and it takes your saves with it. I wrote about exactly why that happens, and how I remove the risk, in Why Do Retro Handheld SD Cards Keep Failing?. The full picture of what changes between a factory handheld and one of mine is on The K-TEC Difference.

The short version

Because the Mega Drive is light to emulate, power is not the story on this platform — every device I sell runs the full library at full speed, from the £94.90 BATLEXP G350 to the £199.90 Anbernic RG405M. The decision comes down to the screen and the controls. The RG405M is the best-built 4:3 device, in stock but selling through. The G350 is the honest value pick — full-speed Mega Drive at £94.90 on a sharp 3.5″ 4:3 panel, in stock, and the proof that on this platform the cheapest chip matches the most expensive. The RG DS is one of two I am keeping in stock (alongside the G350), dual-screen and touch, running the Mega Drive on a 4.0″ 4:3 top screen. The RG353V and RG353M share the same sharp 228 PPI panel as the G350, in a metal body or vertical pocket shape — dual-boot, in final stock. The two 16:9 devices — the Retroid Pocket 3 Plus and the RGB10 Max 2 — run the Mega Drive at full speed too, but they pillarbox the 4:3 image, and both are down to a final unit. If you are unsure which fits you, contact me and I will point you at the right one.