ANBERNIC RG NANO Review – One Of The Best Mini Handhelds

Over the last few years I have seen many mini handhelds make its way onto the scene, many failed, a few succeeded, and now we have a new contender, the RG Nano by ANBERNIC.

The RG Nano could well be one of the best mini handhelds on the market, competing directly with the Funkey S, Thumby and even the Playdate.

It’s likely ANBERNIC has been planning to launch a mini handheld ever since the Miyoo Mini sold out within weeks, and although this is a lot smaller than that device it’s still one that I think could be kind of the mini handhelds, which is saying a lot because I absolutely love the Funkey S!

RG NANO Specifications

• 1.54″ IPS Display (240 x 240)
• ARM Cortex-A7 @ 1.2Ghz CPU
• 64MB RAM
• 1050MAH Battery
• Blue, Red & Purple Color Variants
• USB-C Charging
• Metal Shell

RG Nano Build Quality & Design

The RG NANO is small, coming in at just 7cm tall, 4cm wide and 1.7cm thick, close to the size of a matchbox.

I know what you’re thinking “Brandon, that’s too small to play on”… i thought the same when I took it out the box, but it’s actually surprised me.

The face features the square 1.54″ IPS display with a glass screen and bezels small enough to not take attention away from the game itself, but big enough to give the console a nostalgic look.

The IPS display on this is stunning, surpassingly so, and I am happy that ANBERNIC chose a bright, crispy, saturated display, which I think is the same as the Funkey S.

The viewing angles and pixel density is great also, there’s really no complaining here… apart from the size but hey, this is a mini handheld what do you expect!

Below that is the iddy biddy buttons, and somehow like most of ANBERNIC’s handhelds, they have nailed the DPAD, it’s lifted high enough out the shell to make an easy directional push in anyway.

I did find myself using my nail most of the time though, and when I press the UP button some of my thumb does obtrude the screen, so perhaps lowering the DPAD slightly could have helped, or it’s just my fat fingers… likely the latter.

The ABXY buttons are coloured with white text on them. Again, i found myself using my nail, or the very tip of my thumb because they sit so close together, but after 20 minutes or so you’re use to it.

Below that is your tiny start and select buttons, sat at a vertical angle just like the original Gameboy DMG, and next to that, another not to the original Gameboy is the fake speaker grill.

Around the sides you will find your micro-SD card slot, a sleep/wake/on/off button, and two small shoulder buttons that are located on the top corners of the device, between them a USB-C port for charging.

The shoulder are placed perfectly, have a decent ammount of travel to them with a loud clicking noise. Because these are located on the top, i find my RG Nano resting no my pinkies, and my index fingers pushing on the shoulder buttons, giving me a good grip of such a small device.

Flarer shoulder buttons, or buttons directly on the back of the device would have been a poor choice, so I am happy that ANBERNIC copied the Funkey S… again on this part.

However, I think they missed out on another nod to the Gameboy, instead of having the USB-C port on the side, I would have liked to see it directly on the top, so that it replicated inserting in a cartridge.

But that’s just me being picky.

Audio Quality

The real speaker grill sits on the bottom of the device, and is a 1″ slit with a metal mesh.

The likely placd it here because the users thumbs typically sit directly on top of the fake speaker grill, so this would detract from the overall audio quality from this device.

It’s not loud, but enough to hear it when outside, or sat in a park, not loud enough to hear it efficiently at a train station for example.

The Operating System

When you turn on the device you may be familiar with the OS that the RG Nano uses, and that’s because it’s been ripped straight from the Funkey S.

It will boot up with a clock which needs setting up before you jump into the menus, and as much as I hate how the clock looks visually, it does make games that use the real time clock playable, for example Pokemon.

Once your clock is setup you will be greeted with a pretty hectic main menu, and in my opinion the GMenu2X is a little outdated, so I advise changing it by pressing the menu button when in the menu itself, and scrolling down to “set launcher” here you can swap between “GMENU2X” and “RETROFE”.

This makes it much easier to understand for newcomers. You then simply select your console, then your game.

Yes, our RG NANO was preloaded with thousands of games, for those that like to know!

There are ways to make the menu a little more appealing and that’s by changing the skin, but you can’t polish a turd.

Emulation Performance

This console is a completely unpractical way of playing retro games for long periods of time, there’s no denying it.

I tend to play on the RG NANO for typically 10 – 30 minutes max at a time, so if you’re looking for a handheld that you’ll put hours into a day, this is not for you.

But if you’re looking for one of the best mini handhelds ont he market, well, this could be it.

Te RG NANO can emulate all retro consoles up to and including PS1, anything more than that and it will not perform well at all.

Remember this only has 64MB of RAM, this isn’t powerful at all.

I was testing games such as crash Bandicoot 2 on Playstation 1, Pokemon Gold on Gameboy Color, Sonic The Hedgehog on SEGA Mega Drive and it all worked very well, with very little emulation issues.

A simple press of the sleep/wake button on the side acts as the menu button, so you can jump straight into the Funkey’S menu which is incredibly easy, allowing you save state, load state, change aspect ratio and more.

This menu is great, and i wish the rest of the operating system was like this, and full credit goes to the Funkey Team on this one, ANBERNIC would have typically made this menu more complicated than it should be.

When playing larger 3D games you will also notice that the RG NANO starts to warm up a bit, and the metal shell absorbs that quite quickly.

It’s not too hot, just a mild warmth that is actually going to be quite nice in the winter!

But this power needs to come from somewhere, and tiny 1050MAH battery certainly has its work cut out. I was pulling in around 2 -3 hours of gameplay on one charger, depending on what consoles I was trying to emulate.

It’s not a device that will last all day, and I found myself constantly charging it throughout my two weeks of reviewing it, and a couple of times I forgot to charge it so I was taking out a dead console with me on my trips.

This is my own fault admittedly, but I’m so use to having longer battery life that I found myself needing to remind myself to charger it before trips, so take into mind before buying one.

Overall Opinion

Overall I am very impressed with the RG Nano. ANBERNIC has nailed the build quality on this all thanks to their tradition of building metal devices.

It’s something their competition hasn’t really touched on, albeit, the Metal Retroid Pocket 3+ is now out, but it’s ANBERNIC’s way of giving themselves a slight advantage in an overcrowded market and the metal shell didn’t really affect the price tag much, coming in at $64.99.

I’ll admit, it’s not a handheld you want to play on for longer than an hour, but the pick and up and play nature, matched with the metal shell and beautiful screen makes this one of my favourite mini handhelds of all time.

It’s going to be hard to beat moving forward, as there’s no need for more power, nobody wants to play Dreamcast or Gamecube games on a 1.5″ screen, it’s too complicated, even the best PS1 games is a little overkill.

So that leaves competitors to compete with it using new designs, but in that category, it’s close to flawless!