It's not often that ANBERNIC releases a device out of nowhere; they typically tease the handheld over weeks, if not months, for some extra exposure, but their latest device, named the ANBERNIC RG 35, was released and is available to buy with little to no marketing behind it. Which is a little odd, seeing as their newly released RG55G1 handheld has only been live for a few days now, so there's an overlap there that I'm not sure was planned.
The ANBERNIC RG 35 is a very affordable $37.99 Linux-based handheld device with very low-end specifications as expected, alongside a 3.5" 640 x 480 display, which is enough to play some of your retro games at 2x native resolution.
Credit: ANBERNIC
The design is a popular one, and not in a good way. I see this design being used on many third-party, white-labelled handhelds across AliExpress, for example, the BatleXP G350 and their very own RG35XX Pro, so it's not going to be a unique device amongst the waves of Chinese handhelds, but I can't imagine anyone would care about that, seeing as it's less than $40.
It comes in three different colours: retro grey, transparent pink, and transparent black. The vertical form factor will certainly be comfortable, and dual joysticks offer certain consoles to be comfortably emulated, such as PS1, Dreamcast, Nintendo 64 and PSP.
ANBERNIC RG 35 Specifications
- 3.5-inch IPS display, full viewing angle, OCA full lamination, 640 × 480
- RK3326 quad-core 1.5GHz CPU
- Mali-G31 MP2 GPU
- 1GB RAM
- 32GB Storage
- Linux 64-bit OS
- 3200mAh Battery
- 3.5mm headphone jack
You'll notice no Bluetooth and no internal WiFi, though they have stated it can be used with an external WiFi module for those wanting to open up its multiplayer capabilities. ANBERNIC also states that this could emulate up to and including SEGA Mega Drive, GAME BNOY Advance, Nintendo 64, Nintendo DS, Dreamcast and even PSP, which will be quite impressive if that's the case.
We have seen this type of performance on other RK3326 handhelds, though the 1GB of RAM may pull back its potential; only time will tell. We'll try to get this in to review over the coming weeks. You can snag the RG 35 on ANBERNIC's official website today.
