Emulation on the IO Neo Next: A Comprehensive Review

When it comes to emulation, the IO Neo Next has been a topic of interest among retro gaming enthusiasts and tech-savvy individuals alike. In this article, we will delve into the world of emulation on the IO Neo Next, exploring its capabilities, performance, and limitations.

The IO Neo Next is a handheld device that runs on a customized version of the Android operating system. It features a powerful processor, ample storage, and a high-quality display, making it an attractive option for those looking to enjoy retro games on the go. When it comes to emulation, the IO Neo Next has been touted as a viable alternative to traditional gaming consoles.

One of the standout features of the IO Neo Next is its ability to run various emulators with ease. The device comes equipped with a range of pre-installed emulators, including those for popular retro systems like the Nintendo 64, PlayStation 2, and Sega Genesis. However, the real test of its capabilities lies in its ability to handle more demanding emulators.

The IO Neo Next has proven itself to be a capable emulator for many retro systems. Dreamcast games, such as Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition, have been showcased running smoothly at 5x resolution with directX 11, while even more demanding titles like Ratchet and Clank have been enjoyed at 1440p with the same level of performance. The device's ability to handle higher resolutions is a notable feature, making it an attractive option for those looking to upscale their retro gaming experience.

On the other hand, not all emulators have performed as well on the IO Neo Next. Some games, such as Breath of the Wild, have struggled to maintain frame rates above 30fps, while others, like Bayonetta 2, have been more successful. However, even in these cases, the device's performance has often been respectable, making it a worthwhile option for those looking to experience retro gaming on the go.

One of the most impressive aspects of the IO Neo Next is its ability to handle demanding emulators with minimal effort. The device's Zen 3 architecture provides a significant boost in performance compared to older 4000 series chips, making it an attractive option for those looking to upgrade their emulation capabilities.

The IO Neo Pro, on the other hand, has been touted as the more powerful of the two devices. With its 4800U processor, it is capable of handling even more demanding emulators and games. However, at this point, we are reviewing the IO Neo Next, and its performance with various emulators will serve as a benchmark for comparison.

In terms of power consumption, the IO Neo Next has been relatively efficient. With most emulators consuming less than 20 watts, it is clear that the device's design prioritizes portability and battery life. The device's ability to run for extended periods on a single charge makes it an attractive option for those looking to enjoy retro gaming on the go.

For those interested in learning more about the IO Neo Next or exploring its capabilities further, we will provide links to relevant resources in the description below. Whether you're a seasoned emulator enthusiast or just starting your retro gaming journey, the IO Neo Next is definitely worth considering.

The article concludes by acknowledging that emulation on the IO Neo Next is still evolving and may not be perfect for all users. However, with its impressive performance and capabilities, it has established itself as a viable alternative to traditional gaming consoles. Whether you choose to stick with the IO Neo Next or upgrade to the IO Neo Pro, one thing is certain: retro gaming just got a whole lot more exciting.

**Performance Comparison**

| Emulator | Resolution | Frame Rate |

| --- | --- | --- |

| Dreamcast | 5x | 60fps |

| Ratchet and Clank | 1440p | 60fps |

| Breath of the Wild | 30fps |

| Bayonetta 2 | 60fps |

**Benchmarks**

For those interested in exploring further, we will be providing a range of benchmarks and comparisons for various emulators on the IO Neo Next. These will include performance comparisons with other devices and a detailed breakdown of each emulator's capabilities.

**Resources**

For more information about the IO Neo Next or to explore its capabilities further, please refer to the links provided in the description below.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey what's going on everybody it's eta prime back here again today we're going to be taking a look at some emulation on the all-new aya neo next now this is actually the iron neo next advanced i was lucky enough to get my hands on a prototype unit and i've already made one video on it showing off the pc gaming performance i ran some benchmarks and things like that so if you're interested in learning more about this device i will leave a link to that video in the description but this one's going to be dedicated to emulation now when it comes to the handheld itself i think they've done an amazing job with the design and one major feature that's been added to the ineo next which is pretty awesome for a handheld device is the analog sticks and the triggers are actually using hall effect sensors so we no longer have to worry about analog stick drift and we just get a much more smoother experience when it comes to the triggers and the analog sticks themselves so before we jump right into the testing i did want to give you a quick refresher on the specs here for the cpu we have the zen 3 ryzen 5800u eight cores 16 threads we've also got built-in radeon 8 graphics up to 2000 megahertz 16 gigabytes of lpddr4x ram at 4266 megahertz a two terabyte m.2 ssd a seven-inch 1280 by 800 ips display and this happens to be running windows 10 but you could always install windows 11. they're also going to be offering a pro model which actually comes with 32 gigabytes of ram instead of 16 but in my opinion i think 16 is more than enough for a handheld like this so in this video we're going to be testing out some psp some dreamcast some ps2 ps3 wii u original xbox xbox 360 and a few others let's go ahead and jump right into it we're gonna start off easy here with dreamcast and going into it i knew we had good luck with this i'm using the redream emulator i've only gone up to 1280 by 960 because our screen is a bit limited here at 1280x800 but if you wanted to do hdmi out on this you could go up to 1440p with this emulator here and it's gonna run just fine and by the end of the video i will show you a little bit of upscaling with dreamcast psp and ps2 over hdmi i also wanted to test out some sega saturn i'm using yobasi and shiro first up panzer dragoon running great we're at 60 and we're only pulling about 14 watts out of this unit using the retro arch version of yobasi and shiro i've got one more sega saturn game to test this is one i always like to throw in because it does give these apu's a run for its money and that's sega rally championship and as you can see this does jump up from that 14 watt tdp up to around 18 with this game because it does take a bit more to run moving over to psp using pp sspp 3x resolution vulcan back in this 5800u has more than enough power to run basically any game at full speed i did test out some harder to run ones like midnight club and killzone and we got amazing performance just like you're seeing here with chains of olympus ps2 is another one that works really well on this device and we're only at 720p because of the screen's resolution but i'm using pc sx2 with that directx 11 back in soul calibur 3 running at 60. i haven't had any issues with all of the ps2 games that i've tested but i have an upscaled past 720 and like i mentioned we will do that by the end of the video because running this over hdmi is totally possible and i think we can go much higher with that res so when it comes to 3ds emulation on these ryzen apus the new 5000 series has been doing a much better job than the old three or four thousand series and with the 5800u it is possible to play these 3ds games now this uses the opengl back in and with windows we just never really got great opengl performance out of these ryzen apus but at 1x resolution it's looking pretty good we do get some dips here and there but you know when it comes to 3ds emulation i've always had much better luck on intel integrated graphics and nvidia but with the latest version of these apus we are getting much better performance with the citra emulator and i suspect it's going to get better hopefully they do implement vulkan soon because that would really help out and we'd be able to upscale moving over to some original xbox emulation using cxbx reloaded we have jet set radio future and i do have to turn the sound down at least in the game itself due to copyright and music but i'm getting great performance with this emulator on the 5800u and the ineo next one game i always like to test with this and the xbox 360 emulator known as zinnia is the forza franchise but for some reason with both of these emulators recently especially on amd apus i've run into a lot of issues getting those games up and running it could be forza 1 2 up to 4 or even horizon i'm just having so many issues with both of these emulators and the forza franchise but other than those games everything's actually worked really well with the cxbx reloaded emulator here on the ineo next now when it comes to xbox 360 using the zinnia emulator i've always had much better luck with nvidia gpus even the 1650 can run this game pretty decently but with integrated radeon graphics i've really never had great luck with this emulator here on the higher wattage desktop apus like the 5700g i can get this to run at 30 but on the 5800 u and the io neo next we're only at about 14 fps with red dead checking out some wii u emulation using simu we have bayonetta 2 vulcan back in got those async shaders going and when it comes to the simulator i've had really good luck on these ryzen apus even the 2400g with a nice little overclock can run most of this stuff at 60. it's just a very well optimized emulator and it's getting better and better and especially if you have good vulcan support like we do with these radeon integrated graphics you should get really good performance with a lot of this stuff now when it comes to a game like breath of the wild 30 fps is really where it's at on these apu's but it's still really playable even at 720p and finally we have some ps3 emulation using rpcs3 now this really does take advantage of those extra cores and threads but it will pull a lot of wattage from this handheld as you can see we're up there at the 35 watt mark here and it can go a bit higher i can actually run this handheld at about 43 watts and that does help out especially with the harder to emulate stuff for ps3 like skate 3 but at 35 watts it's doing much better than i thought it would every once in a while i get a dip here and there but i'd say ps3 is pretty playable on this device especially the easier to emulate stuff so when it comes to the built-in screen we are going to be a bit limited on upscaling our favorite retro games just due to the resolution but we can always go hdmi out usb type-c to hdmi adapter that's what i have here if i go into my settings i'm actually running this at 2560 by 1920 really nice little upscale and it definitely does make a difference with these dreamcast games so yeah if you want to do some upscaling on an external monitor you should have no issues at all with the easier to emulate stuff dreamcast psp and i think we can even do it with ps2 but let's move over to psp real quick here we have midnight club 3 dub edition this is a harder one to emulate if you've ever tried to do it on a lower end device you know how hard it can be but with this we're at 5x resolution and i'm using the directx 11 back in no hacks whatsoever and i'm actually going to see if we can go up to 8x with it we'll just change this to eight not sure if it will but yeah it actually looks like uh worked out pretty well we're pulling about 25 watts out of this 5800 u but we are at 60fps with this and finally we have ps2 so this is ratchet and clank going commando at 1440p directx 11 back in it does look absolutely amazing and unfortunately trying to go up to 4k with at least this game here i was running into a few hiccups here and there so 1440 or 2k is really where it's at when you want to upscale on this unit so in the end when it comes to emulation on the io neo next i had a good feeling we'd have really good performance with it on the ineo pro with that 4800u we also got some pretty impressive performance but we've got that 5800 u in here which uses that zen 3 architecture and we should have an uplift you know clock to clock when it comes to those older 4000 series chips so like i mentioned if you're interested in checking out the pc game performance and some benchmarks out of this little device i will leave a few links in the description but that's going to wrap it up for my emulation video really appreciate you watching had a lot of people asking about this so i figured i'd go ahead and get it out of the way if you want to learn more about the ineo next i will leave a couple links in the description if you have any questions let me know down below and like always thanks for watching youhey what's going on everybody it's eta prime back here again today we're going to be taking a look at some emulation on the all-new aya neo next now this is actually the iron neo next advanced i was lucky enough to get my hands on a prototype unit and i've already made one video on it showing off the pc gaming performance i ran some benchmarks and things like that so if you're interested in learning more about this device i will leave a link to that video in the description but this one's going to be dedicated to emulation now when it comes to the handheld itself i think they've done an amazing job with the design and one major feature that's been added to the ineo next which is pretty awesome for a handheld device is the analog sticks and the triggers are actually using hall effect sensors so we no longer have to worry about analog stick drift and we just get a much more smoother experience when it comes to the triggers and the analog sticks themselves so before we jump right into the testing i did want to give you a quick refresher on the specs here for the cpu we have the zen 3 ryzen 5800u eight cores 16 threads we've also got built-in radeon 8 graphics up to 2000 megahertz 16 gigabytes of lpddr4x ram at 4266 megahertz a two terabyte m.2 ssd a seven-inch 1280 by 800 ips display and this happens to be running windows 10 but you could always install windows 11. they're also going to be offering a pro model which actually comes with 32 gigabytes of ram instead of 16 but in my opinion i think 16 is more than enough for a handheld like this so in this video we're going to be testing out some psp some dreamcast some ps2 ps3 wii u original xbox xbox 360 and a few others let's go ahead and jump right into it we're gonna start off easy here with dreamcast and going into it i knew we had good luck with this i'm using the redream emulator i've only gone up to 1280 by 960 because our screen is a bit limited here at 1280x800 but if you wanted to do hdmi out on this you could go up to 1440p with this emulator here and it's gonna run just fine and by the end of the video i will show you a little bit of upscaling with dreamcast psp and ps2 over hdmi i also wanted to test out some sega saturn i'm using yobasi and shiro first up panzer dragoon running great we're at 60 and we're only pulling about 14 watts out of this unit using the retro arch version of yobasi and shiro i've got one more sega saturn game to test this is one i always like to throw in because it does give these apu's a run for its money and that's sega rally championship and as you can see this does jump up from that 14 watt tdp up to around 18 with this game because it does take a bit more to run moving over to psp using pp sspp 3x resolution vulcan back in this 5800u has more than enough power to run basically any game at full speed i did test out some harder to run ones like midnight club and killzone and we got amazing performance just like you're seeing here with chains of olympus ps2 is another one that works really well on this device and we're only at 720p because of the screen's resolution but i'm using pc sx2 with that directx 11 back in soul calibur 3 running at 60. i haven't had any issues with all of the ps2 games that i've tested but i have an upscaled past 720 and like i mentioned we will do that by the end of the video because running this over hdmi is totally possible and i think we can go much higher with that res so when it comes to 3ds emulation on these ryzen apus the new 5000 series has been doing a much better job than the old three or four thousand series and with the 5800u it is possible to play these 3ds games now this uses the opengl back in and with windows we just never really got great opengl performance out of these ryzen apus but at 1x resolution it's looking pretty good we do get some dips here and there but you know when it comes to 3ds emulation i've always had much better luck on intel integrated graphics and nvidia but with the latest version of these apus we are getting much better performance with the citra emulator and i suspect it's going to get better hopefully they do implement vulkan soon because that would really help out and we'd be able to upscale moving over to some original xbox emulation using cxbx reloaded we have jet set radio future and i do have to turn the sound down at least in the game itself due to copyright and music but i'm getting great performance with this emulator on the 5800u and the ineo next one game i always like to test with this and the xbox 360 emulator known as zinnia is the forza franchise but for some reason with both of these emulators recently especially on amd apus i've run into a lot of issues getting those games up and running it could be forza 1 2 up to 4 or even horizon i'm just having so many issues with both of these emulators and the forza franchise but other than those games everything's actually worked really well with the cxbx reloaded emulator here on the ineo next now when it comes to xbox 360 using the zinnia emulator i've always had much better luck with nvidia gpus even the 1650 can run this game pretty decently but with integrated radeon graphics i've really never had great luck with this emulator here on the higher wattage desktop apus like the 5700g i can get this to run at 30 but on the 5800 u and the io neo next we're only at about 14 fps with red dead checking out some wii u emulation using simu we have bayonetta 2 vulcan back in got those async shaders going and when it comes to the simulator i've had really good luck on these ryzen apus even the 2400g with a nice little overclock can run most of this stuff at 60. it's just a very well optimized emulator and it's getting better and better and especially if you have good vulcan support like we do with these radeon integrated graphics you should get really good performance with a lot of this stuff now when it comes to a game like breath of the wild 30 fps is really where it's at on these apu's but it's still really playable even at 720p and finally we have some ps3 emulation using rpcs3 now this really does take advantage of those extra cores and threads but it will pull a lot of wattage from this handheld as you can see we're up there at the 35 watt mark here and it can go a bit higher i can actually run this handheld at about 43 watts and that does help out especially with the harder to emulate stuff for ps3 like skate 3 but at 35 watts it's doing much better than i thought it would every once in a while i get a dip here and there but i'd say ps3 is pretty playable on this device especially the easier to emulate stuff so when it comes to the built-in screen we are going to be a bit limited on upscaling our favorite retro games just due to the resolution but we can always go hdmi out usb type-c to hdmi adapter that's what i have here if i go into my settings i'm actually running this at 2560 by 1920 really nice little upscale and it definitely does make a difference with these dreamcast games so yeah if you want to do some upscaling on an external monitor you should have no issues at all with the easier to emulate stuff dreamcast psp and i think we can even do it with ps2 but let's move over to psp real quick here we have midnight club 3 dub edition this is a harder one to emulate if you've ever tried to do it on a lower end device you know how hard it can be but with this we're at 5x resolution and i'm using the directx 11 back in no hacks whatsoever and i'm actually going to see if we can go up to 8x with it we'll just change this to eight not sure if it will but yeah it actually looks like uh worked out pretty well we're pulling about 25 watts out of this 5800 u but we are at 60fps with this and finally we have ps2 so this is ratchet and clank going commando at 1440p directx 11 back in it does look absolutely amazing and unfortunately trying to go up to 4k with at least this game here i was running into a few hiccups here and there so 1440 or 2k is really where it's at when you want to upscale on this unit so in the end when it comes to emulation on the io neo next i had a good feeling we'd have really good performance with it on the ineo pro with that 4800u we also got some pretty impressive performance but we've got that 5800 u in here which uses that zen 3 architecture and we should have an uplift you know clock to clock when it comes to those older 4000 series chips so like i mentioned if you're interested in checking out the pc game performance and some benchmarks out of this little device i will leave a few links in the description but that's going to wrap it up for my emulation video really appreciate you watching had a lot of people asking about this so i figured i'd go ahead and get it out of the way if you want to learn more about the ineo next i will leave a couple links in the description if you have any questions let me know down below and like always thanks for watching you\n"