The Retro Game 503 Handheld Console Review: A Mixed Bag of Emulation and Performance

This is it would be really nice to see that frame counter pegged out at 60 with Dreamcast on the RG 503 and finally here we've got some PSP using the standalone version of PPSSPP, we're at 2x resolution with Tech and Dark Resurrection, and it's running at full speed feels really good and looks absolutely amazing on this OLED display. Tech and Dark Resurrection is one of those easier PSP games to emulate I've had really good luck on low-end hardware with this even with an upscale and we're at 2x here it's using the OpenGL backend but this doesn't mean that it's going to run every PSP game at full speed because when we move up to Tekken 6, which is a bit harder to emulate than Dark Resurrection, we're not quite at 60 at 2x. We can take this down to 1x and play this game at 60 or we could turn frame skip on and in turn it would run this game at 30 fps and for the harder to emulate PSP games like Chains of Olympus that's probably what you're going to have to do on this hardware, you will have to enable frame skip and even then I'm not sure if that game's going to do 2x with frameskip at 30.

The next thing I wanted to take a look at was something I was really excited about for this device and that's Game Streaming using Moonlight. So I've got this connected to my own PC in my house, this is my gaming PC, the PC itself is connected over Ethernet for a better connection obviously, the handheld here is on Wi-Fi, we're using a five gigahertz network, I can launch it directly into Steam, we can go to Big Picture or regular Steam, it's really up to you or we can launch individual games like God of War. So I've got this running on my main PC, we're at high settings 1080p, it looks really really good on this display, the buttons were already mapped here there was nothing I had to do from within the settings in the game itself or in Steam, so far but I really haven't gotten a Big Picture mode, I've just kind of been launching individual games and it's worked out really well. I can't get over how good it looks on this display and I've got a really decent router in the house and having your main PC that you're streaming from connected on a wired connection definitely makes a big difference that way we've only got one working on Wi-Fi which is the handheld itself, I could play through this no problem at all.

I wanted to test at least one more and here we have Forza Horizon 5 with the layout of the triggers it's a little hard to get to so I would like to go into the settings and change this over that way I can get to the gas and brake a little easier but as you can see, I mean it is fully functional streaming this from my PC at ultra quality looks really really good. When it comes to the RG 305 there's a lot to like about it and there's also a lot of dislike and really when it comes to the dislike it's more about the performance in retro gaming the higher end stuff, the lower end stuff is gonna work just fine as you saw in this video but I wouldn't recommend running out and buying this specifically for PSP or Dreamcast of course with some custom firmware we might get a little boost in performance but I don't see this ever running every PSP game at full speed, the chip they're using here, the Arcade 3566 is kind of on par with the performance of the S905X3 it's definitely a lot more efficient and battery life on this is really great, I can get five and a half hours out of this unit playing it with the brightness all the way up, the speakers they used here sound really good, they get loud nice and clear.

So I love the sound system and I'd say the main selling point here is that OLED display, it looks and performs absolutely amazingly and I suspect we'll see more handhelds with these OLEDs in the future but I do wish performance on the CPU was a bit better for Dreamcast and PSP that would have made all the difference in the world. The price on this is around $135 it's really up to you, I mean if you're interested in picking something like this up for game streaming and older retro games then it might be a good option but just know going into it you're not going to get the best PSP and Dreamcast performance out of this device.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey what's going on everybody it's eta prime pack here again today we're going to be taking a look at the all-new rg503 from amber nick i've actually been looking forward to getting my hands on this unit mainly because of the screen and wi-fi now it's definitely meant to be a retro console but with five gigahertz wi-fi built-in and an oled display this might make a great little steam streaming device and we'll definitely test that out in this video so like i mentioned this does have an oled display it's actually the same display that came in the first ps vita so we should have a really nice screen here as you can see we've got our shoulder buttons our trigger buttons dual analog sticks we've got a d-pad av x y start select it is charged over usb type c and inside of the box we're going to get our instruction manual we've also got our usb type-c charging and sync cable and a glass screen protector take a look around the unit down here we have dual stereo speakers two micro sd card slots we've got a reset button and a function button right out of the box with the stock firmware in order to exit a game back in the emulation station you do have to press function and start but this can be remapped it is a bit cumbersome when it's set up like that usually i just remap mine to start and select over here on the left hand side we have our power button on the right hand side we have our volume rocker and up top we've got two usb type c ports a 3.5 millimeter audio jack and mini hdmi out when it comes to the specs of the rg503 for the cpu it's using the rk3566 we've seen this in a lot of android boxes we've got four cores up to 1.8 gigahertz and these are cortex a55 cores the gpu is a mali g52 we've only got one gigabyte of ram in here which is totally fine for retro gaming and the linux or bottocera operating system that's pre-installed but with the arcade 3566 there is really great android support and one gigabyte just really isn't going to cut it if we ever had an android operating system for this unit i really wish they would have added at least one more gig of ram bringing it up to two it's got a milliamp hour battery and they're claiming six plus hours of gameplay out of this unit it does have five gigahertz wi-fi and bluetooth 4.2 and when it comes to the screen it's a 4.95 inch oled at 960x533 it's the same screen that was used in the original ps vita before they swapped over to ips i'm a huge fan of that screen but when it comes to retro gaming i really wish this was a four by three aspect ratio screen it's 16 by nine so while playing our favorite retro games in a 4x3 aspect ratio the way they were meant to be played we will have some black bars on the side or you can install some bezels it's really up to you but going into this i really do wish it was a 4x3 aspect ratio unit okay so the very first thing you're going to notice once you boot this up is the screen i mean it definitely looks beautiful this is the main claim to fame when it comes to this little handheld here and it definitely does a great job for what we have here awesome brightness great viewing angles and the colors definitely pop on this oled display now most of this stuff right out of the box is going to be set to 16x9 so once you start up a game from like genesis or game gear you'll notice it looks a little stretched out but from the game settings we can set this back to 4x3 that way all of our retro games that were meant to be played at that aspect ratio go to that aspect ratio systems like psp that took advantage of a 16x9 screen will be running at 16x9 it's using a standalone emulator and it does look really good on this display but now i want to get into some performance and just see what this thing can and can't do we're going to start off light here with sega genesis otherwise known as mega drive in other parts of the world we've got gun star heroes and when it comes to the lower end stuff neo geo super nintendo snes game boy game boy color and obviously sega genesis we have more than enough power to run these at full speed even with some nice shaders on we can run these at 60 fps you're gonna have a great time with these systems but there's already a lot of handhelds on the market that can run these lower end emulators at full speed next up we've got game boy advance and for the hardware we have i didn't expect we'd run into any issues i do love the speakers on this they get nice and loud super clear and these games look great on this oled display really wish it was a 4x3 oled right out of the box we could add bezels down the road if you want to to fill in those black lines on the side but you can get used to playing a game like this or you can stretch it out if you want to next up we've got playstation 1 and i do have the high resolution scaler going inside of retro arch with this one colin mcrae rally 2.0 still one of my favorite rally games and the rg 305 can definitely handle playstation 1 really well i don't suspect you're going to run into any games that don't perform well on this hardware so it obviously has the lower end stuff covered really well but what about something a little harder to run like dreamcast here we are with marvel vs capcom 2. i'm using retroarch with the flycast core fps is up in the top right hand corner it's getting really close to 60. i'd say that this is definitely playable still feels really good but unfortunately it's not going to run every dreamcast game this well i went through and i tested a couple like crazy taxi 2. that one's in the mid-40s and when it comes to the flycast core we can also do naomi and atomos wave getting really the same performance low 50s mid 40s with most of the stuff and something like sonic adventure 2 again still in the mid 40s i mean it feels pretty decent we do get some slow downs and audio stutters every once in a while but you know coming out with a new handheld like this it would be really nice to see that frame counter pegged out at 60 with dreamcast on the rg 503 and finally here we've got some psp using the standalone version of ppsspp we're at 2x resolution with tech and dark resurrection and it's running at full speed feels really good and looks absolutely amazing on this oled display tech and dark resurrection is one of those easier psp games to emulate i've had really good luck on low end hardware with this even with an upscale and we're at 2x here it's using the opengl back-end but this doesn't mean that it's going to run every psp game at full speed because when we move up to tekken 6 which is a bit harder to emulate than dark resurrection we're not quite at 60 at 2x we can take this down to 1x and play this game at 60 or we could turn frame skip on and in turn it would run this game at 30 fps and for the harder to emulate psp games like chains of olympus that's probably what you're going to have to do on this hardware you will have to enable frame skip and even then i'm not sure if that game's going to do 2x with frameskip at 30. the next thing i wanted to take a look at was something i was really excited about for this device and that's game streaming using moonlight so i've got this connected to my own pc in my house this is my gaming pc the pc itself is connected over ethernet for a better connection obviously the handheld here is on wi-fi we're using a five gigahertz network i can launch it directly into steam we can go to big picture or regular steam it's really up to you or we can launch individual games like god of war so i've got this running on my main pc we're at high settings 1080p it looks really really good on this display the buttons were already mapped here there was nothing i had to do from within the settings in the game itself or in steam so far but i really haven't gotten a big picture mode i've just kind of been launching individual games and it's worked out really well i can't get over how good it looks on this display and i've got a really decent router in the house and having your main pc that you're streaming from connected on a wired connection definitely makes a big difference that way we've only got one working on wi-fi which is the handheld itself i could play through this no problem at all i wanted to test at least one more and here we have forza horizon 5 with the layout of the triggers it's a little hard to get to so i would like to go into the settings and change this over that way i can get to the gas and brake a little easier but as you can see i mean it is fully functional streaming this from my pc at ultra quality looks really really good so when it comes to the rg 305 there's a lot to like about it and there's also a lot of dislike and really when it comes to the dislike it's more about the performance in retro gaming the higher end stuff the lower end stuff's gonna work just fine as you saw in this video but i wouldn't recommend running out and buying this specifically for psp or dreamcast of course with some custom firmware we might get a little boost in performance but i don't see this ever running every psp game at full speed the chip they're using here the arcade 3566 is kind of on par with the performance of the s905x3 it's definitely a lot more efficient and battery life on this is really great i can get five and a half hours out of this unit playing it with the brightness all the way up the speakers they used here sound really good they get loud nice and clear so i love the sound system and i'd say the main selling point here is that oled display it looks and performs absolutely amazingly and i suspect we'll see more handhelds with these oleds in the future but i do wish performance on the cpu was a bit better for dreamcast and psp that would have made all the difference in the world the price on this is around 135 dollars it's really up to you i mean if you're interested in picking something like this up for game streaming and older retro games then it might be a good option but just know going into it you're not going to get the best psp and dreamcast performance out of this device i will have at least one more video coming up with this unit so if there's anything else you want to see running on the 503 let me know in the comments below but that's gonna wrap it up for this one and like always thanks for watchinghey what's going on everybody it's eta prime pack here again today we're going to be taking a look at the all-new rg503 from amber nick i've actually been looking forward to getting my hands on this unit mainly because of the screen and wi-fi now it's definitely meant to be a retro console but with five gigahertz wi-fi built-in and an oled display this might make a great little steam streaming device and we'll definitely test that out in this video so like i mentioned this does have an oled display it's actually the same display that came in the first ps vita so we should have a really nice screen here as you can see we've got our shoulder buttons our trigger buttons dual analog sticks we've got a d-pad av x y start select it is charged over usb type c and inside of the box we're going to get our instruction manual we've also got our usb type-c charging and sync cable and a glass screen protector take a look around the unit down here we have dual stereo speakers two micro sd card slots we've got a reset button and a function button right out of the box with the stock firmware in order to exit a game back in the emulation station you do have to press function and start but this can be remapped it is a bit cumbersome when it's set up like that usually i just remap mine to start and select over here on the left hand side we have our power button on the right hand side we have our volume rocker and up top we've got two usb type c ports a 3.5 millimeter audio jack and mini hdmi out when it comes to the specs of the rg503 for the cpu it's using the rk3566 we've seen this in a lot of android boxes we've got four cores up to 1.8 gigahertz and these are cortex a55 cores the gpu is a mali g52 we've only got one gigabyte of ram in here which is totally fine for retro gaming and the linux or bottocera operating system that's pre-installed but with the arcade 3566 there is really great android support and one gigabyte just really isn't going to cut it if we ever had an android operating system for this unit i really wish they would have added at least one more gig of ram bringing it up to two it's got a milliamp hour battery and they're claiming six plus hours of gameplay out of this unit it does have five gigahertz wi-fi and bluetooth 4.2 and when it comes to the screen it's a 4.95 inch oled at 960x533 it's the same screen that was used in the original ps vita before they swapped over to ips i'm a huge fan of that screen but when it comes to retro gaming i really wish this was a four by three aspect ratio screen it's 16 by nine so while playing our favorite retro games in a 4x3 aspect ratio the way they were meant to be played we will have some black bars on the side or you can install some bezels it's really up to you but going into this i really do wish it was a 4x3 aspect ratio unit okay so the very first thing you're going to notice once you boot this up is the screen i mean it definitely looks beautiful this is the main claim to fame when it comes to this little handheld here and it definitely does a great job for what we have here awesome brightness great viewing angles and the colors definitely pop on this oled display now most of this stuff right out of the box is going to be set to 16x9 so once you start up a game from like genesis or game gear you'll notice it looks a little stretched out but from the game settings we can set this back to 4x3 that way all of our retro games that were meant to be played at that aspect ratio go to that aspect ratio systems like psp that took advantage of a 16x9 screen will be running at 16x9 it's using a standalone emulator and it does look really good on this display but now i want to get into some performance and just see what this thing can and can't do we're going to start off light here with sega genesis otherwise known as mega drive in other parts of the world we've got gun star heroes and when it comes to the lower end stuff neo geo super nintendo snes game boy game boy color and obviously sega genesis we have more than enough power to run these at full speed even with some nice shaders on we can run these at 60 fps you're gonna have a great time with these systems but there's already a lot of handhelds on the market that can run these lower end emulators at full speed next up we've got game boy advance and for the hardware we have i didn't expect we'd run into any issues i do love the speakers on this they get nice and loud super clear and these games look great on this oled display really wish it was a 4x3 oled right out of the box we could add bezels down the road if you want to to fill in those black lines on the side but you can get used to playing a game like this or you can stretch it out if you want to next up we've got playstation 1 and i do have the high resolution scaler going inside of retro arch with this one colin mcrae rally 2.0 still one of my favorite rally games and the rg 305 can definitely handle playstation 1 really well i don't suspect you're going to run into any games that don't perform well on this hardware so it obviously has the lower end stuff covered really well but what about something a little harder to run like dreamcast here we are with marvel vs capcom 2. i'm using retroarch with the flycast core fps is up in the top right hand corner it's getting really close to 60. i'd say that this is definitely playable still feels really good but unfortunately it's not going to run every dreamcast game this well i went through and i tested a couple like crazy taxi 2. that one's in the mid-40s and when it comes to the flycast core we can also do naomi and atomos wave getting really the same performance low 50s mid 40s with most of the stuff and something like sonic adventure 2 again still in the mid 40s i mean it feels pretty decent we do get some slow downs and audio stutters every once in a while but you know coming out with a new handheld like this it would be really nice to see that frame counter pegged out at 60 with dreamcast on the rg 503 and finally here we've got some psp using the standalone version of ppsspp we're at 2x resolution with tech and dark resurrection and it's running at full speed feels really good and looks absolutely amazing on this oled display tech and dark resurrection is one of those easier psp games to emulate i've had really good luck on low end hardware with this even with an upscale and we're at 2x here it's using the opengl back-end but this doesn't mean that it's going to run every psp game at full speed because when we move up to tekken 6 which is a bit harder to emulate than dark resurrection we're not quite at 60 at 2x we can take this down to 1x and play this game at 60 or we could turn frame skip on and in turn it would run this game at 30 fps and for the harder to emulate psp games like chains of olympus that's probably what you're going to have to do on this hardware you will have to enable frame skip and even then i'm not sure if that game's going to do 2x with frameskip at 30. the next thing i wanted to take a look at was something i was really excited about for this device and that's game streaming using moonlight so i've got this connected to my own pc in my house this is my gaming pc the pc itself is connected over ethernet for a better connection obviously the handheld here is on wi-fi we're using a five gigahertz network i can launch it directly into steam we can go to big picture or regular steam it's really up to you or we can launch individual games like god of war so i've got this running on my main pc we're at high settings 1080p it looks really really good on this display the buttons were already mapped here there was nothing i had to do from within the settings in the game itself or in steam so far but i really haven't gotten a big picture mode i've just kind of been launching individual games and it's worked out really well i can't get over how good it looks on this display and i've got a really decent router in the house and having your main pc that you're streaming from connected on a wired connection definitely makes a big difference that way we've only got one working on wi-fi which is the handheld itself i could play through this no problem at all i wanted to test at least one more and here we have forza horizon 5 with the layout of the triggers it's a little hard to get to so i would like to go into the settings and change this over that way i can get to the gas and brake a little easier but as you can see i mean it is fully functional streaming this from my pc at ultra quality looks really really good so when it comes to the rg 305 there's a lot to like about it and there's also a lot of dislike and really when it comes to the dislike it's more about the performance in retro gaming the higher end stuff the lower end stuff's gonna work just fine as you saw in this video but i wouldn't recommend running out and buying this specifically for psp or dreamcast of course with some custom firmware we might get a little boost in performance but i don't see this ever running every psp game at full speed the chip they're using here the arcade 3566 is kind of on par with the performance of the s905x3 it's definitely a lot more efficient and battery life on this is really great i can get five and a half hours out of this unit playing it with the brightness all the way up the speakers they used here sound really good they get loud nice and clear so i love the sound system and i'd say the main selling point here is that oled display it looks and performs absolutely amazingly and i suspect we'll see more handhelds with these oleds in the future but i do wish performance on the cpu was a bit better for dreamcast and psp that would have made all the difference in the world the price on this is around 135 dollars it's really up to you i mean if you're interested in picking something like this up for game streaming and older retro games then it might be a good option but just know going into it you're not going to get the best psp and dreamcast performance out of this device i will have at least one more video coming up with this unit so if there's anything else you want to see running on the 503 let me know in the comments below but that's gonna wrap it up for this one and like always thanks for watching\n"