Miyoo Mini+ review: One of the best retro handhelds you can buy today (2024)

When it comes to gaming handhelds, some of the heavy hitters of the last year have come from the likes of Valve, Lenovo, and Asus. There are some other handhelds like the Nintendo Switch that are obviously more geared towards casual gamers too, but outside of that, there are even more popular handhelds in a niche dubbed single-board computers, or SBCs. The Miyoo Mini+ is one such device, and it's capable of emulating a ton of consoles of old.

A single-board computer, like the name suggests, is a computer where all memory, I/O, processing, and anything else are all on the same circuit board. A couple of major advantages of SBCs is that they tend to be cheaper to produce and more power efficient, which are both perfect for a device like the Miyoo Mini+. The Raspberry Pi is another rather famous example of an SBC, but there are countless others, too.

The Miyoo Mini+ is a small gaming handheld that you can fit in your pocket, complete with a long battery life and a laundry list of emulators that it supports. Plus, it's cost effective, and will only set you back around $70 to pick one up. As if that wasn't enough either, it's well supported by the community, with a custom operating system with even more emulators and additional features taking less than ten minutes to set up to get even more out of it. It's a fantastic gaming handheld that's capable of so much, and if you want to play older games on the go, then there's really no better device.

Miyoo Mini Plus

9/ 10

About the size of a deck of cards (or a Game Boy), this portable from Miyoo will slip easily into your pocket and be able to handle emulating a huge ton of retro games. What's more is that this is the cheapest portable on the list, making it an easy buy for those who might be interested.

Pros

• Powerful
• Good battery life
• Great operating system alternative

Cons

• No internal clock
• No Bluetooth

See Also

Miyoo Mini (and Miyoo Mini Plus) Starter GuideMiyoo Mini Plus - 128 GB - Retro Handheld Console Grijs | bolMiyoo Mini Plus + V2 V3 V4 | Official Store | $79 In StockThis Analogue Pocket Rival Is the Best Cheap Handheld You Can Buy

$80 at Amazon

About this review: XDA purchased the Miyoo Mini+ for the purposes of this review. Miyoo did not have any input into the contents of this review.

Pricing and availability

The Miyoo Mini+ can be purchased globally from resellers, and also from the official Miyoo AliExpress store. It retails somewhere in the region of $70, though exchange rates and other costs may vary slightly.

Design and build quality

A little on the small side

The Miyoo Mini+ is an entirely-plastic build, aside from the glass screen. Everything from the shell to the buttons are varying types of plastic, which helps keep costs and weight down. However, it can make it feel cheap, and can also make it so that buttons like the power button are actually hard to both find and to press. If you're feeling around in the dark for the power button for example, it might take you a little bit of extra time to find it. That's not just on the fact that it's the same plastic as the shell though, it's that it also doesn't really stick out.

To go over the buttons on the Miyoo Mini+, there's a D-pad, a set of ABXY buttons, start, select, and a button in the center for interacting with the system when in a game. On the back are a set of two R buttons and two L buttons, and on the bottom is a headphone jack and a USB-C charging port. While it may be USB-C, it's limited in what it supports for charging. It only charges at 5V 1A, or 5W.

The screen is surprisingly good, and not quite what I expected from a device as cheap as this. It seems to be the same screen as a Blackberry Bold 9900, as the community has managed to sucessfully make screen swaps with this model without any modifications. It's a 3.5-inch IPS LCD at a 640×480 resolution, more than good enough for this size and for the calibre of games that you'll be playing on a handheld like this. Likewise, the speaker impressed me too, getting quite loud with decent quality.

My only criticism of the Miyoo Mini+ is how small it is, though hat might be an advantage if you're picking up one of these for a child with smaller hands. It's very small, and for anyone with larger hands, may be a struggle to play over longer periods of time. That is literally the only major downside I've noticed in the Miyoo Mini+ though, which seems to be an intentional choice for portability reasons.

Gaming

What the Miyoo Mini+ is really made for

The Miyoo Mini+ is made for gaming, and that's exactly what it excels at. It packs a Sigmastar SSD202D SoC with dual Arm Cortex A7 cores and 128MB of RAM. It's not going to be setting benchmark records by any stretch of the imagination, but that's more than good enough for most retro titles. By default, it can play basically any console or handheld up until the Sega Dreamcast, and with OnionOS, can even play Nintendo DS and ScumVM titles. DS emulatio nis thanks to a Drastic emulator core that's been ported over.

Of course, there are limitations. Nintendo DS emulation isn't perfect, and some titles don't work all that well or have limited performance. I've had a good time with Pokemon Soul Silver, but even Pokemon Black 2 pushed it a little bit to its limits. Keep in mind the Miyoo Mini+ doesn't even support Nintendo DS emulation out of the box, so it's impressive it works at all. As well, there's no real-time clock that keeps ticking in the background for games to use, but OnionOS does have online syncing so that everytime you boot it up, it can pull the current time.

Aside from those minor problems, the Miyoo Mini+ is a dream to play with. Game Boy Advance titles run flawlessly, PlayStation 1 games are a treat to play anywhere, and you can play basically anything that you want from a system of the past. Even ScummVM games work on OnionOS too, which is why it's just a must-install as soon as you get the Miyoo Mini. It's great in its stock form, but it can be made even better.

For anyone who has a library of retro titles that they've wanted to sink their teeth into, then the Miyoo Mini+ is almost certainly worth a look. Battery life also impresses, and you're looking at getting up to six hours of battery life. That's with Wi-Fi enabled and a modest brightness level, making it perfect for trips. The worst part of the experience is the charging time, which will take up to three hours thanks to the slow 5W charging speed.

Even on the stock operating system, the Miyoo Mini excels at being an excellent gaming device. You copy your backups to an SD card (pundits recommend not using the included SD card, as they tend to be cheap and stop working quickly) and launch your games. Simple, right? OnionOS makes it even better though, and given it takes minutes to set up, is a complete no-brainer to do.

If the Miyoo Mini+ had one major flaw when it came to gaming, it's that it doesn't support Bluetooth headsets. While gaming over Bluetooth doesn't always tend to be ideal given that there can be an inherent desychronization, it's a nice-to-have feature that's been left out here. Any headphones that support 3.5mm audio input will work, but as someone who carries exclusively wireless headphones and earphones, it's different to what I imagine a lot of people are used to these days.

Should you buy the Miyoo Mini+?

You should buy the Miyoo Mini+ if:

• You want to enjoy retro games on the go
• You want to play Pokemon ROM Hacks on what feels like official hardware
• You want a small, portable handheld
• You don't mind installing a custom operating system

You shouldn't buy the Miyoo Mini+ if:

• You want a larger handheld
• You want faster charging

The Miyoo Mini+ is a device that's hard to find particular fault with, It's got a great quality screen, it plays so many games, it has fantastic community support, and it has a decent build quality. It's not going to be turning heads with its sheer power, but it's a portable device with a long battery-life and a lot of customizability. It's an impressive hardware package that can be purchased surprisingly easily online, and if you want to play games on the go but don't quite want to go the route of a PC gaming handheld, then this is a fantastic option.

I've been pleasantly surprised by the Miyoo Mini+, mostly because I wasn't sure what to expect. Even when it comes to software, I'm always suspicious of smaller companies like these and how they'll react to community-made operating systems that outperform their own, but it seems that Miyoo have embraced OnionOS, no less because the official operating system now even comes with an OnionOS theme baked into the software.

If you're looking to start your retro gaming journey for cheap, then the Miyoo Mini+ is one of the best options available today. It's really hard to go wrong with it, and I highly recommend it.