My RG353M arrived a couple days ago and I have to say, relative to everything else in their lineup, they really hit the nail on the head with the 353M. Everyone's touched on gameplay and it's capable for sure, but user experience with the physical device ultimately is what's important to me. Once you’re done, you may get several errors saying that the disk needs to be reformatted. Close them and eject the microSD card. For ArkOS on the RG351V, RG351MP, RG353M, RG353V/VS, or RG503, if SD2 is being used for roms, installation must be in /roms2/tools/. The .sh file must remain in the PortMaster folder! The easiest method for adding your own games to the RG353 device is to pop the TF2 card into your PC. Once the SD card it read, you should be able to easily navigate to it in your file explorer. However, it’s the games that really show what this handheld can do. Very similar to the RG353V, I found that all of the included platforms worked remarkably well. This also includes Dreamcast games, which the ones that came pre-installed played without any slowdown or frame rate drops, including Sonic Adventure 2.

We ran the Antutu benchmark on a loop and got 5 hours 20 mins which is a decent time. Android Overview Insert the TF1/Int microSD card that came with your device into your laptop/PC. You may need an SD card reader for this.This OS does not come pre-installed with Google Play store so you’ll either have to sideload your apps, use a third-party app like the Aurora Store, or follow a walkthrough on installing the Google Play store onto the device. Another noteworthy difference is that this console doesn’t bear the Anbernic logo on the front as the company’s other devices usually do. This makes the device look more minimalist and sleek, while also helping to minimise the bezel size.

The start and select are in the same position. I know many of you like these on the face of the device but I do not, and the outdated white text doesn’t help the minimal metal aesthetic in my opinion. RG351MP (LEFT) VS RG353M (RIGHT) Add the roms to their respective folders in the respective folders on the EASYROMS exfat partition. With the vast options of consoles to emulate the battery life for me did vary, but from my tests and mixing with brightness and volume settings I was pulling a solid 5 hours out of this device at high brightness which is reasonable for a device of this power. With the latest image made available today, If you boot ArkOS on a RG353V/VS unit and it just shows a garbled screen, you can try copying the rk3566-OC.dtb.v2 file over the existing rk3566-OC.dtb file which should work for the new v2 screen units. I’m still looking for a better solution than this. https://www.reddit.com/r/RG353V/comments/10ffs7j/arkos_and_unofficial_not_working/j4wt6bg/?context=3 I’m not going to go over the specifications or how well it plays games as it is identical in both those areas when compared to the RG353V, so I would recommend reading the original review for the for that device to help you decide whether this one is worth buying.

RG353M Specifications

The only complaint I have is about the sloppiness of information about system-updates. Most is available on win.anbernic.com, though I only found the latest Android-version (v1.11E at the time) on a YouTube-video for a different device, but the description of the link said v1.10E. Same with the links on win.anbernic.com, which are partly wrong or have a wrong description. For example, the link for the Android-version 1.10E, was the same link as for the Linux-variant. I would wish for more diligence in creating the information and a bit more structure. As a developer and techie, it was doable for me, but still took quite a while to figure out what is what and where to find it. I bet there's less tech-savvy people, who love to enjoy their retro-handheld, but have problems updating there system. There's reddit, there's YouTube, but I'd prefer to have less of a hassle from the official source. RG351P/RG351M (Will not work for the the RG351MP!) Announcement - GDrive | Torrent | (Updated 05/01/2021) MD5:397CE9322205E2042A62F54E770F949E The 8bitdo SN30 controller works great when you are connected to a TV to transform your RG353 into a mini portable home console This distribution is very close to JELOS in terms of emulators being configurable and being lightweight, however, as custom development continues separately from the original OS you can expect it to start to diverge more.

Once the Linux OS has booted up for the first time and everything has been configured, making your way around is pretty straight forward. On top of the device you will find newly designed shoulder buttons, and this is because the device is considerably thinner than the previous model, so notable in fact that it feels like a whole new handheld and the reduction in size means reduction in weight, coming in at just 232g which is fairly light for a metal device. Please note that this guide is specifically for devices in the RG353 range – the Anbernic RG353P, the Anbernic RG353V, the Anbernic RG353VS, and the Anbernic RG353M. While JELOS is also available for other handheld devices such as the Anbernic RG552, the tips in this guide may not be applicable to those. To prepare this card properly to be read by both systems, you need to first boot into the Android system (remove card from TF1 slot) and place your blank SD card into the TF2 slot once the OS is running. This will allow you to format the card as external storage readable by the Android OS. Anbernic has also recently released a PS version of the RG353. This PS version comes in the same SNES controller horizontal form factor but has only 1GB of memory and single boot to Linux. If you are looking for a horizontal form factor and looking to save a little money, the RG353PS might be a good option.

ANBERNIC has kept in their lane with this device and tweaked it efficiently over the last two years to a point where it’s close to perfect. The roms folder is on a separate exfat partition for easy management of roms and bios files from a Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows 10 1703 or newer computer without needing a separate program. Just pop the micro SD card into a card reader and look for the drive letter named EASYROMS and start loading and managing your roms and bios files there. The TF1 slot contains the SD card for your Linux OS. To replace this card, you’ll need to flash one of the Linux operating systems onto this new card. For this, you can use a smaller SD card of 8GB or so as it will only be used for the OS going forward. See my guide for Installing Custom Firmware (CFW) on the RG353 I then tried Nintendo DS, the emulator used has a nice feature where I can simply press the shoulder button to skip between screens, allowing me to get fully immersed into the main gameplay. This isn’t the most fluid way to play DS games, but it’s an easy get around for a console that has just one screen. Emulation performance was solid.

Online Updates (Won't require SD card reflashing unless there are major structural changes like file system changes.) The RG353M can run Android and or Linux, the Android OS is a little cumbersome to use with the tiny 3.5” touch screen, especially when typing, so I found myself using the linux OS because it’s just so easy to use and comes pre-setup straight out of the box. All three devices in the lineup are dual boot Linux and Android with the exception of the RG353VS variant which is Linux only and only 1GB of memory in an attempt to reduce costs on the line. Browsing the file structure of the SD card, you’ll notice that it should have a bunch of folders already on it which are named after the various gaming consoles. For 351Elec/AmberElec, just unzip the contents of PortMaster.zip to your storage/roms/ports folder then run PortMaster.sh from the Ports menu in 351Elec.

Looking at the specs for the RG405M, it features a Unisoc T618 running at 2ghz, MaliG52 GPU, 4GB’s RAM, and a 4” IPS display with a resolution of 640 x 480. It also comes with a 4500mah Battery, built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0. These specs should allow you to run emulation up to and including PS2.