Anbernic RG Cube Review

 

As previously mentioned in this blog Anbernic have been responsible for some of the best emulation handhelds around having absolutely nailed it recently with the clamshell RG35XX SP device.  Now they’ve launched the RG Cube, which is notable first of all for it’s narrower 1:1 screen, best suited for playing systems which support the 4:3 aspect ratio such as GameBoy and SNES, I wouldn’t attempt PSP on it though due to the massive black borders which appear at the top and bottom of the screen.

So is this another winner from Anbernic? Let’s see……

Firstly let me say this is without a doubt the most comfortable emulation device to hold and use that I’ve experienced for a very long time, it feels really great to hold and use.  The build quality is excellent as you’d expect from Anbernic featuring hall effect joysticks which also feature the option of different colour surrounds, although these can be turned off in the Settings but I think they look pretty cool!

For me the 1:1 smaller screen took a bit of getting used to but for systems that support it they look great and in most cases completely fill the screen which is a gorgeously sharp and bright affair.  

I did run into a couple of issues on the Cube, firstly on the Dreamcast Redream emulator, the menu options at the top are chopped off including the Exit option meaning the only way to exit a Dreamcast game is to press the Home button, a minor irritation but still annoying nonetheless.

Next, even though I was using exactly the same roms which worked perfectly on another device I simply could not get any Saturn games to work through the standalone Yaba Sanshiro Pro 2 emulator and ended up creating a playlist in Retroarch in order to play them, thankfully they play flawlessly this way.  I also tried the Saturn.emu emulator but the Cube is clearly not quite powerful enough for this emulator as some Saturn games ran pretty well, others were slow with choppy audio so this wasn’t really an option either.

I experienced no other issues with any other system though I’m glad to say!

This is another cracking device from Anbernic but not without it’s issues, their best machine recently in my opinion is still the RG35XX SP but this takes a credible second place for sure.