I Replaced My Analogue Pocket With a Modded GBA for Six Weeks

Tom Hargreaves — Hardware Reviewer, RetroInHand

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Six Weeks, Two Handhelds, One Commute

I put the Analogue Pocket in a drawer on a Monday morning in January and replaced it with a modded Game Boy Advance. I told myself it was for science. Honestly, it was also because James had been going on about how the GBA modding scene had reached a point where the gap between it and premium modern hardware was “basically nothing” and I wanted to prove him wrong. I didn’t, entirely. But I didn’t entirely fail, either.

The GBA I used wasn’t stock. That matters enormously and I want to be upfront about it from the start, because “modded GBA” can mean anything from a slightly cleaned-up original to something that barely resembles the hardware Nintendo shipped in 2001. Mine was built around an original AGB-001 shell — the classic wide-boy form factor, not the SP — fitted with a 3.0-inch IPS V3 screen kit from FunnyPlaying, a USB-C charging board, a new speaker with a bass mod, and a fresh shell in a translucent grey that I’m unreasonably fond of. Total cost including the donor GBA I bought off eBay for £18: around £85. The flash cart was an EZ Flash Omega Definitive Edition at £45, bringing the all-in cost to roughly £130. Still £89 cheaper than the Analogue Pocket at its current UK retail price of £219.

I want to be clear about what I was testing. This wasn’t a pure emulation shootout, and it wasn’t a “which plays GBA games better” contest — the Pocket wins that on hardware fidelity grounds almost by definition, running an FPGA implementation of the original silicon. What I was testing was something more personal and, I think, more useful: which device actually fits into a real person’s daily life? Which one do you reach for on the Tube when you’ve got four stops to kill? Which one survives being shoved in a coat pocket next to your keys? Which one, when the battery is running low at Paddington, makes you feel anxious versus relaxed? I’ve tested over forty handhelds at this point. Specs matter. Real life matters more.

Build Quality: Old Plastic vs. Premium Aluminium

The Analogue Pocket in hand

The Pocket is, without question, one of the best-feeling handhelds I have ever held. That is not hyperbole. The anodised aluminium shell feels genuinely premium in a way that almost nothing in this space does — the closest comparison I can make is holding a Nintendo Switch in handheld mode, except the Pocket is smaller and denser and the buttons have this lovely tactile click that the Switch’s face buttons absolutely do not. The D-pad in particular is exceptional. It’s one of the best D-pads on any handheld full stop, with clear diagonal registration and a satisfying resistance that makes precision platforming in something like Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow genuinely enjoyable rather than a battle against your own hardware.

The shoulder buttons are slightly shallow for my taste — I’ve got fairly large hands and after long sessions of playing games that require heavy L/R usage, like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 on GBA, I notice a mild fatigue that I don’t get on the SP’s larger triggers. But this is a minor complaint about a device that otherwise communicates quality from the moment you pick it up. The cartridge slot on top accepts original Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance cartridges with a reassuringly positive click. The USB-C port is on the bottom. There is a 3.5mm headphone jack. These are choices that matter in 2024 and Analogue made them correctly.

The modded GBA: surprisingly good, with caveats

The modded AGB-001 is a more complicated story. The original GBA shell design is 23 years old and it shows in certain ways. The hand grip ergonomics are notably less refined than anything designed in the last decade — there’s a reason so many people preferred the clamshell SP, and holding the original GBA for two hours on a long journey will remind you exactly why. My wrists started complaining around the ninety-minute mark on a Bristol to London run, which is something that never happens with the Pocket.

That said, the quality of a modded GBA depends enormously on the care taken during the build. My unit, which I built myself over two evenings with a soldering iron and some choice language, came out tightly assembled with no flex in the shell, no loose screen, and buttons that feel — once you’ve fitted a proper membranes replacement — noticeably better than a tired original unit. The FunnyPlaying IPS V3 kit installs without cutting the shell, which is a significant advantage over some older kits. The USB-C charging mod meant I was never hunting for a proprietary cable, which in day-to-day life is worth more than people give it credit for.

Where the modded GBA cannot compete is in that overall sense of solidity. Plastic is plastic. The shell creaks slightly under pressure. The cartridge slot — still the original Nintendo slot — feels appropriately vintage, which is charming but slightly anxiety-inducing when you’re inserting a £40 Pokémon cartridge on a moving train. And the tolerances on replacement shells vary wildly depending on supplier. I went through two shells before finding one that fit acceptably. Budget an extra £8–12 and order from a reputable supplier; the cheapest option on AliExpress will likely have gaps you could post a SIM card through.

Screen: Where the Gap Is Real — and Where It Isn’t

The Pocket’s screen

The Analogue Pocket has a 3.5-inch LCD with a resolution of 1600×1440. That’s a pixel density of roughly 615 PPI, which is absurdly high for a handheld of this size. The reason for that resolution is the FPGA architecture — running original Game Boy hardware at its native pixel ratio and then scaling it up cleanly requires a screen that can handle extreme upscaling without introducing artefacts. In practice, what you see is Game Boy games rendered at 10× their original resolution with perfect pixel grids, or with a selection of display modes that simulate the look of the original hardware including, yes, the greenish tint of the DMG screen and the ghosting of the original Game Boy Color.

Playing Link’s Awakening on a grey DMG cartridge on the Pocket, in the mode that replicates the original unlit green screen, is a strange and slightly emotional experience. It looks exactly right in a way that I was not prepared for. The authenticity is remarkable. Switch to the “clean” mode and you get crisp, bright, pixel-perfect sprites that look genuinely gorgeous. Brightness, colour temperature, and scaling options are all configurable. The screen itself has excellent viewing angles and holds up well in moderate direct light, though like virtually every LCD-based handheld it struggles in strong sunlight — I tested this on a surprisingly bright February afternoon and had to shield the screen with my hand on the train platform.

The FunnyPlaying IPS V3 screen

The FunnyPlaying IPS V3 kit installs a 3.0-inch IPS panel with a resolution of 240×160, which is — critically — the native resolution of the Game Boy Advance. There is no upscaling. What you see is exactly what the GBA outputs, rendered at pixel density. Compared to the Pocket’s screen, it is objectively less sharp at equivalent sizes, and there are no display mode options. It’s just the game, at native resolution, on a well-lit IPS panel.

And here’s the thing: it looks fantastic. Not Pocket-fantastic, but genuinely, legitimately fantastic. The colours on the IPS panel are vivid without being oversaturated — I’ve used some IPS kits that make everything look like it’s been dipped in neon, and this isn’t one of them. Metroid Fusion looks clean and crisp. The dark corridors of Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, a game that was genuinely difficult to see on the original unlit screen, are fully legible. Fire Emblem’s map screens are a pleasure to read. The brightness is more than adequate for indoor use and reasonable for outdoor use, though again, direct sunlight is a problem.

What the IPS V3 cannot do is replicate the Pocket’s more exotic screen options. There are no pixel grid overlays, no CRT simulation modes, no DMG green filter. You get a bright, clean, accurate image of what the GBA is actually outputting, and nothing more. For GBA games specifically, this is fine — the GBA was designed to produce clean, colourful sprites and the IPS panel delivers them well. For playing GB or GBC games on a GBA cartridge conversion, you start to notice that things look slightly different to how they were intended. Not worse, necessarily. Just different.

What the screen gap actually means day-to-day

In six weeks of use, the screen was the area where I most frequently thought about the Pocket. Not constantly — most of the time I was absorbed in whatever game I was playing and the specific pixel density of the display was the last thing on my mind. But there were moments: booting up a Game Boy Color game, or sitting across from someone on the train who caught a glimpse of the screen and leaned over, and feeling the slight wish that I had the Pocket’s extraordinary display to show off. The Pocket’s screen is special in a way that the modded GBA’s is not. The modded GBA’s screen is good in a way that is perfectly sufficient for the vast majority of use.

Performance and Emulation Accuracy

The Pocket’s FPGA advantage

The Analogue Pocket doesn’t emulate. This distinction matters and I want to spend some time on it because it gets glossed over in a lot of coverage. Software emulation — even excellent software emulation running on capable hardware — involves translating instructions from one architecture to another at runtime. FPGA implementation means the chip is physically reconfigured to behave like the original hardware at an electrical level. The practical upshot is that edge cases that trip up emulators — cycle-accurate timing, specific audio behaviour, unusual cartridge hardware — simply work on the Pocket because the hardware is, for most purposes, the hardware.

I tested this specifically with a few titles known to cause problems for emulators. Pinball of the Dead on GBA — a game that uses a specific mapper that has historically caused stuttering in some emulation contexts — ran without issue. The GBA Video cartridges, which use an unusual format and frequently cause problems, booted and ran correctly. NES games via the appropriate core, which I loaded onto the Pocket using the open-source community cores, ran with the kind of timing accuracy that software emulators on even very capable hardware occasionally miss. The Pocket’s library of cores now includes Game Boy, GBC, GBA, NES, SNES, Mega Drive, and several others, all running with FPGA fidelity.

The EZ Flash Omega Definitive Edition

The EZ Flash Omega DE is currently one of the best GBA flash carts available. At £45 it’s significantly cheaper than the Everdrive GBA X5 Mini at around £80, and for most users it offers the same day-to-day functionality. It accepts a MicroSD card, supports RTC (real-time clock) for Pokémon games and others that need it without requiring the battery workaround of older carts, and has in-built save states. Boot times have improved significantly with recent firmware updates — I was seeing five to eight seconds from power-on to game launch, which is entirely acceptable.

GBA game compatibility is near-total on the Omega DE. I tested around sixty titles across the six weeks and had zero problems with any of them. Where things get slightly more complicated is with GB and GBC games, which the Omega DE can run via a bundled emulator called Goomba. Goomba is good — it handles the vast majority of the library perfectly well — but it is software emulation running on the GBA’s ARM7 processor, and it shows its limitations with certain titles. Pokémon Pinball’s rumble feature doesn’t work. The Konami GB Collection games have audio issues. SGB-enhanced games obviously can’t display their enhanced borders. These are corner cases, but they’re worth knowing about.

The bigger picture is this: if you’re buying a modded GBA specifically to play GBA games, the EZ Flash Omega DE will serve you extremely well. If you want to use it as a multi-system retro device covering GB, GBC, and GBA with equal fidelity, the Pocket is in a different class.

Going beyond GBA

This is where the comparison becomes genuinely lopsided and it would be dishonest not to say so clearly. The Pocket, with its community cores, now plays NES, SNES, Mega Drive, Game Gear, Atari Lynx, and a growing list of other systems with FPGA-level accuracy. Loading up Super Metroid via the SNES core on the Pocket and having it run with frame-perfect accuracy is remarkable. The GBA, even with an Omega DE and Goomba or other software emulators baked onto the cart, simply cannot match this. The ARM7 processor in the GBA is powerful enough for 8-bit emulation and barely adequate for some 16-bit titles, but it cannot run SNES games at full speed across the board, and NES emulation has occasional audio glitches depending on the emulator version.

If your use case is “play GBA games”, the gap narrows considerably. If your use case is “play everything up to and including the 16-bit era with high accuracy”, the Pocket wins and it isn’t close.

Battery Life: The Commuter’s Obsession

I’m going to talk about battery life at length because it is, for me, the single most important practical specification on any handheld. I commute. I travel. I do not always have access to a plug socket, and even when I do, I don’t always want to sit next to it. A device that dies on me at 3pm after a morning session and an afternoon top-up attempt that got interrupted by a meeting is a device that has let me down in a real, tangible way.

Analogue Pocket battery performance

Analogue rates the Pocket at six to ten hours depending on usage. My real-world testing, with brightness set to around 70% and GBA core active, consistently landed between seven and eight hours. That is perfectly good. I never once had the Pocket die on me unexpectedly during my testing period — but bear in mind that I was primarily using the GBA for commuting during those six weeks and the Pocket was in the drawer, so this data comes from my prior four months of daily Pocket use rather than the six-week experiment period.

What I will say is that seven to eight hours at 70% brightness is competitive but not exceptional by modern standards. The Miyoo Mini Plus, which costs around £55 and I’ve reviewed separately, frequently hits twelve hours at equivalent brightness. The RG35XX H from Anbernic, which I had on the bench at the same time, hit nine to ten hours. The Pocket’s battery life is the result of FPGA hardware drawing significantly more power than a standard SoC — it’s the cost of the accuracy. Whether that trade-off is worth it depends entirely on how you use the device.

Modded GBA battery performance

This is where the modded GBA did something I genuinely did not expect: it made me stop worrying about battery entirely. The USB-C charging mod I installed uses a TP4056 charging board coupled with an upgraded 1800mAh lithium battery replacing the original 2× AA setup. In real-world testing across six weeks of commuting — typically forty minutes each way, five days a week, with longer sessions on weekend trains — I charged the GBA roughly once every four to five days. I tracked this specifically because I was curious. The longest I went without charging was six days, during which I played approximately nine hours total.

The FunnyPlaying IPS V3 screen is more power-hungry than the original GBA’s reflective screen, and the EZ Flash Omega DE adds some drain compared to a standard cartridge. Even so, IPS-modded GBAs with lithium battery upgrades routinely achieve eight to twelve hours of play time. Mine was consistently hitting ten to eleven hours at a moderate brightness level. On a four-hour train journey to Edinburgh — I did this in week three, primarily to visit a friend and also, admittedly, to give the GBA an extended torture test — I played for three hours and arrived with just under 60% battery remaining. That kind of range is enormously liberating when you commute.

The Pocket requires USB-C charging. The modded GBA also now requires USB-C charging. Neither requires anything proprietary. Both topped up from a standard power bank without issue. But the GBA’s extended range meant I was reaching for the power bank far less frequently, and that is a quality-of-life difference that compounds over six weeks.

Pocketability and Daily Carry

The Analogue Pocket measures 75.5mm wide by 133mm tall by 16.5mm deep. The GBA AGB-001 measures 144.5mm wide by 82mm tall by 24.4mm deep — wider and thicker, but shorter. In coat pocket terms, the GBA is more uncomfortable. It’s wide. It sits awkwardly in jeans pockets and creates an obvious rectangular bulge in jacket pockets. I spent a meaningful amount of time in weeks one and two adjusting it, moving it from one pocket to another, eventually settling on carrying it in my bag rather than on my person for anything longer than a short walk.

The Pocket, by contrast, slips into a jacket pocket with minimal fuss. It’s genuinely pocketable in a way that the wider GBA simply isn’t. This sounds like a minor lifestyle observation but it isn’t, quite, because the whole premise of a dedicated handheld versus a phone is the immediacy of access. If the device is in my bag and I need to get it out, open the bag, find the device, that friction adds up. If it’s in my pocket and I can have it in my hand in two seconds, it gets used more. The Pocket got used more than the GBA did in idle moments — queuing for coffee, waiting on a platform, standing in a lift — purely because of its size advantage.

The GBA SP clamshell form factor would have changed this calculation somewhat. The SP closes to 84mm × 82mm × 24.5mm, which is genuinely pocket-friendly. But I specifically wanted to test the AGB-001 form factor because it’s the most popular basis for mods — the SP’s screen replacement options are less developed and the ergonomics of the clamshell in extended play sessions are a different conversation. If you’re building a modded GBA specifically for portability, an SP donor unit is worth serious consideration.

What I Actually Missed About the Pocket

Six weeks is long enough to know what you miss and what you don’t. I kept a note on my phone every time I noticed the absence of a Pocket feature. Reading it back now, a few themes emerge clearly.

The screen, specifically for Game Boy and GBC games

I play a lot of Game Boy Color games. Shantae, Dragon Warrior Monsters, Metal Gear Solid on GBC, the Oracle of Ages and Seasons Zelda games — these are regular rotation titles for me. On the Pocket, GBC games look spectacular: pixel-perfect, with optional CGB colour accuracy mode that renders the palette authentically. On the GBA via the Omega DE’s Goomba emulator, they look… fine. Clean. The IPS screen helps enormously compared to the original GBA’s unlit display, but there’s a flatness to the image, a slight softness in certain pixel arrangements, that reminded me constantly I was looking at software emulation rather than the real thing.

Shantae in particular — a game with extraordinary sprite work for a GBC title — highlighted this on several occasions. There’s a particular animation where the main character’s hair catches the light that looks glorious on the Pocket’s display with the pixel grid overlay enabled. On the GBA, it looks correct. On the Pocket, it looks like someone polished every individual pixel with a tiny cloth. That sounds like the sort of thing only a maniac cares about. I am, apparently, that maniac.

The build quality

I missed holding the Pocket. I’ll just say it plainly. There’s something about picking up a well-made piece of hardware that is genuinely pleasurable in a way that plastic, even good-quality plastic, doesn’t replicate. The Pocket feels like an object that cost money to design and manufacture. The modded GBA feels like a beloved piece of kit that has been thoughtfully upgraded. These are different things. Both have their charm, but they are different.

The library depth via cores

Towards the end of week four I had finished the GBA games I’d queued up and found myself wanting to play some Mega Drive titles. On the Pocket, I’d have switched cores in about thirty seconds and been playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2 within a minute. On the GBA, my options were either to find a Mega Drive emulator that runs adequately on GBA hardware — Picodrive, which runs some titles at full speed and others definitely not — or to accept that I was limited to the GBA’s native library for the evening. I accepted the limitation. But I noticed it every time something like that came up.

The display modes and pixel grid overlays

This is more subjective, but I’ll include it because it came up repeatedly in my notes. The Pocket’s various display options — the pixel grid overlay that simulates the space between GBA pixels, the scanline modes for systems that warrant them, the DMG green filter — add a layer of intentionality to the way you experience games that you simply don’t get with a clean IPS panel. Playing Metroid Fusion on the Pocket with the pixel grid enabled and Metroid Fusion on the modded GBA on the IPS screen are meaningfully different experiences even though you’re running the same game on effectively equivalent hardware. The Pocket asks you to think about what you’re looking at. The modded GBA just shows you the game.

For some people, that clean presentation is preferable. For me, after six weeks, I found myself missing the option to choose.

What I Didn’t Miss — And This Is Equally Important

Balanced coverage means talking about what worked, and there are several things the modded GBA does that the Pocket doesn’t, or does better in purely practical terms.

The physical cartridge experience

I don’t want to be precious about this, but playing games from physical cartridges — real ones, not a flash cart — has a texture to it that I’d slightly forgotten. During the six-week period I specifically ran some sessions from original cartridges: my own Pokémon Emerald, a copy of Golden Sun from a car boot sale in 2019, a rather battered copy of Advance Wars that I’ve had since I was fifteen. Inserting a cartridge that you’ve owned for twenty years into a GBA that you’ve rebuilt with your own hands and booting it up is, I’ll admit it, a genuinely nice feeling. The Pocket also accepts physical cartridges, so this isn’t a GBA-exclusive experience — but it felt more natural in the GBA, in a way I can’t entirely rationalise.

The EZ Flash Omega DE’s save state flexibility

The Omega DE’s in-built save state system is, for commuting purposes, excellent. Press L+R+Start+Select to access the save state menu, save anywhere, resume anywhere. This is not unique to the flash cart — the Pocket has in-game save states too, via the menu. But the Omega DE’s implementation felt slightly snappier in daily use, and the ability to have save states on original cartridges (with an appropriate workaround involving the cart’s PSRAM) is something the Pocket cannot replicate with physical carts. This matters when you’re four stops from your station and mid-boss in Castlevania.

The cost and replaceability factor

Here’s a thought I had repeatedly during the experiment, usually when I was on a crowded train with someone’s bag pressing against my pocket: the Pocket costs £219 and if I drop it or it gets nicked, that is £219 gone. The modded GBA cost me £130 all-in and is made of parts that are individually replaceable. If the screen cracks, a new IPS kit is £25. If the shell cracks, a new shell is £10. If the flash cart fails, I’ve lost £45. The whole thing is a collection of modular components rather than a single precious object, and that changes how relaxed you feel carrying it.

I am not cavalier with hardware — ask James, who once watched me spend twenty minutes finding the right microfibre cloth before cleaning a screen — but there’s a low-level anxiety that comes with carrying an expensive single-piece device that disappears when you’re carrying something more modular. The GBA went in my coat pocket alongside my keys twice by accident. The Pocket would never have survived that indignity.

The community around GBA modding

This isn’t a hardware feature, strictly speaking, but it’s part of the experience. The GBA modding community — centred around places like the GBATemp forums and the Retro Game Repair Shop YouTube channel — is one of the most active, helpful, and well-documented modification communities for any piece of vintage hardware. When I had a question about the USB-C board grounding during my build, I found an answered thread on GBATemp within ten minutes. When I wanted to try a different screen brightness profile on the IPS kit, there was a firmware update with clear instructions. The Pocket has a community too, and Analogue’s own support is generally responsive, but the depth of DIY knowledge available around the GBA is extraordinary in a way that reflects the console’s twenty-three-year head start.

Value: What Are You Actually Paying For?

Let me put the costs out plainly, because I think it’s worth being specific.

Analogue Pocket: £219 direct from Analogue, occasionally available second-hand for £160–180 in good condition
Modded GBA (AGB-001 donor + IPS V3 + USB-C + shell): approximately £85–100 depending on your donor unit and shell quality
EZ Flash Omega Definitive Edition: £45
Everdrive GBA X5 Mini (alternative flash cart): approximately £80
Modded GBA all-in with Omega DE: approximately £130–145
Modded GBA all-in with X5 Mini: approximately £165–180

At £130 all-in with the Omega DE, the modded GBA is less than 60% of the Pocket’s price and offers a genuinely good GBA gaming experience. The gap in raw value terms is real. But value isn’t purely a price calculation — it’s what you get per pound spent.

What the Pocket gives you for the extra £89 over the Omega DE build: FPGA accuracy across GB, GBC, and GBA; a significantly better screen; a premium build that holds its value better; an expandable core library covering multiple additional systems; and a device you can use immediately without an evening of soldering. These are meaningful things. The soldering point in particular is worth addressing: I enjoy building hardware, and I have the tools and confidence to do so. A large number of people do not, and “just mod a GBA” is easy to say if you’ve got a Hakko soldering station on your desk and less easy if you’ve never picked up a soldering iron. Pre-modded GBAs are available from sellers on eBay and Etsy — I’ve seen decent ones go for £90–120 all-in without a flash cart — but quality control varies and you’re trusting someone else’s workmanship.

If you want the best possible GBA gaming experience and you’re willing to pay for it, the Pocket is the answer and there’s no shame in that. If you want a very good GBA gaming experience at a significantly lower price and you’re comfortable either modding yourself or buying a pre-modded unit, the GBA route delivers remarkable results. If you want GB and GBC games to look as good as they can possibly look on modern hardware, the Pocket wins outright and the gap is not close.

Specific Games I Tested and What I Noticed

Rather than talk about this in abstract terms, let me give you a run-through of specific titles and specific observations, because I think concrete examples are more useful than generalisations.

Golden Sun (GBA)

Golden Sun is, to my mind, one of the finest GBA games ever made and I return to it roughly every two years. On the modded GBA via the Omega DE, it ran perfectly — save states at chapter breaks made the episodic structure of the game feel natural on a commute, and the IPS screen rendered the beautifully detailed sprite work with real clarity. On the Pocket in GBA core mode, the experience was essentially identical in gameplay terms, with the added bonus that the pixel grid overlay gave the sprites a slightly more defined, slightly more “printed” quality that I find satisfying. Meaningful difference? Marginal. Noticeable? Yes.

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (GBA)

Dark game. Dark corridors. The original GBA screen — and even some lesser IPS kits — make the dark areas of this game genuinely difficult to navigate. The FunnyPlaying IPS V3, with its good black levels for an IPS panel, handled the game well. I never once squinted trying to parse a dark area. The Pocket handled it equally well. No meaningful difference here, which surprised me slightly — I expected the Pocket’s higher-resolution screen to give it an edge in fine detail, and in still screenshots it does, but in motion during gameplay the advantage essentially disappears.

Shantae (GBC)

As mentioned earlier, this was the game that made me miss the Pocket most acutely. Shantae via Goomba on the GBA is perfectly playable and looks good. Shantae on the Pocket in GBC mode with authentic colour palette rendering looks extraordinary. The sprite work in this game is dense and intricate and the Pocket’s pixel density and colour accuracy do it genuine justice in a way the GBA’s IPS screen — limited to the GBA’s own output resolution and colour space — simply cannot match.

Advance Wars (GBA)

Turn-based strategy on a commute is ideal, and Advance Wars remains one of the great handheld strategy games. No meaningful difference between the two devices in terms of the experience. The game’s clean art style translates well to both screens. The Omega DE’s save states were useful for preserving positions mid-mission. This is the category of game where the modded GBA feels like a fully adequate device rather than a compromised one.

Pokémon Emerald (GBA, original cartridge)

Running from the original cartridge on the modded GBA, Pokémon Emerald was a pleasure — the original cart’s battery is still alive, the save file I started in 2005 is apparently still intact, and there’s something faintly surreal about playing that specific save file on a rebuilt GBA on a commuter train nineteen years later. The Pocket cannot run original cartridges and simultaneously access save states without a workaround, so this experience belonged exclusively to the GBA. For original cart fans, that matters.

Metroid Fusion (GBA)

One of the best games on the platform and one I’ve played through eight or nine times at this point. Both devices ran it beautifully. On the Pocket I used the pixel grid overlay and found the SA-X sequences slightly more atmospheric for it — there’s something about the simulated pixel structure that makes the pixelated horror work slightly harder. On the GBA, the clean IPS image was arguably more immediately striking. Personal preference territory.

Who Should Buy What

I’ve spent six weeks thinking about this question across many train journeys and I’ll give you my honest answer without hedging it too much.

Buy the Analogue Pocket if:

You want the best possible screen for GB, GBC, and GBA games — full stop
You value FPGA accuracy and the peace of mind that comes with it
You want to play across multiple systems (NES, SNES, Mega Drive via cores) with high accuracy
Build quality and the premium feel of the hardware matter to you
You want something pocketable that you can also use immediately without a build project
You have £219 and you’re happy spending it on a dedicated gaming device

Build or buy a modded GBA if:

Your primary interest is GBA games specifically and you want the authentic hardware form factor
You want excellent battery life without anxiety
You enjoy the modding process and the satisfaction of a self-built device
Budget is a genuine constraint
You have original cartridges you want to play from real hardware
You’re comfortable with the trade-offs in GB/GBC emulation quality

There’s also a third option that I’ll mention briefly: the Miyoo Mini Plus at around £55 handles GBA, GBC, and GB emulation via software on a capable SoC, and for most games it’s excellent. If pure cost is the primary driver and you’re not attached to the GBA’s physical form factor, the Miyoo is worth serious consideration. I’ll cover it in detail in a dedicated review next month.

The Verdict

Six weeks with the modded GBA taught me that “close enough” is closer than I expected for GBA gaming specifically, and further away than I’d hoped for everything else. The modded AGB-001 with a quality IPS screen and the EZ Flash Omega DE is a capable, enjoyable, genuinely good GBA gaming device. At £130, it provides real value. The battery life is outstanding. The physical form factor has nostalgic charm that the Pocket cannot replicate, and the original cartridge compatibility is something no emulation-based device can fully substitute for.

But the Analogue Pocket remains, after six weeks away from it, one of the best handheld gaming devices I have ever tested. That screen is exceptional. The FPGA accuracy is meaningful for GB and GBC in ways that become increasingly apparent the more time you spend with the modded GBA’s software emulation. The build quality communicates an investment in craft that the modded GBA, however lovingly constructed, cannot match. Getting back to the Pocket after six weeks felt like coming home — specifically, like coming home to find that the central heating is on and there’s a good IPA in the fridge, versus the somewhat chilly but characterful flat you’d been staying in.

James was right that the gap is smaller than I assumed. I was right that a gap still exists. The interesting question — and the one only you can answer — is whether the gap is worth £89 to you.

Scores

Analogue Pocket

Build Quality: 10/10 — among the best in class, full stop
Screen: 10/10 — exceptional pixel density, outstanding display modes
Performance/Accuracy: 9/10 — FPGA fidelity is excellent; core library still growing
Battery Life: 7/10 — seven to eight hours is good but not outstanding
Portability: 9/10 — genuinely pocketable, comfortable in extended sessions
Value: 7/10 — excellent hardware at a premium price
Overall: 8.7/10

Modded GBA (AGB-001 + IPS V3 + EZ Flash Omega DE)

Build Quality: 6/10 — dependent on mod quality; plastic limitations are real
Screen: 7/10 — excellent IPS image for GBA, limited options for other systems
Performance/Accuracy: 7/10 — near-perfect for GBA natively, adequate for GB/GBC via emulation
Battery Life: 9/10 — ten to eleven hours is outstanding for daily carry
Portability: 6/10 — wide form factor is awkward in pockets; SP would score higher
Value: 9/10 — exceptional performance per pound for GBA gaming
Overall: 7.3/10

I Replaced My Analogue Pocket With a Modded GBA for Six Weeks — Here’s What I Missed