Miyoo Mini Plus Review: Is It Worth Buying in the UK in 2025?

Sarah Hargreaves — Culture & Features Editor, RetroInHand

Last updated: May 2026

I almost didn’t buy one. I’d heard so much about the Miyoo Mini Plus from the retro handheld community — Reddit threads, YouTube deep-dives, Discord servers full of people arguing about firmware builds — that by the time I actually ordered one, I felt like I’d already owned it for six months. That’s what happens when a device captures a certain corner of the internet: the discourse precedes the experience. But when the little white box finally arrived, slightly battered from its journey across from a Chinese warehouse via a third-party UK seller, and I held it in my hands for the first time, something clicked that no amount of reading had quite prepared me for. It just felt right.

The Miyoo Mini Plus is a small, clamshell-adjacent handheld from Chinese manufacturer Miyoo, running a Linux-based custom firmware called OnionOS. It costs roughly £50–£60 depending on where you buy it in the UK in 2025 — more on sourcing in a moment, because that’s genuinely complicated — and it plays games from the NES, SNES, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Mega Drive, PS1, and more. In raw specification terms, it’s not the most powerful budget handheld you can buy. But specifications have never been the whole story, have they? If they were, we’d all have stopped caring about hardware the moment the PS5 launched. The Miyoo Mini Plus succeeds for reasons that are harder to quantify, and as someone who grew up on a Game Boy Pocket and spent her teens obsessing over every portable release that made it to British shores — and plenty that didn’t — I find those reasons genuinely interesting.

So let’s get into it properly. Is the Miyoo Mini Plus worth buying in the UK in 2025? My answer is: yes, for most people, but with some important caveats that are specifically relevant to us as UK buyers. Read on.

What Is the Miyoo Mini Plus, and Why Does It Matter?

Before we get into the nuts and bolts, it’s worth situating the Miyoo Mini Plus within a broader story — because this device didn’t appear from nowhere. It’s part of a wave of Chinese-manufactured budget retro handhelds that has genuinely transformed the landscape of portable retro gaming over the past five or six years. Where once your options were a modded original Game Boy or an expensive Analogue device, you now have dozens of manufacturers producing small, affordable, Linux-powered handhelds capable of playing decades of gaming history.

The original Miyoo Mini launched around 2021 and caused an immediate stir. It was tiny — smaller than a Game Boy Pocket — had a gorgeous 2.8-inch IPS screen, and was priced at a level that made it almost an impulse purchase. The problem was stock. Miyoo, a relatively small operation, couldn’t keep up with demand, and the device became nearly impossible to find at retail price. The community that formed around it, though, was extraordinary. Custom firmware projects like OnionOS emerged, transforming what was already a capable little device into something genuinely special.

The Miyoo Mini Plus, which followed in 2023, addressed most of the original’s hardware limitations. Bigger battery. Wi-Fi built in. A slightly larger 3.5-inch screen. A more ergonomic form factor with proper shoulder triggers. Still tiny by modern standards — this thing genuinely fits in a jeans pocket, not in the theoretical way a Switch Lite fits in a pocket but in the actual, comfortable, doesn’t-ruin-the-line-of-your-coat way. The “Plus” designation is earned. This is the device that should have existed from the start.

Why does it matter culturally? Because it represents something genuinely new in how we relate to gaming history. This isn’t a licensed mini console like the PAL Mega Drive Mini — a lovingly curated but ultimately closed box with a fixed library. And it’s not an Analogue device — beautifully engineered but priced in a way that keeps it aspirational for most people. The Miyoo Mini Plus occupies a middle space: it’s cheap enough to be accessible, powerful enough to be genuinely useful, and open enough to become whatever you need it to be. That’s a combination the handheld market has rarely managed at this price point.

Miyoo Mini Plus Specs: What You Actually Need to Know

I’m going to resist the urge to paste a raw spec sheet here, because frankly most of those numbers won’t mean much without context. Instead, let me tell you what the specs mean in practice for someone who wants to play retro games on the go.

The Screen

The 3.5-inch IPS LCD panel is, genuinely, one of the best screens I’ve seen on a budget handheld at this price. It’s 640×480 — which is a 4:3 ratio, as God and Gunpei Yokoi intended — and it’s sharp, bright, and has excellent colour reproduction. Playing Super Mario World on this screen is a joy. The colours pop in a way that actually feels more vibrant than I remember from childhood, though of course what I remember from childhood was a grey-screened original Game Boy and a slightly-murky-in-PAL-50Hz SNES, so that’s perhaps not the highest bar.

The key thing about 640×480 is that it’s a perfect integer scale for most of the systems this device targets. NES, SNES, Game Boy, Mega Drive — they all scale cleanly to this resolution. You get pixel-perfect rendering without any of the stretching or filtering ugliness that plagued the early days of handheld emulation. OnionOS lets you apply CRT-style shaders if you want them, and some of them are genuinely lovely, adding a subtle scanline effect that brings back muscle memory from playing on a Trinitron in 1997.

The Processor and Performance

The Miyoo Mini Plus runs on an Allwinner A133P chip — a quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor. This is not a powerhouse. You’re not getting PS2 emulation, you’re not getting Nintendo DS reliably, and N64 is hit-and-miss at best. What you are getting is essentially flawless performance across everything up to and including the PS1, which covers an enormous range of games that most of us here care deeply about.

SNES emulation is perfect. Mega Drive is perfect. Game Boy Advance runs beautifully. Game Boy and Game Boy Color are so well emulated that the experience is arguably better than playing on original hardware — you’ve got save states, you’ve got rewind, you’ve got a backlit screen on everything. NES is, of course, trivial. PS1 emulation is where things get interesting: the vast majority of the PS1 library runs well, though you’ll encounter the occasional title that needs some tweaking. For those of us with a particular fondness for the PS1 library — and given how much has been written on this site about that era — the fact that this little device handles it so capably at this price is remarkable.

Battery Life

The Plus bumped the battery from the original’s 1,400mAh up to 3,000mAh, and the difference is night and day. In practice, you’re looking at four to six hours of play depending on screen brightness and what you’re emulating. SNES and Game Boy eat less power than PS1 emulation. I’ve been getting closer to five hours in my typical use — a mix of SNES JRPGs and GBA platformers — which is enough for a long train journey without the creeping anxiety of hunting for a USB-C port. Charges via USB-C, which in 2025 is the bare minimum expectation and the Miyoo delivers it.

Build Quality and Form Factor

Here’s where I want to be honest, because the Miyoo Mini Plus isn’t flawless. The build quality is good for the price but not exceptional. The plastic feels sturdy enough in daily use, but it’s not going to convince anyone it’s a premium product. The buttons have a slightly mushy quality compared to original Nintendo hardware — not terrible, but noticeable if you’re coming from a modded GBA SP or an Analogue Pocket. The d-pad is actually quite good, better than I expected, with clear diagonals and a satisfying click that handles fighting game inputs better than you’d think for a £55 device.

The analogue sticks are where opinions diverge most sharply in the community. They’re small — almost thumbstick-sized rather than full analogue sticks — and they feel a bit toy-like. For the systems the Miyoo primarily targets, this doesn’t matter much. PS1 games that need analogue inputs work, but don’t expect the precision of a DualShock. This is a device built for the d-pad era of gaming, and that’s exactly what it excels at.

Form factor: it’s roughly the size of a slim Game Boy Color. You can hold it in one hand. Both thumbs reach all buttons comfortably. The shoulder triggers are a genuine improvement over the original Mini, which had cramped bumpers that made PS1 games with trigger-heavy controls frustrating. My hands are on the smaller side, and I find it genuinely comfortable for extended sessions. I’ve seen comments from people with larger hands who find it cramped after an hour, and that’s a fair concern worth keeping in mind.

OnionOS: The Secret Weapon

I cannot overstate how much OnionOS transforms the Miyoo Mini Plus. The stock firmware is serviceable but unexciting. OnionOS — a community-built operating system developed by a group of dedicated volunteers — is extraordinary for what it is. It’s polished, it’s actively maintained, it’s full of features, and it makes the whole device feel cohesive in a way that most budget handhelds don’t manage.

Installing OnionOS is genuinely simple. You format a microSD card, drop the OnionOS files onto it, and the device handles the rest. If you’re comfortable enough with technology to have read this far without your eyes glazing over, you can do it. There are excellent guides in the OnionOS documentation and the Miyoo Mini subreddit, and the community is remarkably helpful to newcomers.

Once it’s running, you get a thoughtfully designed interface with a games library organised by system, quick access to save states, a sleep mode that actually works (the bane of many budget handheld existence), RetroAchievements support for the competitive or nostalgically completionist among you, a night mode, theme customisation, and syncing features via Wi-Fi that let you back up saves. The Wi-Fi functionality — new to the Plus, absent from the original — opens up syncing saves to a local network, which is genuinely useful if you play across multiple sessions and hate losing progress. This isn’t transformative technology, but it’s the kind of thoughtful quality-of-life feature that separates a device you use from one you put down after a week.

The emulator cores within OnionOS are well-configured out of the box. You don’t need to be a tinkerer to get good results, though if you are a tinkerer, there’s enormous depth to explore. The defaults are sensible. The SNES core is Snes9x, the GBA core is gpSP, the PS1 core is PCSX ReARMed — all solid, well-regarded choices with decades of community development behind them. Someone has clearly put genuine thought into which core to pair with which system for this specific hardware, and it shows in the consistency of the experience.

Buying a Miyoo Mini Plus in the UK in 2025: The Honest Reality

This is where UK buyers need to pay particular attention, because the purchasing experience for the Miyoo Mini Plus is genuinely more complicated for us than it is for people in the US or Europe, and getting it wrong can cost you significantly more than the device is worth.

Where to Buy

Miyoo doesn’t have official UK distribution. There is no British retailer stocking these on the high street, no Amazon UK listing from an official seller, and no warranty support that means anything in practical terms. Your options are:

• AliExpress directly from Miyoo’s official store: This is the cheapest option — typically £45–£55 depending on colour and any ongoing sales. Shipping takes two to four weeks. You will almost certainly pay customs charges on top, which under current UK import rules means you’ll likely be hit with VAT (20%) on the goods value plus a handling fee from whatever carrier delivers it. That can add £15–£20 to your total, turning a £50 device into a £65–£70 one. This isn’t unique to Miyoo — it’s the reality of importing from China post-Brexit for UK buyers, and it’s something our American friends in the retro gaming community sometimes don’t factor into their price comparisons.
• Third-party UK sellers on eBay or Amazon Marketplace: You’ll pay more — typically £65–£80 — but the device arrives quickly, is generally already customs-cleared, and returns are easier under UK consumer law. The markup is real, but so is the convenience, and for many people it’s worth it.
• Droix: A UK-based retailer that has stocked Miyoo devices and similar Chinese handhelds. Worth checking — they tend to have stock intermittently, prices are reasonable, and they provide actual UK-based customer service.

My honest advice: if you’re patient and comfortable with the slight admin of a customs charge, AliExpress from the official store is the way to go. If you want it now and hate faff, the eBay markup is genuinely worth it. This is very much the same calculation we make with importing Japanese hardware or US-only releases, as anyone who’s read our piece on whether the Analogue Nomad is worth importing to the UK will recognise immediately. The Miyoo is more forgiving on the maths, though.

Which Colour and Version to Buy

The Miyoo Mini Plus comes in white, black, and various limited-edition translucent colours — a clear purple version released in 2023 caused a minor internet frenzy, partly because it looked extraordinarily like the beloved Atomic Purple Game Boy Color, which remains one of the finest pieces of consumer electronics design ever produced. If you can find a translucent version at reasonable cost, I’d go for it. There’s something about seeing the circuit board through the casing that makes the device feel like a love letter to that late-90s design language.

As of 2025, there are no meaningful hardware revisions to worry about. The Miyoo Mini Plus is the current device. There were some early batch issues with certain units having slightly dim screens, but this appears to have been resolved in later production runs. If you’re buying new through any of the channels above, you should be getting a current-batch unit.

MicroSD Cards: Don’t Cut Corners

The Miyoo Mini Plus does not come with a microSD card, or comes with a very small, slow one depending on the listing. Buy a decent card separately. A 128GB SanDisk Ultra or Samsung Evo is more than enough for a substantial library and will cost you around £10–£12. Do not buy the cheap no-brand cards floating around on AliExpress — fake or failing microSD cards are the single most common cause of issues with budget handhelds, and a bad card can corrupt your entire setup. Spend the extra few pounds. I cannot say this firmly enough.

How Does It Compare to the Competition in 2025?

The budget retro handheld market has exploded since the original Miyoo Mini launched, and the Miyoo Mini Plus now exists in a genuinely competitive field. Here’s how it stacks up against the devices you’re most likely to be comparing it to.

Miyoo Mini Plus vs. Anbernic RG35XX H

The Anbernic RG35XX H is probably the Miyoo Mini Plus’s closest rival in 2025. It’s a horizontal, landscape-orientation device — think more Game Boy Advance than Game Boy Color in its layout — with broadly similar hardware capabilities and a similar price point of around £40–£60 depending on source. The screen on the RG35XX H is excellent, and the landscape orientation suits some people’s hands better, particularly for longer gaming sessions and for GBA titles where the original hardware was landscape anyway.

The Miyoo wins on community and software. OnionOS is more polished and more actively developed than the Anbernic’s stock firmware or the custom alternatives available for it. If you’re buying your first budget handheld and don’t want to spend too long in configuration hell, the Miyoo’s ecosystem is more accessible. The Anbernic’s larger range of models — they make devices at various price and performance points — means there’s more choice, but also more potential confusion about which one to buy.

My personal preference is the Miyoo Mini Plus, but this is genuinely close. If you play a lot of GBA games and find portrait-orientation tiring, look seriously at the RG35XX H.

Miyoo Mini Plus vs. Anbernic RG28XX

The RG28XX is even smaller and lighter — genuinely pocketable in a way that approaches the original Game Boy Micro in its compactness. It’s cheaper too, often around £35–£45. The tradeoff is a smaller screen and slightly reduced ergonomics. If portability is your absolute top priority and you’re primarily playing NES, Game Boy, or SNES titles rather than GBA or PS1, it’s worth considering. But for most people, the Miyoo Mini Plus’s additional screen real estate and better ergonomics are worth the small price premium.

Miyoo Mini Plus vs. Analogue Pocket

This comparison is almost unfair, because the Analogue Pocket costs £219.99 and uses FPGA hardware — a fundamentally different approach that prioritises accuracy over emulation by recreating the original hardware’s circuitry rather than simulating it in software. As we’ve explored elsewhere on this site in our piece on replacing an Analogue Pocket with a modded GBA for six weeks, the Pocket delivers something genuinely different from emulation, and if accuracy matters deeply to you, there’s nothing at the Miyoo’s price point that competes. But for most retro gamers most of the time, the Miyoo Mini Plus’s emulation is close enough that it won’t interfere with your enjoyment. The games feel right. The inputs feel right. The screen looks beautiful. The Analogue Pocket is a Michelin-starred restaurant; the Miyoo is a really excellent local Italian that you can actually afford to visit regularly. Both make you happy, just differently.

Miyoo Mini Plus vs. Retroid Pocket 5

The Retroid Pocket 5 costs around £130–£160 and runs Android, giving you access to a much wider range of emulated systems including PS2, Dreamcast, GameCube, and even some lighter Switch titles. If you want those systems, the Miyoo simply cannot compete — it’s not designed to. But if your primary interest is everything up to and including the PS1, you’re paying a significant premium for capability you may rarely use. The Miyoo Mini Plus’s focused approach — doing a specific set of things beautifully — is a genuine virtue, not a limitation to apologise for.

What Games Should You Actually Play on It?

I want to spend some time here, because this is ultimately what matters. The Miyoo Mini Plus is a delivery mechanism for experiences, and those experiences are what justify the purchase.

The SNES Library

This is the Miyoo Mini Plus’s natural home, and it is magnificent here. The SNES library is one of the finest in gaming history, and so much of it never properly reached British players in a playable state — games running at 50Hz with borders, slowdown, and sometimes missing content, as anyone who spent enough time reading about the dirty 50Hz secret that plagued our PAL consoles will know all too well. Playing a 60Hz SNES ROM on the Miyoo Mini Plus, at the speed the developers intended, on a gorgeous IPS screen, is a corrective experience. Chrono Trigger at the proper tempo. Super Metroid without the padding that 50Hz conversion added to its running time. Final Fantasy VI as Nobuo Uematsu heard it in his head. I’ve replayed games I thought I knew intimately and found them almost revelatory at the correct speed.

The Japanese import library opens up too. Games that never left Japan, games that got butchered in localisation, games we read about in magazines but could never play — the Miyoo provides access to all of it. Mother 2 (the Japanese Earthbound) in its original form. The complete Tales of Phantasia before the censors got to it. This is the kind of access that, growing up in 1990s Britain and depending on what GAME or Woolworths decided to stock on their shelves, would have seemed genuinely science-fictional.

The Game Boy Advance Library

GBA emulation on the Miyoo is essentially perfect, and the GBA library is one of the most underappreciated in gaming history — a last hurrah for 2D game design from studios that hadn’t yet fully committed to 3D, producing some of the finest sprite-based action, platforming, and RPG experiences ever made. Golden Sun. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. Metroid Fusion. Mother 3 (finally properly translated by the community). The WarioWare series in its original form. The GBA’s library has aged extraordinarily well, and a device that fits in your pocket and plays all of it beautifully is a remarkable thing. With original GBA cartridges now fetching significant prices in 2025, the accessibility argument for the Miyoo becomes even more compelling.

PS1 Emulation

This is where I want to be careful, because PS1 emulation on the Miyoo is very good but not universal. The majority of the PS1 library — probably 80–85% of games you’d actually want to play — runs excellently. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is flawless. Final Fantasy VII, VIII, and IX are all perfectly playable. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 and 2 are great. Crash Bandicoot and Spyro work well.

Where you might encounter issues: games with complex 3D rendering, games that pushed the PS1’s hardware particularly hard, and games that rely on specific CD audio timing. Some games will need you to adjust the emulator settings slightly — switching renderer options, toggling specific fixes — and while OnionOS makes this accessible, it does require a moment’s willingness to engage with settings menus. For a generation that grew up with the PS1 as our primary gaming console, this library access is emotionally significant in a way that’s difficult to overstate. These aren’t just games. They’re Tuesday evenings after school, and Friday nights at a friend’s house, and the specific feeling of a summer holiday with nothing to do but play.

Game Boy and Game Boy Color

Flawless. Trivially emulated, beautifully presented on the IPS screen. The ability to apply the original Game Boy’s green palette or the Game Boy Color’s colourised versions, or the original game’s intended palette, is a nice touch. Playing Link’s Awakening in its original Game Boy form — not the Switch remake, not the GBC version, the original green-and-black 1993 version — on a screen this good is a strange and wonderful experience. I grew up playing that game on a backlit-free Game Boy in varying degrees of natural light, squinting at the screen in the back of my mum’s car. Seeing it crisp and bright and full of detail I’d literally never seen before felt like finding a version of a book you love printed in a font you can finally read properly.

Mega Drive / Genesis

Perfect emulation, and worth mentioning specifically because the Mega Drive has a particular place in the hearts of British retro gamers — it outsold the SNES here in a way it simply didn’t in North America, partly due to pricing and partly due to the extraordinary retail presence Sega built in the UK in the early 90s. The Mega Drive library on the Miyoo is a joy. Streets of Rage 2. Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Gunstar Heroes. The Shinobi games. Phantasy Star IV. It all runs perfectly, all sounds right, all feels correct. If you’re a Sega devotee who also has a soft spot for the Game Gear’s PAL exclusives, the Miyoo handles the Master System library — the Game Gear’s big brother — beautifully too.

The Retro Gaming Context: Why This Device Matters Right Now

I want to take a step back from the specs and the game lists for a moment, because I think there’s something culturally interesting happening with devices like the Miyoo Mini Plus that’s worth articulating.

We’re at a peculiar moment in gaming history. Original retro hardware is becoming genuinely expensive — not just rare or collectible, but financially inaccessible to casual interest. A decent GBA library costs serious money in 2025, and CRT televisions suitable for retro gaming are no longer the free items you could collect from the kerb on recycling day. The legitimate digital storefronts — Virtual Console on Wii U, the 3DS eShop — have closed. Nintendo’s own Switch Online library is curated and incomplete, missing enormous swathes of history for reasons of licensing complexity and commercial calculation.

Into this gap, the budget Chinese handheld market has stepped. And while there are legitimate questions about game preservation, copyright, and the ethics of emulation that deserve honest engagement — this isn’t the article for that full conversation, though it’s one we should have — the practical reality for retro gamers in the UK in 2025 is that devices like the Miyoo Mini Plus represent one of the most meaningful ways to engage with gaming’s past. Not the most accurate. Not the most legally pristine. But meaningfully, accessibly, and with a genuine love for the source material that you can feel in the care of OnionOS’s design and the community around it.

There’s also something specific to the British experience here. We were systematically disadvantaged by the PAL release system for decades — slower frame rates, missing games, delayed releases, content cut for European ratings boards. The Miyoo Mini Plus, running international ROMs at 60Hz, is a kind of historical corrective for UK players. The gaming press largely didn’t fight for us at the time. The retailers — bless them, as our PAL survival story shows — did what they could. But we ended up with a different, lesser experience of the same era, and that matters.

Playing the NTSC version of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on a device that fits in my pocket, in the year 2025, for £55, feels like a small act of justice. I realise how overwrought that sounds. I’m going with it anyway.

Who Should Buy the Miyoo Mini Plus in the UK in 2025?

Let me be specific here, because I think the most useful thing I can do is tell you plainly whether this is the right device for you.

Buy It If…

• Your primary gaming interest is anything up to and including the PS1. This is the Miyoo’s wheelhouse and it is genuinely exceptional here.
• You want something pocketable — genuinely, actually pocketable, not just theoretically.
• You’re new to the budget handheld scene and want a device with an excellent, accessible community and software ecosystem. OnionOS is the best introduction to this world you’ll find at this price.
• You’ve been curious about the games you missed — Japanese imports, region-locked releases, the SNES library in 60Hz — and want an affordable entry point.
• You’re buying for a teenager or a child who loves retro gaming. This is an excellent gift that doesn’t cost a fortune and will keep them occupied for months.
• You’re a seasoned retro gamer who wants something for travel or commuting rather than your main setup. I use mine on trains. It’s perfect for that.

Look Elsewhere If…

• You want to play N64, PS2, GameCube, or later hardware. The Miyoo cannot do this reliably. Look at the Retroid Pocket 5 or the Anbernic RG405M instead.
• You have large hands and find small devices uncomfortable. The Miyoo is compact, and while the ergonomics are better than the original Mini, it’s still a small device. Try to handle one before committing.
• You’re deeply invested in hardware accuracy and FPGA-level precision. The Analogue Pocket is your device, and our honest look at the experience of living with the Analogue Pocket will help you decide if the premium is justified for you.
• You want to play original cartridges. The Miyoo has no cartridge slot. For that experience, you’re looking at a modded original handheld or the Analogue Pocket.
• You’re uncomfortable with emulation on any level, whether for legal or philosophical reasons. That’s a completely valid position, and this device doesn’t offer an alternative path.

Living With the Miyoo Mini Plus: Honest Impressions After Six Months

I’ve owned my Miyoo Mini Plus for about six months now. I bought it on a whim after my cousin James — who shares my capacity for getting deeply into rabbit holes about gaming hardware — wouldn’t stop talking about his. I got one of the white units from a UK eBay seller, paid about £72 all in with a decent microSD card included, and set it up on a Sunday afternoon.

The setup took about forty minutes, including installing OnionOS and organising my library. I’d describe my technical confidence as moderate — I can follow instructions, I’m not intimidated by file management, but I’m not someone who gets excited about compiling things from source code. OnionOS’s installation was within my comfort zone with no stress.

What has surprised me most is how often I reach for it. I thought it would be an occasional novelty — a train toy, something for waiting rooms. Instead it’s become a genuine part of my gaming life. I finished Terranigma on it — a SNES JRPG I’d always meant to play but never had the right version of, now running at 60Hz in its European English localisation, on a screen far better than the CRT I would have played it on in 1996. I played through Castlevania: Rondo of Blood for the first time — a game that simply wasn’t available to British players in any form until the PSP remake, now running perfectly on a device smaller than a Penguin biscuit bar.

I’ve also gone back to games I know intimately and found them freshened by the experience. Streets of Rage 2 on a screen this crisp, with headphones in on a late train, is a different sensory experience from playing it on a CRT in a living room in 1992. Not better, necessarily — there’s no replacing that original context — but different in ways I find interesting rather than diminishing. The Miyoo doesn’t pretend to recreate the original experience. It offers something new while respecting what was there.

The things that have genuinely annoyed me: the analogue sticks feel cheap and I rarely use them, the microSD slot is a bit fiddly to access (you need a fingernail or a thin implement to eject it), and there’s a very slight screen wobble if you grip the device firmly in certain ways that I’ve never quite been able to eliminate. None of these are dealbreakers. They’re the texture of a £55 device, and I knew what I was buying.

The sleep mode works reliably, which I cannot say about every budget handheld I’ve tested. Closing the device and opening it ten minutes later to resume exactly where I was has never once failed me. That sounds like a low bar, but ask anyone who’s owned a budget Chinese handheld from five years ago how reliable the sleep mode was. It’s not a given.

The Question of Longevity: Will the Miyoo Mini Plus Still Be Worth It in Two Years?

This is worth addressing because the budget handheld market moves quickly. New devices from Anbernic, Retroid, and other manufacturers appear regularly, and there’s always a temptation to wait for the next thing.

The Miyoo Mini Plus’s longevity argument rests primarily on two things: the quality of OnionOS as a platform, and the stability of its target library. The systems this device emulates are not going to become more demanding — SNES games are SNES games, and the processing requirements of the PS1 library aren’t going to increase. OnionOS continues to receive active development and updates in 2025, and the community around it shows no signs of diminishing interest. Unlike some proprietary platforms, the open nature of the firmware means it doesn’t depend on Miyoo as a company continuing to invest in software support.

Will a better device come along at this price point? Almost certainly. The Anbernic RG35XX family continues to evolve. Miyoo themselves may release a successor. But the Miyoo Mini Plus in its current form is an excellent device right now, and “wait for the next thing” is a holding pattern that keeps you waiting forever. Buy the good device that exists today. You can always upgrade later, and the Miyoo will hold its value reasonably well for resale if you do.

One thing I’d flag: if you’re hoping for official Nintendo or Sony titles via legitimate download on this device, that is not the Miyoo’s model and never will be. This is an emulation device, and its value depends entirely on you sourcing game files yourself. If that becomes legally or practically more complicated over the next few years — and there are no signs of it doing so, but it’s always a possibility — that’s a risk worth acknowledging.

Final Verdict: Is the Miyoo Mini Plus Worth Buying in the UK in 2025?

Yes. Genuinely, clearly, without significant reservation — yes.

For most retro gaming enthusiasts in the UK, the Miyoo Mini Plus represents outstanding value. At £50–£70 depending on how you source it, you’re getting a well-built, pocket-sized handheld with a beautiful screen, excellent emulation of everything up to and including the PS1, and access to one of the best community firmware ecosystems in the budget handheld space. The UK-specific sourcing process is a mild nuisance rather than a genuine barrier, and once you’re past it, the device delivers.

It’s not perfect. The analogue sticks are mediocre. The build quality is good but not premium. The device can’t handle anything more powerful than the PS1. If those limitations matter to you — if you need N64 or PS2, if build quality is a priority, if you want FPGA accuracy — then you should be looking at something else, and this article has hopefully helped you identify what that something else might be.

But for the person who grew up playing SNES and Mega Drive and Game Boy and PS1 in 90s Britain, who has a backlog of classics they never played, who wants to experience the Japanese library they couldn’t access at the time, who wants something they can genuinely carry in their pocket — the Miyoo Mini Plus is, in 2025, one of the best answers to those desires that any amount of money can provide. The fact that it costs about the same as a dinner out for two makes it feel almost unreasonably generous.

Buy the white one. Install OnionOS. Load up Chrono Trigger. And remember that you’re playing it at the speed it was supposed to run at, on a screen far better than anything available when it was released, in the palm of your hand. That’s not nothing. In fact, for those of us who grew up measuring our gaming life in 50Hz compromises and limited shelf space at Woolworths, it’s quite a lot.