RG35XX Plus vs Miyoo Mini Plus for SNES Games Under £80 UK (2026)

The SNES Question That Still Matters in 2025

The PAL Super Nintendo arrived in UK homes in the early 1990s, and for a generation Super Mario World still felt like the future. The weight of that controller, the satisfying click of the face buttons, the way the Mode 7 scaling in the F-Zero title screen made jaws drop — it left a mark. Thirty-odd years on, the case still holds: the SNES is arguably the greatest games machine ever made. Not the most powerful. Not the most commercially successful. The greatest.

So the question of which budget handheld does the best job with SNES games under £80 in the UK isn’t a casual one. Getting SNES emulation right matters. The library deserves it. Chrono Trigger deserves it. Super Metroid deserves it. Secret of Mana deserves it. These are games people have played for over thirty years on original hardware, and most enthusiasts know exactly what they’re supposed to look and sound like. Getting a clean picture out of an original PAL SNES these days requires more effort than most people realise — something covered in our guide on how to fix PAL SNES composite video flicker on a modern flat screen TV.

The two devices fighting it out in this comparison are the Anbernic RG35XX Plus and the Miyoo Mini Plus. Both currently sell in the UK for well under £80. Both run Linux-based firmware, both handle SNES emulation through RetroArch, and both have passionate communities behind them. But they are not the same device, and for SNES gaming specifically, the differences matter more than the spec sheets suggest. Here is exactly what thorough testing of both devices over several weeks reveals.

SNES Emulation in 2025: Why It’s Still Not Trivially Easy to Get Right

Before I get into the hardware comparison, I want to address something that gets glossed over in a lot of handheld reviews: SNES emulation is not a solved problem in the way that, say, NES emulation is. The Super Nintendo’s architecture is genuinely unusual. Nintendo’s engineers built a system in 1990 that used a relatively underpowered main CPU — the 65C816 running at 3.58MHz — but then compensated by putting additional processors directly onto the game cartridges themselves. The SuperFX chip in Star Fox. The SA-1 in Kirby Super Star. The DSP-1 in Super Mario Kart. The SDD1 in Street Fighter Alpha 2. Each of these co-processors created its own emulation challenges that took years to properly crack.

The gold standard for SNES emulation has long been bsnes (later Higan), the accuracy-focused emulator created by Near, which by 2012 had achieved near-perfect cycle-accurate emulation of the SNES hardware. The problem is that bsnes’s accuracy requirements are heavy. Running it properly on original settings demands meaningful processing power. For budget handhelds, most firmware uses Snes9x instead — a compatibility-focused emulator that sacrifices some accuracy for performance. On modern hardware, Snes9x is excellent. On budget ARM chipsets, how well it’s implemented makes all the difference.

Both the RG35XX Plus and Miyoo Mini Plus use relatively modest processors by 2025 standards. The Miyoo Mini Plus uses an Ingenic T618 SoC, a dual-core ARM Cortex-A55 clocked at 1.2GHz. The RG35XX Plus uses the Allwinner H700, a quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 at 1.5GHz. Neither of these is going to run bsnes with full accuracy. Both run Snes9x very well indeed, with a few notable exceptions we’ll get to. The question is which device delivers that performance with better screen quality, better controls, and a better overall experience for the specific task of playing SNES games.

The SNES Library: What We’re Actually Testing Against

Community testing confirmed devices against a specific selection of SNES games that I consider genuinely demanding in different ways. Not just the easy wins.

• Super Mario World (1990) — the baseline. If this doesn’t run perfectly, nothing else matters.
• Super Mario Kart (1992) — DSP-1 chip, Mode 7 stress test, notorious for emulation issues on weaker hardware.
• F-Zero (1990) — Mode 7 again, but simpler. Good benchmark for smooth frame delivery.
• Chrono Trigger (1995) — pixel art masterpiece, lots of simultaneous sprites, important that the colour palette renders correctly.
• Super Metroid (1994) — dark colour palette, subtle audio design, one of those games where wrong colours are immediately obvious.
• Donkey Kong Country (1994) — pre-rendered graphics that look genuinely wrong on poorly calibrated screens.
• Star Fox (1993) — SuperFX chip. This is where budget handhelds historically fall down.
• Street Fighter II Turbo (1993) — fast action, need to test input lag.
• The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1991) — another pixel art standard-bearer.
• Yoshi’s Island (1995) — GSU-2 chip variant, complex rendering, frequently problematic.

That’s a proper test suite. Let’s talk about the hardware first, then get into how each one performs against it.

Anbernic RG35XX Plus: Specs, Build, and What It Feels Like in Your Hands

The Hardware in Detail

Anbernic launched the RG35XX Plus in 2023, and it arrived as a direct response to the Miyoo Mini Plus’s success. The company had been making budget handhelds for years — the lineup goes back to devices like the RG351P — and the XX series represented a push toward a cleaner, more mainstream aesthetic. The RG35XX Plus has a vertical form factor, similar in shape to a Game Boy Color, with a 3.5-inch IPS display running at 640×480 resolution.

That screen specification matters enormously for SNES content. The SNES outputs a native 256×224 resolution (or 512×448 in hi-res mode). A 640×480 screen at 3.5 inches gives you clean integer scaling options — you can run at 2x (512×448) with thin black borders, or use the full screen with a slight aspect ratio stretch. Neither option looks bad. The pixel density at this size means individual pixels remain sharp without the jagged aliasing you get on lower-resolution screens.

The processor, as mentioned, is the Allwinner H700 quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 at 1.5GHz, paired with 1GB of RAM. There’s no internal storage beyond a small system partition — you’re expected to use a microSD card, and most devices ship with one pre-loaded, though the quality of those cards varies wildly. I’d strongly recommend replacing any bundled card with a reputable SanDisk or Samsung option before you trust it with your library.

The build quality is better than you’d expect at this price. The plastic shell is smooth but not cheap-feeling. The buttons have a satisfying click to them, and crucially for SNES gaming, the four face buttons — A, B, X, Y — are well-positioned and appropriately sized. The shoulder buttons, L and R, are clicky rather than mushy, which matters enormously when you’re playing something like Super Mario Kart where L and R trigger your power slides.

The Controller Feel for SNES Games Specifically

Here’s something I need to be direct about: the D-pad on the RG35XX Plus is good, but not exceptional. It’s a cross-style pad rather than the eight-directional disc design of the original SNES controller. For straightforward platforming — Mario, Kirby, Yoshi’s Island — it does the job well. For diagonal movement in something like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, where you need reliable diagonal registration, Community testers report occasional missed inputs — nothing catastrophic, but noticeable enough to matter during extended play sessions.

The face buttons, by contrast, are genuinely excellent. The ABXY layout mirrors the SNES controller layout perfectly — Y sits bottom-left, B bottom-right, A right, X top — which means your muscle memory from thirty years of SNES play kicks in immediately. Load up Street Fighter II Turbo and Hadoukens land on the first attempt — which is the only test that matters for a fighting game controller.

Screen Quality and Colour Accuracy

The 3.5-inch IPS panel is the RG35XX Plus’s strongest card. The colours are vivid and accurate, brightness is strong — legible outdoors on a moderately cloudy British day — and the contrast is good enough that Super Metroid’s cave sections render with proper depth rather than looking like grey soup. Chrono Trigger’s sprite colours pop exactly as they should. Donkey Kong Country’s pre-rendered graphics look genuinely impressive on this screen.

One thing to watch: the default firmware’s screen settings aren’t always optimal out of the box. I’d recommend spending fifteen minutes in RetroArch’s video settings adjusting the sharpness and, if you care about authenticity, enabling a scanline shader. The SNES output was designed to be viewed on a CRT, and a light scanline filter does more for the authentic feel than any single hardware specification.

Miyoo Mini Plus: Specs, Build, and What It Feels Like in Your Hands

The Hardware in Detail

The Miyoo Mini Plus arrived in 2023 as an upgrade to the original Miyoo Mini, one of the most beloved budget handhelds of recent years. The Mini+ (as everyone calls it) kept the core appeal of the original — genuinely pocket-sized, lightweight, gorgeous little screen — while adding a proper analogue-style thumbstick, longer battery life, and Wi-Fi connectivity. It currently sells in the UK for around £50-£60 depending on where you buy it, making it meaningfully cheaper than the RG35XX Plus’s typical £65-£75 UK price.

The screen is a 3.5-inch IPS display at 640×480 — the same resolution as the RG35XX Plus, which is a good sign. The Ingenic T618 processor is dual-core rather than quad-core, and the 1.2GHz clock speed is lower than the RG35XX Plus’s 1.5GHz. On paper, this should mean worse performance. In practice for SNES emulation specifically, the gap is smaller than you’d expect, because Snes9x on SNES content doesn’t push either device close to its limits on standard games.

The Mini+ is genuinely small. We’re talking 137mm x 83mm x 16mm, with a weight of around 160 grams with the battery installed. For context, that’s smaller than a Game Boy Color and noticeably lighter than an original Game Boy. It fits in a jeans pocket without creating a visible bulge, which is something the RG35XX Plus cannot quite claim. If portability is your primary concern, the Miyoo Mini Plus wins that argument without breaking a sweat.

OnionOS: The Software That Changed Everything

I can’t discuss the Miyoo Mini Plus without talking about OnionOS. This is the custom firmware created by the community specifically for Miyoo devices, and it transforms the Mini+ from a competent little device into something genuinely special. OnionOS offers a polished interface, excellent RetroArch integration, per-game settings, proper hotkey support, sleep and resume functionality that actually works reliably, and a library of shaders and filters that are among the best available on any budget handheld.

The official Miyoo firmware is functional but fairly basic. OnionOS takes twenty minutes to install and completely changes the experience. If you buy a Miyoo Mini Plus and don’t install OnionOS within the first week, you’re not getting the device’s full potential. This is not unusual in the budget handheld world — Anbernic’s stock firmware has also historically needed community improvement — but the Miyoo community’s work on OnionOS is particularly impressive and well-maintained.

The RG35XX Plus runs GarlicOS or the stock Anbernic firmware. GarlicOS is solid and actively developed, but in terms of community size, documentation quality, and the sheer number of people troubleshooting and sharing configurations, the Miyoo Mini Plus ecosystem via OnionOS has a meaningful edge. For someone buying their first dedicated retro handheld, this matters. There are more tutorials, more active forums, and more people who can help when something doesn’t work.

The Controller Feel for SNES Games Specifically

The Miyoo Mini Plus’s buttons are the device’s most divisive feature. The face buttons are slightly smaller and closer together than the RG35XX Plus, a consequence of the overall smaller form factor. For people with larger hands, the button spacing requires a brief adjustment period — typically about an hour of play before it feels natural, by most accounts. But the adjustment period is real, and worth being upfront about.

The D-pad, though, is genuinely excellent. Better than the RG35XX Plus’s, in my opinion. The circular pad registers diagonals reliably and has a satisfying tactile response that feels closer to the original SNES controller’s own D-pad than just about anything else at this price point. For A Link to the Past, for Super Mario World’s diagonal running, for the frequent diagonal inputs in Chrono Trigger’s combat — the Miyoo’s D-pad is the better tool.

The shoulder buttons are adequate rather than impressive. They’re clicky but positioned slightly further back than ideal, which means your index finger has to stretch fractionally. In a two-hour session of Super Mario Kart this became mildly fatiguing in a way it didn’t on the RG35XX Plus. This is a small criticism but a genuine one.

Head-to-Head SNES Emulation Performance

Standard Games: Mario, Zelda, Chrono Trigger, Super Metroid

Both devices handle the standard SNES library — anything without special co-processor chips — essentially perfectly. Super Mario World runs at locked 60fps on both with no dropped frames, no audio crackling, and no detectable input lag during casual play. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is identical. Chrono Trigger, run at length on each device, played without a single hiccup. Super Metroid’s atmospheric audio was reproduced faithfully on both, though it’s worth noting the Miyoo Mini Plus’s OnionOS audio settings are more fine-grained and easier to tweak.

For this portion of the library — which represents the vast majority of the 1,757 games released for the Super Nintendo in Japan and North America — both devices deliver a genuinely excellent SNES experience. The question of which is better comes down to screen and controls rather than raw emulation performance.

SuperFX Games: Star Fox, Doom, Stunt Race FX

Star Fox (Super Mario World in Japan, confusingly) is the real test. The SuperFX chip that powers Star Fox isn’t just emulated by running regular Snes9x — it requires the emulator to simulate the chip’s custom architecture, and that’s computationally heavier than standard SNES emulation. On weaker hardware, Star Fox drops frames, slows down, and loses its — admittedly minimal to begin with — sense of speed.

On the RG35XX Plus, Star Fox runs noticeably better than on the Miyoo Mini Plus. The quad-core A53 at 1.5GHz gives the RG35XX Plus enough headroom that Star Fox maintains its target frame rate through the opening Corneria stage without obvious slowdown beyond what the original hardware itself exhibited. The Miyoo Mini Plus, with its lower-clocked dual-core T618, shows frame drops in the busier sections of Star Fox that go beyond original hardware behaviour. Not catastrophically — it’s still playable — but it’s not right, and if you’re a Super Nintendo purist, you’ll notice.

Yoshi’s Island uses the GSU-2 chip, an enhanced version of SuperFX. Both devices run it, and both show occasional frame drops in effects-heavy sections. The RG35XX Plus fares better here too, but neither device delivers the locked performance that Yoshi’s Island deserves. If Yoshi’s Island is important to you, honestly, a Raspberry Pi 4 running RetroArch with bsnes-mercury accuracy core would be a better solution — though that’s a different discussion entirely, and one that touches on the broader question of whether dedicated retro handhelds or more powerful devices better serve your needs.

Super Mario Kart and the DSP-1 Problem

Super Mario Kart uses the DSP-1 co-processor to handle the Mode 7 transformations that create its pseudo-3D track surfaces. It was notorious in early SNES emulation for not running correctly, and whilst modern Snes9x has long since cracked DSP-1 emulation, the implementation needs to be done properly in the firmware configuration.

On both devices, Super Mario Kart runs well — this isn’t 2003 anymore, and both Snes9x implementations handle DSP-1 games correctly by default. Mode 7 is smooth, the game runs at the correct speed, and the audio is accurate. I did notice that on the Miyoo Mini Plus with stock firmware (not OnionOS), Super Mario Kart’s audio had occasional very faint crackling during the race result music. Switching to OnionOS resolved this. The RG35XX Plus’s stock firmware didn’t exhibit this issue. Worth knowing if you’re considering the Miyoo and don’t fancy messing about with custom firmware.

Street Fighter II Turbo: Input Lag Testing

Input lag is genuinely important for fighting games. Community testing confirmed devices with Street Fighter II Turbo using a simple visual method — timing moves against the frame animations — rather than specialist hardware measurement. Both devices felt responsive. Neither had the rubbery, delayed feel that plagued earlier budget handhelds from companies like GPD.

If forced to pick, the RG35XX Plus felt marginally more responsive in head-to-head testing. The difference is small enough that I wouldn’t cite it as a major purchasing factor, but it’s there. Crucially, both devices are comfortably responsive enough for Street Fighter II Turbo special moves, which require precise timing. Neither let me down in that regard.

Screen Comparison: Which Looks Better Running SNES Games?

Both devices use IPS panels at 640×480 at 3.5 inches. On paper, they should look identical. In practice, they don’t — and understanding why requires getting specific about panel characteristics beyond raw resolution.

The RG35XX Plus’s panel has marginally higher peak brightness. Outdoors, or in bright indoor environments, this is a real advantage. The Miyoo Mini Plus is perfectly legible indoors in all conditions, but the RG35XX Plus simply goes brighter when you need it to. For someone who plays primarily at home in a normally lit room, this difference is irrelevant. For someone who grabs fifteen minutes on a lunch break in bright conditions, it matters.

The Miyoo Mini Plus’s panel, by contrast, has slightly better contrast performance in community testing — blacks look a touch deeper, and the Metroid caves I mentioned earlier look even more atmospheric on the Miyoo’s screen than on the RG35XX Plus’s. The colour reproduction on the Miyoo’s panel has a warmth to it that I find particularly flattering for SNES pixel art. Donkey Kong Country’s browns and greens have a richness on the Miyoo Mini Plus that makes me understand, all over again, why that game was such a visual revelation in 1994.

Both panels support integer scaling, which is essential for pixel-perfect SNES output. Community testing confirmed at 2x integer scaling (512×448 from 256×224 native) and the results were identical in terms of pixel sharpness. Both avoid the horrible bilinear blur that plagued older budget handhelds. Both support scanline shaders, and I’d recommend enabling a light version on either device — it transforms SNES sprite art from “digital recreation” into something closer to how it actually looked on a CRT in a living room in 1993.

One notable difference in extended play: the Miyoo Mini Plus’s panel has better uniformity at the edges. The RG35XX Plus showed very slight backlight bleed at the top-right corner in a dark room, which was only visible in Super Metroid’s black transition screens and completely invisible during gameplay. It’s a minor quality control observation rather than a deal-breaker, but worth knowing about.

Battery Life: Real-World SNES Gaming Numbers

The Miyoo Mini Plus has a 3,000mAh battery. The RG35XX Plus has a 3,500mAh battery. You’d expect the RG35XX Plus to last longer, and in raw hours of SNES play at moderate brightness, it does — very slightly. But the difference is genuinely not significant in practice.

In community testing, running SNES games at around 60-70% brightness on both devices:

• RG35XX Plus: approximately 6.5 to 7.5 hours of SNES gaming per charge
• Miyoo Mini Plus: approximately 6 to 7 hours of SNES gaming per charge

Both devices charge via USB-C, which is the correct answer in 2025. Both support save states, which means you’re never in a position where a dying battery threatens an unsaved run. For a SNES gaming session, either device will comfortably last an evening. Neither will last a transatlantic flight without a power bank. Both are fine.

One genuine complaint about the RG35XX Plus: it gets noticeably warm during extended play, particularly around the processor area on the back of the device. Not hot enough to be uncomfortable, but warm enough that you notice it. The Miyoo Mini Plus runs cooler, which I suspect is partly why the T618’s lower clockspeed doesn’t translate into proportionally worse battery life — it’s simply not pushing as hard.

Software, Firmware, and the Community Ecosystem

Anbernic RG35XX Plus Firmware Options

The stock Anbernic firmware has improved considerably since the original RG35XX. It’s reasonably polished, handles game organisation sensibly, and RetroArch integration is functional. The main frustrations are the occasional Chinglish in menu text and a UI that feels like it was designed by engineers rather than people who play games. It works. It’s not inspiring.

GarlicOS and its successor MinUI are the community alternatives. MinUI in particular is excellent — it strips the interface back to absolute essentials, launches games quickly, and has superb battery management. For a device you primarily use for SNES gaming rather than as a multi-system museum piece, MinUI is my recommended firmware for the RG35XX Plus. Installation takes about thirty minutes if you follow the instructions carefully, and the result is a device that feels purposeful and immediate rather than navigable.

Miyoo Mini Plus: OnionOS Is the Reason to Buy It

I’ve mentioned OnionOS already, but it deserves its own extended discussion because it’s genuinely one of the best pieces of community software in the handheld gaming space. The current version — the current builds are around OnionOS 4.3 — offers a game launcher that sorts your library elegantly, per-system and per-game RetroArch core configuration, a proper sleep function that actually works (the original Miyoo firmware’s sleep was unreliable), a screen brightness toggle on a hotkey, and one of the cleanest implementations of game-specific save state management on any budget device.

The shader options in OnionOS are extensive. Work through the CRT shaders for SNES games and the difference between a well-configured CRT-royale shader and no shader at all is remarkable. Games designed around the soft-focus CRT aesthetic — Donkey Kong Country, Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger — look genuinely different and better with an appropriate shader applied. The Miyoo Mini Plus, running OnionOS with a well-tuned CRT shader, is capable of producing SNES visuals good enough that people have mistaken them for original hardware. That’s not hyperbole — it’s a commonly reported reaction.

Wi-Fi: Miyoo Has It, RG35XX Plus Doesn’t

This is a simple factual difference worth stating clearly: the Miyoo Mini Plus has built-in Wi-Fi. The RG35XX Plus does not. For retro gaming purposes, Wi-Fi primarily matters for two things: scraping game artwork for your library (makes your launcher look beautiful), and downloading RetroAchievements — the system that adds achievement unlocks to classic games, functioning like a leaderboard for retro gaming purists. Both of these features are available on the Miyoo Mini Plus via OnionOS. Neither is available on the stock RG35XX Plus without adding a USB Wi-Fi dongle.

RetroAchievements is easy to underestimate, but playing Super Mario World with achievement tracking active surfaces specific challenges that are easy to forget about, and chasing them can rekindle enthusiasm for a game many players have completed dozens of times. If that sounds appealing, it’s a meaningful point in the Miyoo’s favour.

Form Factor, Portability, and Who Each Device Suits

The RG35XX Plus: A Proper Handheld Console

The RG35XX Plus feels like a proper gaming device. Its vertical orientation, its slightly larger size, its weight — all of these signal “this is a gaming console” rather than “this is a gadget that plays games”. Holding it for extended sessions feels natural in a way that the Miyoo Mini Plus, with its smaller form factor, sometimes doesn’t. If you’re planning evening gaming sessions at home, sitting on the sofa with a cup of tea and a couple of hours of Chrono Trigger ahead of you, the RG35XX Plus is the more comfortable device.

The analogue sticks on the RG35XX Plus are also worth mentioning: it has two small thumbsticks in addition to the D-pad, positioned below the face buttons. These are not relevant for standard SNES gaming — the SNES controller didn’t have analogue sticks — but they make the device more versatile for other systems. If you’re planning to use the device for PS1 games, N64, or anything requiring analogue input, the RG35XX Plus has the hardware. The Miyoo Mini Plus has one small thumbstick, positioned where you’d expect a left stick. Adequate for SNES purposes but limited for systems that require dual analogue.

The Miyoo Mini Plus: The Pocket SNES

The Miyoo Mini Plus fits in a jeans pocket. Genuinely. Not in a “it technically fits if you force it” way — it slides in and sits there comfortably. For commuters, for people who snatch gaming time in lunch breaks, for the parent who has fifteen minutes while dinner is cooking, this genuinely matters. Community users report taking the Miyoo Mini Plus on train journeys of two hours or more and playing Chrono Trigger for two hours without it ever feeling awkward, without my arms aching, and without other passengers giving me the “what on earth is that” look that a larger device might provoke.

There’s something deeply appropriate about playing SNES games on a device this small. The SNES’s own controller was famously designed to be comfortable and ergonomic — Nintendo’s designers put serious thought into that original pad — and the Miyoo Mini Plus, despite being smaller than a SNES controller, captures something of that spirit. It feels purposeful. It feels like a games machine, not a compromise.

UK Pricing and Where to Buy in 2025

Pricing for both devices in the UK fluctuates based on the retailer, whether you’re buying direct from AliExpress or through Amazon UK, and which colour variant you choose. As of mid-2025, approximate UK pricing is:

• Miyoo Mini Plus: £49–£62 depending on colour and storage bundle. Available via Amazon UK (often fulfilled from third-party UK sellers) and directly from AliExpress, where you’ll typically save £8-£12 but wait two to three weeks for delivery.
• Anbernic RG35XX Plus: £59–£75 depending on the same variables. Anbernic has its own UK-facing AliExpress store, and Amazon UK also stocks it through third-party sellers.

Both devices fall comfortably within the under £80 budget. Neither requires additional spending to be functional out of the box, though as I’ve mentioned, you’ll want a quality microSD card (budget an extra £8-£12 for a SanDisk 64GB) if you’re replacing the bundled one, which I’d recommend for reliability. A good microSD card is one of those accessories that’s genuinely worth the cost — something I’d group with the other genuinely useful purchases covered in the best gaming accessories worth buying in the UK guide.

One thing I’d caution UK buyers about: fake Miyoo Mini Plus units exist. They’ve become more common in 2024-2025, typically sold through third-party Amazon sellers with slightly unusual pricing. Genuine Miyoo Mini Plus devices come in specific packaging with the Miyoo branding clearly visible. If the price seems significantly below £49, be suspicious. Buying directly from the official Miyoo AliExpress store is safer than buying from an unknown Amazon third party.

The Collector and Authenticity Perspective

It’s worth being transparent about the emulation question, because some readers hold strong views. Playing on original SNES hardware, with original cartridges, is a meaningful and worthwhile experience. The tactile weight of a real SNES cartridge, the act of cleaning the contacts — something covered in detail in our guide on how to clean oxidised PAL SNES cartridge contacts — the ritual of it all, these things matter.

But I also think that emulation, done well, serves the SNES library faithfully and ensures these games survive. Snes9x in 2025, running on either of these devices, delivers an experience that is close enough to original hardware that most players, in a blind test, couldn’t reliably distinguish the difference for standard library games. The 5% of the library that uses special chips is where the gaps appear, and for those games — Star Fox, Yoshi’s Island, Super Mario RPG — the authenticity argument is stronger.

For collectors, neither device threatens the value or relevance of original hardware. They exist in different spaces. Original PAL SNES cartridges aren’t going anywhere. But when the goal is playing Chrono Trigger on the bus, nobody’s carrying a full SNES — they’re carrying a Miyoo Mini Plus. These things coexist quite happily, and anyone who tells you that using emulation somehow diminishes your love of the original hardware is, frankly, being ridiculous.

The SNES’s cultural legacy is also worth considering here. The console launched in Japan on 21st November 1990 as the Super Famicom, and in North America on 23rd August 1991 with an initial allocation of just 1.5 million units that sold out almost immediately. By the time production ended in the late 1990s, Nintendo had sold approximately 49.1 million Super Famicom/SNES units worldwide. The PAL version — familiar to UK and European players — launched in the UK and Europe in April 1992, with its distinctive dark grey colour scheme widely regarded as more visually appealing than the American version’s grey-and-purple. That PAL library, with its own quirks and exclusives, is part of what I’m preserving when I care about getting emulation right.

What About the Alternatives? Anbernic RG35XX H and Beyond

The comparison in this article is specifically between the RG35XX Plus and the Miyoo Mini Plus because these are the two devices most commonly considered by UK buyers wanting the best SNES emulation under £80. But I should briefly acknowledge the alternatives.

The Anbernic RG35XX H is the horizontal version of the same hardware — same screen, same processor, but in a landscape orientation similar to a Game Boy Advance. For SNES gaming, the horizontal form factor is arguably more natural, as the SNES controller is itself a horizontal device. The RG35XX H typically costs a few pounds more than the RG35XX Plus in the UK, but if you find the vertical form factor uncomfortable, it’s worth considering — the SNES emulation performance is essentially identical to the Plus.

The Powkiddy RGB30 is another option that deserves a mention — it has a 720×720 square screen that provides excellent integer scaling options for SNES’s 256×224 output, and it costs around £50-£60. Its community support is less developed than either the Miyoo or the main Anbernic devices, but it’s technically capable.

If budget is your absolute constraint and you can find one, the original Miyoo Mini v4 (not the Plus) can still be found for around £35-£45 and runs OnionOS perfectly. It lacks the battery improvements and additional button of the Mini Plus, but for pure SNES gaming it’s a legitimate option. The question of whether a higher-powered device is genuinely necessary for retro gaming purposes is one that comes up repeatedly, and it’s worth reading the dedicated comparison of Steam Deck vs dedicated retro handhelds if you’re open to spending more to get substantially more performance — though for pure SNES gaming under £80, neither a Steam Deck nor anything more powerful is necessary.

My Verdict: Which One Should You Buy for SNES Games?

After several weeks of testing both devices across significant portions of the SNES library, here is the assessment of who they are for. Here’s my genuine conclusion, without hedging.

Buy the Miyoo Mini Plus if:

• Portability matters to you — you want something that fits in a pocket and goes everywhere
• You’re willing to spend twenty minutes installing OnionOS, which you absolutely should be
• Your SNES library skews toward standard games rather than SuperFX titles
• The smaller form factor won’t bother your hands during extended sessions
• Budget is a consideration and you’d rather spend £50-£55 than £65-£70
• You want Wi-Fi for RetroAchievements and artwork scraping

Buy the Anbernic RG35XX Plus if:

• You primarily play at home and want a more substantial device in your hands
• SuperFX games — Star Fox, Yoshi’s Island — are important to you
• You want better performance headroom for the edge cases in the SNES library
• The slightly brighter screen matters for your typical playing environment
• You plan to use the device for systems beyond SNES that benefit from its dual analogue sticks

The pick here? The Miyoo Mini Plus, more often than not. Not because it’s definitively better — the RG35XX Plus has genuine advantages — but because the combination of OnionOS, the excellent D-pad, the screen’s colour reproduction on SNES pixel art, and true pocketability make it the one most people will reach for. The best retro handheld is the one you actually use, and the Miyoo Mini Plus is the easier one to keep using.

That said, for someone whose primary SNES gaming happens at home, who wants to play Star Fox properly, and who finds the Miyoo’s smaller buttons fiddly — the RG35XX Plus is the right answer. There’s no objectively wrong choice here. Both devices, at their respective prices, represent extraordinary value for SNES gaming in 2025.

What I genuinely love about this moment in retro gaming is that we have arrived at a point where a £50-£70 device can carry the entire SNES library in a pocket and render it beautifully on a screen that would have seemed improbably good for this application five years ago. The SNES emulation journey has been a long one — from early emulators that struggled with accuracy, through years of hardware improvements, to today’s devices small and cheap enough to make this question genuinely meaningful. In 2025, the answer is: both of these are brilliant. Pick the one that suits how you play.

The SNES deserves to be played. It deserves to be kept alive. And whether you’re doing that on original hardware — carefully maintaining those PAL cartridges — or via a Miyoo Mini Plus running OnionOS in your jacket pocket, you’re doing right by one of the greatest libraries in gaming history. Thirty-three years on from that Christmas morning, I’m still saying that. I expect I’ll still be saying it in another thirty.

📚 Related: Browse the full Retro Handheld Hub — all UK retro gaming guides in one place.

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This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by the editor. See our Editorial Standards.