Whenever I'm picking up a retro handheld, I always ask th♒e same question: What's the price-to-power ratio? The Steam Deck is an excellent device for those looking to play PC games and retro classics on the go, and a $549 asking price for something that capable makes sense. But, flip the script and look at something like the RG35XX Plus, a budget device only capable of up to PSP emulation, and a high MSRP wouldn't work due to its lesser power. That's why Anbernic's $64 price tag works so well. It's all about the price-to-power ratio, baby! Get the price to match the specs and you've got a potential golden goose.
That said, not every handheld maker follows this simple rule. Despite how many of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best gaming handhelds I've💮 played with, I've also had my fair share of needless plastic waste. Sometimes when a price is too good to be true, it’s down to it being a quick nostalgia-fueled cash-in. When a handheld can't even emulate 8-bit systems without crashing and crackling, you know you've been had.
Where am I going with this? Well, I recently picked up the PlayStation Portal-inspired (cough knock-off cough) Project X at Aliexpress. Love the high-quality materials and clever engineering Sony brought to the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:PlayStation Portal? It’s nothing like that. I've had $1 lighters that use better plastics. The D-pad is also so high and thicc that pulling off quarter-rotations in fi💦ghting games is nearly impossible. Seriously, I counted how many times it took me to pull off a Hadouken in Street Fighter II. Once in every 40 attempts! You couldn't design a worse d-pad.
Yet, believe it or not, I actually love the Project X. Hear me out, as I'm very aware it's terrible on almost every level, but let's bring that price-to-power ratio back. For around $30, my hopes were floor♈-level. I knew it was going to have problems - not just the shoddy design, but the operating system is generic, PS1 emulation is expectedly poor, and some games cause the system to crash. Where's the value, I hear you cry? Here's the kicker: The Project X manages to run 8-bit and 16-bit games surprisingly well, and that 5:3 ratio screen means🅰 you can enlarge 4:3 games and they don't look horrifyingly overstretched.
Normally with retro handhelds, they're either vertical and utilize a 4💧:3 aspect ratio or horizontal and roll with a larger 16:9 screen. That format looks great when you're playing a game that makes full use of it, but for older stuff, you're le📖ft with two black gaping voids on either side of the picture and it's fugly as hell.
The Project X is 100 percent the ugly duckling of the retro handheld world. It's got more problems than Jay-Z on a bad day, but being able to play old-school games at full speed on a larger screen that doesn't stretch the image to ghastly lengths is a joy. If this handheld was even remotely close to the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Anbernic RG35XX Plus in pri✱ce, sure, it'd be dead on arrival. However, as a super-budget entry point designed for newcomers, and if you go in with low expectations, the Project X's problems melt away under the weight of what it gets right and a price that sim𓄧ply cannot be beat. Now that's a price-to-power ratio!
As a side note, if you're looking for the real deal, head over to our handy 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:PlayStation Portal stock tracker for a helping hand. Alternatively, have a peek below for some handhelds with a t𓆏asty discount.
