Anbernic RG406H Review

Buy the Anbernic RG406H here: https://joeysrh.link/ANB_RG406H

Looking for the Anbernic RG406H Setup Guide? Find it here.

Specs, Price & Comfort

Spec wise, for the Anbernic RG406H, there’s nothing else exciting here or new over the previous models – T820 processor, 8GB of RAM, 5000mAh battery, hall sticks, hall triggers, wifi, bluetooth and video out. It’s a nice package that you can purchase from GoGameGeek with my code JOEY for $187 US dollars shipped worldwide. I’ve even been told they don’t charge you taxes, for my European friends, so save some money, link in the description. 

So first off, let’s talk about the great and it’s the comfort. This is a super comfortable device to hold, has all of the bump outs and thickness in the right spots and makes it a nice joy to use. I would have liked to see them use the rubbery style plastic that they did with the RG556, that’s really the only upgrade I’d personally want, along with the blue color, but in comparison to 99% of devices, this is comfy. Having only used the Retroid Pocket 5 for the last few weeks, it really was interesting to test drive the Anbernic RG406H and see the comfort upgrades. 

Sticks & Dpad

Next up is the sticks, and I’m glad that they’re at least using these sticks on their T820 lineup. No more Switch style sticks here, Anbernic copied Retroid’s base and put their own caps on them, and the result is sticks that have a wide range of motion, no cardinal snapping issues and feel nice to use. They’re the same sticks from the Anbernic RG406V, and I think one concern coming in would be that they’re too tall and stick out way too much on this device. On the one hand, while you’re not using it, definitely – they’re weird to see, stick out a lot and just seems weird, but during gameplay and actual usage, I didn’t find them to be an issue for height and actually feel better because of the wider range of motion you get. Most of my complaints on the sticks is just being slippery. Blame my cold Canadian hands, but the tops are a bit too slippery to get good grips with, and thankfully, that’s an easy fix with stick caps. 

Can’t talk about the sticks without talking about the dpad, which Anbernic is using the same Sega style dpad from the RG Cube and it’s a great choice here. This type of dpad has grown a lot on me, and I find that I’m starting to prefer it to regular dpad’s just because it’s so much more comfortable and more accurate. It’s not just in fighting games, but also platformers and even just the normal Pokemon usage. The dpad to me is a standout, easily and since I’ve been using it a lot on my Anbernic RG CubeXX, it felt great to use it again here. 

Battery Life

Lastly on the great, and it’s the battery life. There’s a 5000mAh battery inside of here, and a decently efficient processor, and so here’s a quick rundown of my battery tests. All with 100% brightness, WiFi on, 10% audio and full 100% charge to zero. Super Nintendo got a 525 minutes or just under 9 hours. Nintendo 64 got a nice 600 minutes, or 10 hours of battery. GameCube, with native resolution, got a whopping 375 minutes or 6 hours 25 minutes. Lastly, we have PS2 with native resolution, at 250 minutes or just over 4 hours. 

Screen & Face Buttons

Moving onto the good, and let’s start with the screen. On the one hand, this is a great IPS display, at a 4:3 aspect ratio with 960×720 – that’s a better resolution than previous Anbernic devices, has good scaling, and overall, is right on the good side. I think the miss here, which we’ll talk about later, is when you have your competition adding so much more including OLED screens for a few bucks more, that’s where the screen starts to look dated and to me, it does. However, it’s still a good screen overall on brightness, colors and more. 

On the neutral end, is the face buttons. So this one is weird, but both my Anbernic RG406V and Anbernic RG406H have hard to push buttons, like significantly harder to push than any of my other Anbernic devices. However, talking to others who own these models, and they don’t have that issue. It would be weird for me to get the same problem issue on two different devices months apart, so I have no idea what’s going on, but that’s why this is in the neutral category. I don’t know what to make of this, I know that I’m not a fan of them – Anbernic usually gets buttons right, but for some reason, mine aren’t. 

Speakers

Still on neutral, and we’ll end off with the speakers. Down firing speakers are always going to get a negative point from me, for as long as they exist. We’ve seen it time and time again, even on smaller handhelds, that they absolutely can do front firing speakers, but choose to not design for it. The speakers here are passable, but not good or great.

Performance

Lastly, on the neutral end, and it’s the performance. I’ve seen the T820 processor be hyped up to be perfect for PS2, perfect for GameCube, perfect for everything and that just isn’t the case, you need to be aware of what you’re buying here. On the PS2 end, no, this is not a PS2 processor in the way that you’re thinking – it can play some of the catalog, easily, without tweaks, at a native resolution, but you will be heading into that settings menu often to play the vast majority of the popular PS2 games and some will just have trouble no matter what. I would not expect upscaling here. 

It’s the same scenario for GameCube, and this is one of those scenarios where you’ll pull up the beginning of a game and check it, and be like, awesome this runs well, but the moment you actually play through the game, get further into Wind Waker, or Twilight Princess or most others, you realize that you’ll be headed into those settings again to lower the resolution, enable VBI Skip, enable other performance hacks and so on. 

A lot of people are fine with that, and that’s perfectly okay. I just want to set the right expectations here – I think some of the PS2 and GC catalogues are playable and easily at native, but this is far from a perfect device for both of those systems. And before you ask, every other system on down are just fine here – PSP, N64, Dreamcast, all of the other retro systems, are of course great. My unpopular opinion, that you won’t like, is that I would personally never play anything above PSP on this due to the performance, and would consider it a perfect device for Nintendo 64, Dreamcast and so on, with the nice upgraded screen.

But again, that’s just my unpopular opinion – I prefer not having to mess around with settings to play games. 

Video Out & Software

On the bad end, it’s the software. You still can’t use video out and charging at the same time. It’s one or the other – you either charge, or you do video out, no in between. You also still can’t do GeForce Now for streaming, not that you’d have a good time as I pointed out in the previous T820 videos, the wifi chip they use for this device is on the budget end of budget, and the range and throughput are both not very good. And Anbernic will not ever update this device, like ever, you’ll see no over the air updates, no changes, nothing. They include an over the air updater just for show, they never used it, but their Linux devices get biweekly updates without an over the air updater, go figure. 

Sticking with the bad, and it’s the lack of fast charging. Charging the Anbernic RG406H is super slow compared to Retroid devices. 

Anbernic RG406H vs. Retroid Pocket 5

Now, going to end off here with a quick discussion about the Anbernic RG406H and Retroid Pocket 5. Using their retail pricing, the Anbernic RG406H is $187 US dollars shipped and the Retroid Pocket 5 is $239 US dollars shipped, making it a $52 US dollar difference, at least for countries where these prices apply.

That’s a sizeable price difference, not easy to just say buy a Retroid Pocket 5 instead, which you know I want to say, but let’s look at the comparison. The 5 has a much better, 5.5” 16:9 1080p OLED screen, which Anbernic has actually used on their RG556, it has much better performance with the Snapdragon 865 processor which has no issues playing any GameCube, PS2 or other systems and upscaled and I’d argue it has better software since GeForce Now isn’t a problem, and all the other weird quirks with Anbernic’s software aren’t an issue on Retroid’s along with the 5 having a much better wifi chip for streaming and other uses. Retroid also updates their Android software, whereas Anbernic just lets the device die and releases a new one with the fixes the first one should have had.

So, in trying to be fair here, you could dumb this down to a better screen and better processor over the Anbernic RG406H. Because in my personal opinion, a lot of the rest is either equal, or the Anbernic RG406H might come out ahead. For example – the sticks are equal, but the Anbernic RG406H has them in a better more comfortable position up top. Both dpads are fantastic, and I’m perfectly happy using either of them. Comfort wise, the Anbernic RG406H comes out ahead – it’s just a more comfortable device to hold, especially with that stick top. And so that’s a quick side by side between the two. 

Anbernic RG406H vs. Retroid Pocket Mini

Honestly, I think the better comparison is the Retroid Pocket Mini. The 3.7” 4:3 OLED screen on the Mini is a lot better than the 4” 4:3 IPS display on the Anbernic RG406H, that 0.3” difference disappears super quickly when using a much better display and pricing wise, it’s closer at $214 US dollar shipped, so a difference of just $27 US dollars now for a much better OLED screen, much more powerful processor, still great dpad/sticks, and insane battery life along with front firing speakers and Retroid’s software. 

My Thoughts

If you’re asking me, I would easily go Retroid Pocket 5 over the Anbernic RG406H, in every scenario, and I would also go Retroid Pocket Mini over the Anbernic RG406H, in also every scenario. But that isn’t me saying the Anbernic RG406H doesn’t have a place. 

For a lot of people in countries that don’t have access to Retroid, and have hard budgets, the Anbernic RG406H is still a good choice, but I’d argue maybe a bit more expensive than it should be. Given the competition, this really needs to be in that $150 US dollar range nowadays, especially when Snapdragon processor devices are $200 dollars.

Wrap Up

But, I’m pleasantly surprised by the Anbernic RG406H – like the Anbernic 406V, this is a nice complete package, and I think I would have slotted this right after the 406V on my best of the year list, making it the 6th best handheld of 2024, since I’m a lot more interested in horizontals than verticals.

I don’t think the Anbernic RG406H will cause a stir, or a movement, or much of anything really, but like the 406V, I think Anbernic has at least put some effort in here and it shows and so I’d love to see more of this either way.