TrimUI Brick Review

Buy the TrimUI Brick here: https://joeysrh.link/GGG_TRIMUIBRICK
(use code JOEY for 15% off)

Specs & Price

The Brick has an awesome 3.2” IPS 1024×768 4:3 display – yeah, it’s an HD screen, it’s pretty awesome.

There’s a 3000mAh battery inside, which in my testing of a normal use case SNES game, I was able to clock the battery life at 200 minutes or just about three and a half hours with 100% brightness, wifi on and sound at 10%. For a device like this, that’s pretty decent and fine for quick pick up and playing. 

Pricing wise, this is $68 US dollars shipped worldwide with my code JOEY at checkout from GoGameGeek. That’s about twice the price of what a Miyoo Mini Plus currently goes for regularly on AliExpress for comparison. 

On the power front, it’s very similar to the H700 processor from Anbernic – you can play some Nintendo 64, some Dreamcast and some PSP, but let’s be real here, there’s no analog stick and 3.2” 4:3 doesn’t translate well for PSP games. Your real use case for this device is going to be PlayStation 1 and under, mostly 4:3 systems like Super Nintendo, Genesis and so on. That’s where this excels.

Screen

Now, topic of the day is of course the Miyoo Mini Plus comparison, and on the screen and power front, there’s absolutely zero comparison between both devices – the TrimUI Brick is the winner. Screen wise, the Plus has a 3.5” 640×480 screen and the Brick is running that beautiful 3.2” 1024×768 screen. It’s a lot more crisp, in every way, and is just a gorgeous screen at this price.

Power

It’s a similar story for the power. The Miyoo Mini Plus really does top out at PlayStation 1, although it utilizes hacks to do most of it whereas the Brick easily surpasses that without hacks. In real world scenarios, the Brick comes out ahead when we start looking at fast forward speeds and use cases without utilizing frameskip. If you’re looking at just Pokemon games, the Brick is the easy winner overall by being able to actually use mGBA as a core, or even just fast forwarding more in gpsp. I will say that personally, for my uses, the Miyoo Mini Plus has been more than fine power wise, but you can’t say no to more power.

Heat

However, there’s a bit of a trade off here. With more power, comes more heat responsibility and the Brick fails at that aspect. I stuck to just playing PlayStation 1 and under on the Brick for this review, given the use case, and still found it to get warm to hot on a lot of occasions – enough to make it uncomfortable in my hands. Not a big fan of that overall, and outside of finding a way to downclock the device to lower the heat, which also doesn’t make much sense, I couldn’t find a way around it.

Controls

On the controls front, the Miyoo is a clear winner here and by a large margin. I’m one of the few people, I think, that actually really liked the controls on the TrimUI Smart Pro, which they’re using here again. Same dpad style and type and same buttons feel and all that. They’re clicky style, no real travel and while they’re fine, they’re not as good as the Miyoo’s at all. The Miyoo’s dpad, to me, is still one of the best in the hobby and the face buttons are so comfy to use as well. 

Shoulders & Triggers

But the part where TrimUI screwed up, which I can’t believe you’d screw up in comparison to the Miyoo which already wasn’t great on this part, is the back buttons. The shoulder buttons, L1 and R1, are fine and I say fine through gritted teeth because I want to say it’s a lot worse than fine, but they’re serviceable, you can do things with them. The problem is the triggers are absolutely not fine, in a hard to reach spot, hard to push down spot and feel awful. The entire back feels awful, but I risk angering internet people and they get real mad about these things.

TrimUI must have known this because they include options in the box for other shoulders and triggers, except none of them solved the problem and in fact, the default option was the best feeling for me. Triggers, are super important for utilizing fast forward in games as that’s how I have them mapped, and they’re a complete miss here.

That all ties into overall comfort because with where the trigger are positioned and how often I personally use them in games like Pokemon, it’s a complete disaster for holding and just doesn’t feel great. It’s funny to talk about ergonomics and comfort for a device this small because you’d assume it has none, but I find the Miyoo to be just fine for fast forwarding and these uses, the Brick unfortunately, isn’t to me. 

Sound & Audio

Speaker wise, the sound can get distorted at loud volumes, which is normal for these low cost type of devices, but otherwise the sound itself is just fine – actually pretty good for the price and nice levels of volume for low and high.

Software

On the software front, I’m currently waiting on the Crossmix release with Syncthing integration and all of that, it’s my option of choice with this device, but the stock operating system is actually quite decent. It’s no OnionOS, to continue the Miyoo comparison, which isn’t fair as Onion isn’t the stock operating system, but you know what I mean. It’s serviceable and to me, completely fine. Once Crossmix releases, you’ll get all the cool functionality that it offers which will turn this into a much better device.

I will say it was pretty funny that my white Brick arrived completely in Chinese and I had to read the manual to figure out how to change it, was super simple, but just funny. I could see a lot of people confused on arrival with that, but my setup guide that I did for this device should help you in that scenario and just setting this all up. 

Charging wise, unlike Anbernic devices, TrimUI have figured out USB-C to C charging and I found that to work reliably across different chargers. 

Overall Thoughts

Otherwise, overall, the Brick is premium feeling, has a nice screen, decent controls, and the power that you’d want for this, but it’s held back by the heat issues, and awful back buttons. 

Versus the Miyoo Mini Plus

So if we go back to my question of the day, does this beat or replace the Miyoo Mini Plus for me? Surprisingly, even to me, it doesn’t, but I really wanted it to. I’ve been excited for this for months and outside of the cool colors, I’m pretty let down by it. 

Outside of the power and the screen, the rest isn’t doing it for me on the Brick and it’s a bit of a letdown as I’ve been excited for this for months, even grabbed a few colors in expectation of it.

I will say though, the screen is gorgeous and it’s a beautiful upgrade, but it just isn’t enough to win me over.

Why you might want it

If you’re looking at just power and screen, and don’t mind the double the price bump, then yeah, see if you can grab one of these and you might like it. I will say that throughout my entire time having this, I keep looking at it and the awesome red and trying to find ways to like this thing, but it’s just not hitting. On paper, it should be perfect, which is why I was so excited before it arrived, and now I’m just sad because I wanted to like this, I want and need a device this size to be just a quick everyday carry, but for now I keep waiting. Do I think it’s a bad device? Not at all, it’s just not for me.

It missed the mark for me, and not what I’m looking for or waiting for. Seems like it’s super difficult to get a small vertical right, but given Miyoo’s recent track record, I don’t even trust them to make a Miyoo Mini Plus successor at this point, it seems like they lucked into making the Miyoo Mini and Miyoo Mini Plus and they won’t be recapturing that lightning in a bottle anytime soon. But at this rate, with no one competing, I guess I can just keep using my Miyoo Mini Plus.