Dedicated Android gaming devices have exploded in popularity the last few years. I've never been too interested in them, preferring to do most of my emulation and gaming on PC. But lately I've been finding myself not wanting to play any older retro or handheld games, and I think it's because there's a disconnect with playing these handheld games on a monitor with a separate controller.I did some research and decided to pick up the Retroid Pocket Flip.It's essentially a slightly bulkier Nintendo DS. It arrived yesterday, and after a few hours of setup and configuration I'm really happy with it.Games feel great to play, and playing GBA or DS games on a dedicated handheld device just feels better to me.

It's an Android device, essentially a phone built into a controller shell, so everything runs off of emulation. This means Retroarch for me, which can be a pain to setup if you're unfamiliar. Luckily I've got a lot of experience with setting it up, so I was able to get my emulators up and running in an hour or so. I installed Daijisho as my frontend, which is similar to Playnite on desktop, and setup was seamless. Then I installed Moonlight, to stream my desktop, and was able to add Playnite fullscreen mode to it. After a bit of troubleshooting, I was able to launch Playnite from my Flip and launch games, which run on my PC and stream to the Flip. Controller support works seamlessly. Lastly, I installed the Plex client, so now I've got a complete gaming and media streaming machine.

It works great for every game I've tried so far, up through DS for handheld and PS1 for consoles. I'm less confident in emulating anything later than those, but Playnite steps in as a streaming option. I wasn't able to notice any latency on my home connection.

Battery life seems excellent. From a full charge I messed with it pretty heavily for almost 3 hours, and the battery only discharge to 80%.

I only have 2 real downsides. First, I wish the screen was an inch or so bigger. Text in higher-resolution games can be just slightly hard to read, and the screen has a huge bezel around it. I feel there's a good bit more real estate that could have been used.

Second, the thumbsticks aren't great. They aren't true analog sticks, instead they're sliders that lie flush with the console. They don't feel great, and will definitely take some getting used to if you're going to be playing any games that require an analogue stick.

All in all it seems like a great little device for retro games, and can be serviceable for newer games if you're able to utilize a "home base" gaming PC and streaming like I am. Access to the Play Store is a bonus, you can utilize all native android apps and play android games that have controller support. It's also good for watching movies or shows in bed, but a tablet would be a better use case there.

The Retroid Flip gets a recommendation from me if you're in the market for a dedicated emulation device that gives you the feeling of holding a DS or GBA SP in your hands. Setup can be a little tricky if you're unfamiliar with setting up emulators or with the Android OS, but plenty of guides exist online.