MY HANDHELD BLOG

Powkiddy V90

December 13, 2024

Another budget device.

I have to admit when I saw the price for this device, I thought it must be too good to be true. Little did I know at first that this was a device from 2019. I should have checked that before I bought it probably. Not that there is anything to do about it now, but what do I actually think of it?

My Powkiddy V90 arrived and I have to say that I didn’t really know what to think about this device. I think my mistake was that I immediately compared it to the Anbernic RG35xxSP and compared to that device this device looks terrible cheap. I felt disappointed but on the other hand what did I expect from a device that was priced at 28 euro? It didn’t make it better when I read the paper that was with it. It told me that if you not use the power off option in the settings to shut down it may cause the system card to lose files. That doesn’t really sound good right. I felt sorry for the device and had a feeling this one would not last long in my growing collection.

I left the poor device alone for a while. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted with this device, keeping it or selling it off again. I think I was kind of afraid that I would be even more disappointed. Some time passed and I saw the Powkiddy V90 sitting on my shelf with the rest of my devices and decided I should at least give it a try. What if this device was actually okay and I didn’t give it a chance?

My first game on this device was sonic advance on the GBA emulator. I have to admit that I was surprised. It was not as bad as I thought it would be. I somehow had the feeling that the games would be laggy or something around the lines, but the games that I tried played well. I have to admit that the games I tried are mostly Gameboy or advance games since, my try with SNES games were kind of disappointing.

The SNES emulator actually has a weird screen, it’s not filled to full screen like with Gameboy games, but rather smaller and you have lots of black space. If you want to change it to full screen you have to do some editing in the settings. Which I really think is a shame. This is also the same with Nintendo and PCE games.

The other emulators I checked do work in full screen but I do not recommend playing PS1 games on this one. The most games are laggy. Probably with some tweaks you can make them run better, but personally I would not use the device for PS1 games.

The firmware itself is a little chunky honestly but on the other side this device is some years old. I have to admit I find it enjoyable to see how far emulation on handhelds came, but let’s go back to the firmware. Most emulators you can quit with just the small round button in the middle of the device. To do a safe switch off you can use the R button until you see a menu with a power off button and then do not forget to use the switch to fully turn it off or you end up with an empty battery like me a lot of times. That is quite frustrating I can tell.

I don’t think that I would use this device a lot, but I really do not dislike it honestly. I would probably use this every now and then or as a travel device since it’s cheap. I am still using the stock card and I am still curious how long it will take before it dies on me. I will let you know when time is there, but I think it can take a while since it will not be used daily.

I think this is a nice device if you want to play Gameboy or advance games and don’t want to spend too much money and don’t change settings. If you want to play SNES games you sadly have to change some settings. I cannot guarantee how long the Micro-SD card will work. There is an okay selection of games on this little device. Zelda and Kirby for example for Gameboy and SNES. I also spotted some Donkey Kong games under a different name, and of course many more. This one does not have Mario or Pokémon. So, if you are looking for those you have to add them yourself. Overall, most of the emulators are playable except PS1, but I have to say I did not expect that when I first got my Powkiddy V90.

For only 28 euro I think this is quite a nice budget device. it does have some flaws of course, but overall if you want something that is cheap or you just are curious about emulation and are not ready to spend a lot of money, I think you can have a good amount of fun with this device. Keep in mind do not expect miracles form this device.

Till the next blog everyone

Alexia