MY HANDHELD BLOG

R36S a cheap handheld device

November 22, 2024

Do I actually like it or not?

When I heard about this cheap handheld device that would be under 40 euro and would be able to run emulation up till PS1 I was of course curious. I have seen this device around internet a few times before but never came around to get one. Sometimes I see a device and I just need to buy it. Other times I see a device and wonder would I like it. For this one I was not really sure, but I decided to give it a shot for only 33 euro in a sale with coupons. This makes this device my cheapest handheld at this moment. So, is it worth it?

When my device arrived, I was really happy the clear red color makes it look really good. I mean lots of devices have the same kind of color. Not that that is a bad thing but let’s give this color some extra points. For the Micro-SD card that comes with this device, I think this time I’m not even going to talk about it. I read that it is even worse than some other non branded Micro-SD cards.

So, my first thing I had to do was switching out the Micro-SD card and install a new version of ArkOS. This device has the same firmware as the Powkiddy has when it first arrived. Certainly, not a bad thing since ArkOS is really stable. I want to point out that some people had their screen turn black after installing the firmware on a new card. Don’t worry then there are just some files missing. You can either get those from the card that came with the device or on the internet. Personally, I did not need to do it since I installed the firmware from the ArkOs website but I still wanted to point it out.

I thought it was finally time to play on this device, but I read something on a forum that made me uneasy and I had to check it out first. It seemed that a lot of people are selling fake R36S devices online. After some research I learned that you could check on the motherboard if the device was real or not and luckily, I have a clear shell one. This made me only to remove the battery to see if my device was real or not, and it was.

Now I could play games, which I did. No complaints actually I mean every game I tried running played well. I did not have any problems with save states that were deleted, that was another thing I read that could happen. Maybe this is more likely to happen with the unbranded card, but that is what I think I cannot say this for sure.

I played a lot of sonic games on this one, and some other random SNES and Gameboy advance games like Wario, Yoshi and so on. Sadly the game sessions were not that long for me and I can’t explain why, but holding this device is not comfortable for me. I feel really bad about this. I really want to love this one because I think it’s deserving it, but because of this I do not see myself playing a lot of games on this one. I will probably sell this one to someone who will have more fun gaming on this device it deserves to be loved.

I think this is not a beginner’s device. More than often, I read that these cards break really quickly and don’t forget the save problem. So, if you don’t have any knowledge or you don’t want to invest some time in this device even if it’s a good budget handheld, I would not recommend this. If you are willing to switch to a branded Micro-SD card and spend just a small amount of time on this device. Wait till there is a sale and you will have yourself a great budget handheld.

Till the next blog everyone

Alexia