Retro gaming used to require a lot of hard work. Getting old consoles to play happily with modern, flatscreen displays was a constant challenge that wearied the very idea of it, ultimately making it an easier option to put everything in the loft and play the latest Call of Duty instead. That’s no longer the case, though, with retro handhelds becoming an affordable and fun option for playing all your older games, no matter where you are.
The Boyhom R36H is one of the cheapest retro gaming devices on the planet, coming in for less than £40 in the UK – it’s listed as having a $49.99 RRP but our unit was listed on AliExpress for a slightly ridiculous £18.27 with a 64GB memory card, before shipping and fees. The handheld shows some signs of that accessible price point, but its quality far exceeds the expectations you might have for a console priced this low.
Our review unit came in pure white, though the R36H is also available in grey, transparent black, purple or orange. Laid out horizontally with buttons on either side of the screen, it shares a similar outlook to Retroid’s older Pocket devices, with a chunky, slightly boxy aesthetic. It’s not sleek or premium-looking like the Retroid Pocket 5, but it’s charming in its own way. For the price I wasn’t expecting it to look or feel as good as it does, and it immediately sets you up for a positive experience.
The Boyhom R36H has a 3.5” IPS display, with a 640×480 resolution. Its 4:3 ratio makes it ideal for older games, and it’s plenty bright and vibrant. Frankly, it’s a continual source of surprise every time you boot a game up how good the display is, and for the type of games the R36H is capable of playing, you couldn’t ask for more.
Internally, the R36H is equipped with a RK3326 chipset and 1GB of DDR3L RAM. It’s definitely not the most powerful device out there, but for retro games up to and including the Dreamcast, it provides enough power to keep everything running smoothly, and relatively efficiently.
It uses Arkos 2.0, an open-source Linux-based operating system, that does exactly what it needs to, in so far as it lets you dump a frontend like Emulation Station onto it that pulls together your ROMS into different categories, with some smart artwork and labels to make it all make sense.
You’ll find Arkos on a batch of Powkiddy and Anbernic devices, and it’s been around for long enough to be well-optimised, keeping you gaming for longer, and with decent performance. The system as a whole is a little on the slow side, so hopping in and out of games can feel lethargic, but in-game, you’ll never notice. It boasts a 3000mAh battery – though its own advertising gets confused between 3000mAh and 3500mAh, but either way it’s plenty to keep you going for between 5 and 6 hours, and maybe even longer if you’re playing less demanding titles. One annoyance is that the battery LED can’t be turned off, and it’s lit at all times, even when you’re not playing. You can choose between it being red or green though, so… there’s that.
Everything has been stripped back in the R36H, and when you consider the price, that’s not surprising. There’s no Bluetooth or WiFi here, so any updates or connections need to be done via wired connections, or installing data onto your MicroSD cards. There are two MicroSD slots on the R36H, one for your OS, and the other for your ROMS, and they do exactly what you need of them. It makes working with the R36H slightly clunky, but chances are this is a device that would serve well as a gift, or a starting point for the retro gaming hobby, rather than the end point like the Retroid Pocket 5. That said, there’s some additional functionality with HDMI output via a USB-C OTG connection, which is a nice inclusion.
One of the best things about the Boyhom R36H is the D-pad. It’s sturdy, responsive, and ideal for classic retro games like Mario or Metroid. Given the price, I expected the different inputs to feel cheap, but that’s mostly not the case. The face buttons aren’t quite as good, being fractionally raised from the unit’s main body, and the travel feels ever so slightly too long, but they still do a decent job of responding to your inputs in games like Sonic the Hedgehog and Kid Chameleon.
The two analogue sticks are laid out asymmetrically, and for some people, this will be a sticking point. While it’s aping the Xbox or Nintendo Switch layouts, it does mean that the D-pad is at the bottom of the unit. Depending on how you hold the device, the size of your hands and the games you’re playing, this could make it uncomfortable over long gaming sessions. They’re also pretty short and soft, without much feedback, but they are there, which isn’t always the case for retro-focused devices. It means that you can properly control Dreamcast and later PlayStation 1 games, without having to resort to swapping the D-pad’s functionality, and that’s a big bonus for me.
The other controls are solid, with digital shoulder buttons that wrap around the top corners of the R36H, and two further inputs on top which are easily reachable with the tips of your fingers. Most retro games won’t use both sets, but they’re solid and useable if you need to call on them.
We’re here for retro gaming, and thankfully the R36H allows you to do that, and it does an especially good job with older titles from the 16-bit era and below. I love a good shoot ‘em up, and Aeroblaster – or Air Busters depending on where you played it – remains one of my all-time favourites. Here it runs flawlessly in its Arcade rendition, with a decent frame rate, and unspectacular but well-represented audio. This is retro gaming running through imperfect emulators, so support isn’t going to be perfect across the board – I found audio issues in the arcade Mortal Kombat games that weren’t present in other games, for example – so if you’re coming at this as your first entry into the hobby, don’t expect everything in your ROM collection to work straight out of the box.
The speakers on the R36H aren’t great. They’re thin-sounding, firing downwards into your hands and relying on how you place your palms to get the best audio, but they do have plenty of volume. That volume is controlled by two digital buttons on the top of the unit, and there is a 3.5mm socket for a wired headphone connection, which is the best way to hear your favourite game themes. I’ve been playing a lot of Final Fantasy Tactics, and the soundtrack sounded great when playing on the R36H with headphones – it’s definitely my recommended way to play.
