ANBERNIC RG Slide review: The Xperia Play of my dreams

While many people are nostalgic for flip phones, sliders are the way to go for me. Sure, I had a basic flip phone in the early 2000s, but I didn’t really get excited about phones until I got my first sliding phone with a full QWERTY keyboard in 2006. That satisfying THWOMP made me feel like I was a secret agent every time I texted my mom to pick up some more Mountain Dew and Cheetos.

But when the PSP Go and Xperia Play brought that form factor to gaming, I just didn’t get it. At that time, I didn’t want to overlap my gaming devices with my phone. I still don’t, but that’s the unfortunate world we now live in.

So when the ANBERNIC RG Slide was announced, I was skeptical. Clamshells like the Retroid Flip 2 had me hungry for more unique form factors in the retro gaming handheld world, but can this slider overcome my past prejudices?

After unboxing the device and sliding it open, that familiar THWOMP immediately had me hooked. The RG Slide might not be perfect, but it’s excited me about the future of handhelds in a way that few devices have in the past year.

Apart from the slick sliding mechanism, the first thing that stands out about the RG Slide is its size. It is incredibly chunky. The 4:3 aspect ratio, 4.7-inch screen, and rounded design make it look like a phone from two decades ago, but the thickness reminds me of even older handhelds from the 90s — the kind that ate through AA batteries like I went through Mountain Dew.

Once I got over the initial shock, I found that the size actually worked in its favor. Once I got used to the bulk, it was surprisingly comfortable to hold, and the thickness allows for inset capacitive sticks with a nice range of motion. The controls in general are fantastic, with a soft D-pad and quiet buttons. The triggers are very clicky, and the small power and volume buttons are discreetly tucked away on the side.

There are two extra buttons, and they’re found on either side of the screen. These are great for emulation hotkeys, and they make it so that I never really needed to touch the screen. That alone made it feel more like a gaming console and less like an Android phone.

The screen itself is beautiful. The 120Hz refresh rate is certainly overkill for a device like this, but the colors and brightness are perfect. It’s not an OLED panel, but I would have no complaints if Anbernic and other companies continued to use this screen on more devices in the future. However, it’s pretty exposed on the outside of the device, so I’d definitely recommend using the included screen protector.

Taking another page from the book of older smartphones, it also has stereo speakers on either side of the screen. They sound great, and the placement means you’ll never cover them with your palms. They actually make the RG Slide a solid media viewing device, especially for older, non-16:9 content.

If I have one complaint about the design, it’s that the screen is ever so slightly off center. It’s not noticeable when the slider is open and you’re playing games, but it is noticeable when playing touchscreen games. More on that in a moment.

I was initially disappointed by the Unisoc T820 chipset on the RG Slide, since it felt like a device this unique should have something more powerful. The T820 has been used on many Anbernic devices in the past, though, and it’s a solid performer for everything up to and including some PS2. Just don’t expect to enjoy frontier Switch or PS3 emulation.

I ran the device through our standard suite of benchmarks to get a general idea of what we’re talking about. There’s only one configuration available, with 128GB of storage and 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM. You can increase that storage with a microSD card, and ANBERNIC sells the device with the option to include a 128GB or 256GB card, loaded with games of questionable legality.

Check out the results of our tests above, pitted against two Retroid devices on either side of the RG Slide in terms of price. The Pocket Flip 2 has an aging, but capable Snapdragon 865 SoC, and the Pocket Classic has the new handheld-focused Snapdragon G1 Gen 2.

Results are mixed, with the RG Slide falling somewhere in between the two Retroid devices in most tests. The newer G1 Gen 2 shows impressive performance for how cheap it is, but the Unisoc T820 still blows it away in GPU performance. Personally, I would love to see a follow-up to the RG Slide incorporate the mid-range Snapdragon G2 Gen 2 chip that’s set to power the next Retroid flagship. ANBERNIC has never used a Snapdragon chipset in any handheld, though, so that may never come to fruition.

In terms of actual emulation, the RG Slide handled everything I wanted it to. Retro systems obviously ran great, and the 4:3 screen is perfect for PS1, N64, and more. Unfortunately, 16:9 systems like the PSP feature pretty heavy letterboxing. Ironically, I wouldn’t recommend snagging this PSP Go-shaped device to play PSP games.

GameCube and PS2 are also playable, but you’ll have to make some compromises. I couldn’t get all games to play at full framerates, let alone upscaled. Without upscaling, PS2 games play at 640 x 480, which is half of the native resolution of the RG Slide’s 1280 x 960 IPS panel, and it looks pretty muddy on the 4.7-inch display. It’s playable, but it’s far from ideal.

As a sidenote, I abandoned my beloved ES DE frontend for the sake of this review, sticking to ANBERNIC’s homegrown RG launcher. It took a little work to get it to recognize the games in my microSD card, but once it was set up, it was surprisingly great. The console comes with many emulators pre-installed (although I ended up swapping some for more updated versions), and you can select which emulator to launch right in the launcher settings.

There’s a toggle in the notification shade to change the default launcher, so you can play your games without ever seeing an app icon. With everything configured properly, the RG Slide becomes a bonafide gaming console rather than an Android phone pretender. There’s even an option to lock and unlock the device with the sliding mechanism, which is indescribably cool.

Native Android games don’t show up in this menu, but they’re also great on this device. I typically only play controller-compatible Android games on these gaming handhelds, but on this device, I also enjoyed portrait touchscreen games. It looks and works just like a chunky phone when the slider is closed, so it didn’t feel awkward to play mobile-first games like Monument Valley, Clash Royale, or Subway Surfers. As mentioned above, the off-center screen is glaringly noticeable when holding the device vertically.

The last note here is battery life, and for the most part, the 5,000mAh cell goes the distance. Depending on the settings and systems I was emulating, I got anywhere from five to 12 hours of battery life.

The downside is the charging speeds, which top off at 10W. In my testing, it took roughly two hours to fully charge, so don’t expect a quick top-off between matches.

While the RG Slide is a fascinating device, it’s also fairly expensive. It starts at $189.99 for just the console, which puts it in a strange place in terms of value. The middling chipset and mixed PS2 emulation make it a hard sell at that price, but it makes up for it with a design that’s a cut above the competition.

That’s a relatively new position for ANBERNIC. The brand isn’t exactly known for innovation, but rather for incremental improvements on existing designs and ideas. The RG Slide might be the device to turn that reputation on its head.

If you are looking for more performance, you’ll have to look at a different form factor. The Retroid Flip 2 ($229 at Manufacturer site) is one option, and it offers quite a bit more performance for PS2 emulation, but it also costs quite a bit more, starting at $229 before shipping and taxes.

Otherwise, you’re looking at more standard vertical or horizontal handhelds, which frankly don’t hit the same as the RG Slide. If you have any nostalgia for sliding devices like the Xperia Play or PSP Go, this device might scratch that itch.

Of course, you would also wait for ANBERNIC to do its thing and iterate on this device. If it were just a smidge smaller and a hair more powerful, it would be an absolute slam dunk.