Is the Ayaneo Pocket Micro more than a chic GBA? | 4 Weeks Later
After 4 weeks with the Ayaneo Pocket Micro I’m confident I could position the benefits of this handheld where it seems like there is no more perfect handheld and yet it’s more likely than not this handheld isn’t for you. Video Review
Sure there is a lot to love about the Ayaneo Pocket Micro. On paper it appears to be the perfect GBA handheld with 4X Nintendo’s native resolution. Obviously sporting a glass front with aluminium shell, the fit and finish are nicer than even the most modified GBA handheld whether horizontal or the SP. Mediatek’s Helio G99 SOC is much stronger and it opens the ability to play far more than what the GBA had to offer. There are multiple versions of this handheld so for comparison the Pocket Micro that I have is the more powerful 8GB RAM with 256GB storage option.
Gameplay on the Pocket Micro is very satisfying when emulating many different systems. I find it a real joy to hold and play. Even without the addition of ergonomic bumps we see on most modern handhelds it doesn’t get uncomfortable in long gaming sessions. It also doesn’t typically get very warm. Between active cooling and the aluminium shells ability to better distribute heat than most in its class. Even though I recently picked up Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Nintendo Switch I thought I would try my luck with my GameCube copy through emulation using Dolphin on the Pocket Micro. With the G99 I have the ability to play it on this pocketable’ish handheld at 2X resolution keeping a steady 30FPS. Needless to say I’ve yet to start it on the Switch and have found myself hours into the game. I should note I did convert my Switch copy to emulate but it can’t keep a steady frame rate on the Pocket Micro and visually suffers freezing issues as well as screen tearing compared to the GameCube version which is mostly issue free.
The DPad works well for fighting games, Contra and the like. There are solid face buttons with short travel and a faint satisfying click when released (I know some think it is loud but it is one of the quietest this year). There are dual hall effect joysticks that click and have a short travel area allowing them to be shorter than normal with small thumbcaps. Ayaneo managed to get the start/select as well as the Ayaneo/sometimes home buttons sort of placed on the front, moulded along with the lower of the handheld. There are dual speakers which are always nice to see in a handheld, though placed on the bottom to not interrupt the all glass finish on the front of the handheld. They placed a rubber cover over the TF hole on the left side of the handheld, making it more aesthetically pleasing while protecting the card from getting ejected across the room (it is crazy how powerful the springs are in some devices). There are also two additional buttons on the right side of the handheld inlaid in the same rubber as the TF cover, one labelled RC and the other … that do different things depending on what screen you are in. The back features a nicely inlaid logo for Remake (Ayaneo’s Retro Handheld line) along with a vent for the Pocket Micros active cooling. Lastly the top of the handheld has shoulders/triggers that are inline and have a soft click to them along with the volume control also with a soft click. Lastly on top there is a fingerprint scanner which is also the power button, designed to unlock your device while you power it on.
As you can see the build of this handheld is of exceptional quality. There is something magical about it because as it sits on my desk it has a way of distracting me from my work to pick it up and play. There are very few handhelds that have had this effect on me over the years. The Pocket Micros hold on me I believe will make less sense as we go over the thoughts about the handheld.
The Ayaneo Pocket Micro was built around GameBoy Advanced emulation and it absolutely nails this. Playing games at 4x resolution natively not only looks amazing but also is easier on resources. GBA isn’t the only 3:2 gaming system but it is likely the one you will gravitate towards with its massive library. With that said other systems have games that play well on here including PSP, PS2, N64, GameCube and everything in between. Unfortunately it seems to take a lot of work on the users part in order to get these other systems to run at their best, tweaking individual games in most cases. As I stated earlier I have found myself playing the GameCuber version of Twilight Princess but it hasn’t been nearly as fun playing the game as the amount of hours I have put into making it play with minimal hiccups. Somehow the Pocket Micro is a $200+ handheld for those who like to tinker. It isn’t uncommon for handhelds to focus around those who want to push them to their limits but at this price it is rarely seen and this handheld hasn’t been marketed that way. I know it was again designed with GBA in mind but nobody is buying a GBA device that costs this much.
So if you want to play around with different emulators to find the emulator that works for you then you should be able to get most of your retro library to play. But getting games to play is only one of the shortfalls to this handheld. If you watched my initial review then you know that there isn’t a 3.5mm headphone jack included on this handheld. Normally this wouldn’t bother me as I typically use bluetooth head phones with handhelds like this but I decided to try a 3.5 to usb-c adapter to get audio out of the OTG port as part of my review process. To my surprise the headphones are for whatever reason connected to the game controllers. So using the adapter does allow you to get audio but you sacrifice using the handheld as none of the controls work while they are hooked in. This might be ok for something like watching a movie if you start it prior to plugging the headphones in but I have an iPad Pro I use for my multimedia needs. Also the Pocket Micro isn’t exactly going to be great for watching movies on its anything but large screen.
Next I want to touch on the TF bay and installation. I do appreciate the cover over the TF card and think it is a welcome addition. However in order to open it I need something like a pair of tweezers to get to the TF card.Once you get the flap removed the TF card slot itself is located too tightly to the frame of the handheld so again you need to get your tweezers back out in order to push the card. The card will then get stuck against the frame not fully ejecting. It sits in there so tightly that tweezers have begun chipp[ing the paint off my card as I take it in and out. I am just waiting for the day that I snap the card trying to remove it or place it back in. None of this can be good for the card either way as it also scrapped the body of the TF card along the body of the handheld . It is only a matter of time before the card itself brakes and you can currently visibly see marks in the handheld paint caused by this process.
This Pocket Micro also isn’t good at all with FPS games. This doesn’t have to be an issue but a lot of GBA games are FPS or use a similar controller layout.The hall sticks in the handheld have very little resistance which is great for speed getting lined up with a target but they are nearly impossible to lock onto a target even with auto aim. Any time you try and line anything up you find yourself nudging the sticks trying to get them to line up. This isn’t an uncommon issue with low resistance hall sticks buy because of the size of the Pocket Micro the sticks are short with little travel allowed by the m. This lowers the arc range to fire while also causing the sticks to over correct themselves when aiming. But this isnt the only issue I have with the sticks on the Ayaneo Pocket Micro.
With the handheld supposedly pocketable the sticks make that nearly impossible. For starters even though they are too short for a lot of gaming they are actually too tall for pocketability. This is something most manufacturers fix by sinking the sticks into the body allowing them to be longer for travel while not sticking out to preserve the ability to put them in your pocket. I could probably deal with the sticks getting stuck in my pocket if they didn’t completely disassemble themselves anytime they are in there or in the bag that Ayaneo included with purchase. Nearly every time you travel with this handheld the sticks find a way to have the caps pop off and then everything else like the tiny dust covers come off with it. The ha handheld is “Mico” so it is very difficult to find these parts to put the sticks back toge ther when this happens. Fortunately I have noticed every time this has happened so far (knocking on wood) but even that doesn’t guarantee you will find all the parts. It took me over a day to find the joystick thumbpad and dust cover one day when they came apart in the car. Oddly I wasn’t pulling the handheld out of my pocket by playing Monkey Ball when this happened. Maybe I should have mentioned that sometimes the sticks also disassemble themselves when playing games that require heavy stick usage as Monkey Ball does. I have looked on the Ayaneo site and haven’t seen replacement parts for any of these that like to get lost so I’m not sure what you do if you can’t find the parts. I’m sure they don’t sell them separately so someone with this week’s new Anbernic handheld doesn’t order them to swap out with a different device. Companies like Ayn sell their sticks on their sit relatively cheaply so I think it would be sage for Ayane to do the same.
The last negative I think that needs to be touched on is the buttons. Not the shoulder or face buttons but all the rest of them. Because the start/select as well as the Ayaneo/Menu buttons are located near your palms and on two sides of the handle you can easily push these while playing games. These don’t happen nearly as much for me however as the two buttons located on the righthand side of the handheld. These buttons do different things when in different screens or emulators but the thing they are consistent at is closing my current game.I’m not sure if they are overly sensitive because it doesn’t seem like your index finger should bump them and if it is not hard but it happens all the time. Nearly every time I’m playing a game I find myself back on the home screen or opening the in game menu from these two buttons. It doesn’t seem to matter how I hold it that this is still an issue but I have noticed the harder I grip the handheld the more often that it happens.This would normally be enough to get me to stop using a handheld but it hasn’t here.
At the end of the day, like some kinda spell is cast on me I continue to gravitate to the Ayaneo Pocket Micro. Its amazing finish with attention to overall detail of the shell and most of the I/O makes it pleasant to play.It really is an absolute pleasure to play. Oddly I have much more expensive handhelds and cheaper handhelds that do more but nothing pulls off the designer finish like the Ayaneo Pocket Micro. I think I have laid out my point that this handheld isn’t a performance beast or even all that practical. Oddly sometimes in electronics the most expensive products have a very narrow focus that they more than excel at and really suck at everything else. That is exactly what we have here.
My answer to the question, should you buy this handheld? Probably not honestly. When it comes to price to performance it’s an overwhelming failure, there are so many tiny problems that become big problems and the handheld really is only focused around GBA. But if you have money to burn and you love GBA as much as I do then I don’t know what you are waiting for? If the expectations are set correctly this can be the Ultimate Retro Handheld for anyone who loves Game Boy Advance. Sure it plays the other stuff but it does best at what it was designed for.
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