Powkiddy V10: Quality 2X Resolution GBA Gaming on a Budget

Powkiddy took a wildly different approach to GBA gaming with the release of the V10. The Powkiddy V10 is a Retro Handheld that Emulates GBA at double the resolution. But the form factor is what has me confused.

Checkout the Video Review here!!

Not only did they design a handheld that looks nothing like a GBA while advertising GBA but they skipped improving on their already popular V90 GBA SP clamshell. When I asked the question: ‘Is Powkiddy secretly making a Clamshell Handheld V90 successor??’ about 2 months ago I was defiantly not expecting the V10. Sticking with the GBA theme Powkiddy could also have tapped into improvements in their A30. The A30 would have kept them in a similar form factor while taking advantage of the popular RK3326 found in the V10.

…the sequence is Select plus up/down. This seems simple enough until it doesn’t work. Going back to the directions you find that the “-“ key is L3/Select. That’s right there is a second select button. The random L3 button is also a secondary select key. Another Spoiler… holding L3/Select also doesn’t change the volume. But R3 or “+” and right/left does change the volume. They had 2 opportunities to get this right and still missed. Once you get the volume to change it is immediately evident that’s too quiet to hear under 65% vol which is surprising with the well centered front firing speaker. One you do get to a point where you can hear the music in your game it sounds clean and in some cases even a little punchy.

I’m still trying to figure out which handhelds ArkOS build was used but I can only hope to assume this has everything to do with the wonky button mapping. I’m almost positive it’s the Anbernic 353V build but regardless it’s likely a handheld with included joysticks. That aside I love ArkOS so I’m happy to see it being used here.

We can only hope the ArkOS devs have some time to make an official build for the V10. This wouldn’t be the first time Powkiddy nudged their way into an unofficial firmware then point the finger at an unknowing developer for complaints people have around it (I’m only assuming that’s happening here). There was likely panic after Powkiddy shipped the RGB10Max3 with JelOS to have the dev team drop support for the handhelds while they were in the mail. Luckily ROCKNix broke off and upheld the RGB10Max3’s firmware (I’m testing GammaOS on the RGB10Max3 now so stay tuned for that breakdown).

Ok so with all that out of the way the Powkiddy V10 is as expected, a great handheld for Game Boy Advance. The default resolution is 2x due to the 480×320 display. The display on the GBA is 240×160. With the RK3326 on board the device will allow for additional resolution tweaks if you so chose. Lucky for us GBA isn’t the only system that plays on this 353V mini handheld.

Ok quick admission here; I had read the advertising for a couple weeks and not until writing this did I realize instead of it saying “twice resolution” it instead is written “GBA game display (original pixels 240*160) runs twice as fast”. This pixel speed is outta control.

I’ve had good luck with emulating all the classics Atari, Mame, NES, SNES, Genesis, Wonderswan, PS1, etc. Some look better than others with either letter boxing or stretching to fit the 3.5” OCA display but they play with little to no resistance. For some reason in testing I found myself going back time and time again to play any of the 7 included PS1 games. It’s no surprise they work well as at this point you can emulate PS1 with the power provided by a potato.

I’ve found the hand feel rather comfortable. It has a unique design as a more squarish handheld but they got the triggers molded in correctly for the most part. I’m sure it’s the way I hold a handheld but I do find myself accidentally hitting L1 from time to time. It’s a bit annoying but not a deal breaker (except when it tries to load my save state because L1 is the assigned hotkey for load in Retroarch by default). In comparison to past Powkiddy handhelds the triggers have less but not too light travel making them more useful. Thankfully we haven’t seen hair triggers again since the Anbernic RG405V as that handheld was perfect except the triggers made it mostly unplayable. The other great thing about the triggers….they barely rattle. I know I didn’t expect that either. I thought they would sound like pretty much most Powkiddy handhelds. Finally more precise tolerances which help make it feel more premium.

Powkiddy even supplied a removable battery door to give us access to the 3000mAh battery. There are 2 things I immediately noticed when removing the battery door. First they probably could have doubled the battery size, but that also would have raised the price so I get it. Second and very important is a separation between the battery and the SOC. Typically on a $40 handheld the battery would be used as the heat shield for the SOC. The fact that Powkiddy took the time and spent the money to mold a proper battery tray makes me think someone was actually paying attention to detail. Then I turn the handheld over and am immediately reminded that there is 2 selects that don’t select along with L3/R3 but no volume buttons.

As per typical the first few ROMs on each system are scraped but images are mostly missing for the rest of the sets. This is either do to naming convention, spelling or time. It takes a long time to scrape 64gb of ROMs along with space for all those images to be stored. If we set that aside however scraper is present due to the V10 running ArkOS. Setup a screen scrapper account and take a nap while Screen Scrapper tries to fill in the gaps. That is if you have a WiFi card that runs through the OTG port.

See this doesn’t have WiFi in 2024. I’m going to give them some credit here though. Even though I don’t by default have access to beloved RetroAchievements I oddly had a WiFi dongle I needed to also do testing on so it was a win…at least for now. If this had WiFi, a bigger battery and an RK3566 SOC the price would be $55-60 immediately falling out of the Budget Gem category.

As much as I hate the corners they cut they mostly cut the corners that could be trimmed. I won’t however get over the no volume L3/R3 w/out joystick debacle. Also it would be nice to have a working search function but at least we can search by letter in each system. Of course that’s if the ROMs aren’t numbered (good luck with Sega anything).

The overall experience is pretty good aside from the for mentioned. Buttons are sized for mortal thumbs with good conductive rubber membranes, the DPad is one of the better as of recent from Powkiddy (I’m still not sure why when they make a good DPad they never make that DPad again), the triggers are solid and plastics feel premium along with the build quality. Load from off is snappy along with the loading of systems and it appears to have a true sleep mode. Emulation works like every other RK3326 handheld I’ve tested. The handheld as stated earlier is comfortable to hold.

I think if you can overlook the couple discrepancies listed you will find some great value here. This is coming in priced under their top competitors for $20-$30 less than a single double A game on any current generation console. With its ability to emulate thousands of Retro Games at ease and minimum setup I would be comfortable handing this to a friend new to emulation and be confident they would have a blast (after I go through and remap a couple buttons). If you are interested in getting the Powkiddy V10 you can get one directly from Powkiddy Here!

We’ve discussed it before but GBA is one of my favorite systems to emulate. This is and will continue to be one of the very few handhelds I grab to get my Mario vs Donkey Kong on.

Have you tried out the Powkiddy V10?

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