Every year there seems to be a popular SOC used by multiple manufacturers at each tier for Retro Handhelds. There is a lot of RK3326 Budget handhelds and RK3566 sub $100USD Linux handhelds so far in 2025.
It seems that with all the new Snapdragon variants this year we might already be seeing a new mid level contender showing its colors. The Allwinner A527 seems to be replacing the Unisoc T618’s of yesteryear.
So far in the last couple of weeks we have seen 2 more affordable Android Gaming Handhelds with this new SOC. First was the E6 Max, a follow-up to the E6 and E6 Plus with the same body but new DPad. Now we have the Helegaly A527 which uses you guessed it the Allwinner A527 as well (the name gives it away).
We haven’t seen a lot of Comparision testing with this SOC yet, but it is supposed to perform slightly better than the T618 in some cases. This could be a welcome addition if the performance does turn out to be good on non-flagship devices.
If I can get my hands on an E6 Max or Helegaly A527 I’ll run some Comparision tested to update here. So far my orders for the E6 Max have been canceled as they are doing small batch releases of the $80USD (pre-tariff) handheld.
Are you excited to see a new SOC in the handheld gaming space?
GameOn
CellPhish
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