AISLPC RG52 Mini Review: Budget Brawn

AISLPC is making something of a name for itself in the budget emulation category. What started out as a product line of R36 clones is slowly making an individual identity for itself. Soccer theme, anyone? Devices like the R36MAX, R36T, and R36T MAX take what already existed and do enough with external design elements to make themselves stand out from the pack.

The release of the RG52 Mini marks something of a growth spurt for the manufacturer. No longer content to just copy their classmates’ homework in different handwriting, the AISLPC team looks to make their own imprint on the budget handheld space with this new offering.

RG52 Mini Specs

The RG52 Mini is currently available in 3 color choices. The Grey and Orange combo (seen here), and black or green variants. All of the designs have a similar retro-future-inspired molded shell.

Performance

The Rockchip RK3562 takes everything that you knew and loved about the RK3266 and just gives it that extra little boost to take things into the next performance plane.

Systems like the eternal R36S run the RK3266 to great success, and have fashioned an entire industry out of extracting performance from this noble little chipset. Where the RK3266 tops out at some DC, PSP, and N64, the RK3562 can handle the libraries in full.

I’m not going to fully speculate on all the optimizations and shortcuts that may be happening under the hood of the stock OS setup, but suffice to say, I could comfortably play the PSP library at a 2x resolution. Dreamcast and N64 were both fully playable with everything I threw their way, including shaders.

Design and Ergonomics

The molded plastic shell of the RG52 Mini is decidedly OK. The handheld has a decent overall weight to it, which helps it feel a bit sturdier than the shell might otherwise suggest. All the little design flourishes around the device are fine, but I’d be happy to never see another etched screen bezel for the rest of my days. I can’t help but look at the G52 Mini’s bezels and think of the garish additions on the old Boyhom M17. This isn’t something you want for your new handheld in 2026.

Overall, though, the RG52 Mini feels great in my hands. Slight curvature on the rear of the device provides a comfortable grip for longer sessions, and some texturing keeps my palms from wandering while in the middle of an intense firefight.

Ghost Fan

The back of the RG52 Mini sports an exhaust port that would appear to be a fan housing. Removal of this piece of the shell shows (to no real surprise) that there is no fan present. While I’m sure the vent does offer heat dissipation for the handheld’s internals, the shell design is doing a cheeky bit of false advertising here.

Fan-controlled cooling is seen as a more premium feature on handhelds, so it makes sense to add the appearance of it in a budget device. I find moves like this amusing. Manufacturers are trying to get one over on an uninformed consumer.

The lack of a fan doesn’t hurt anything, as it isn’t really necessary on the device, but I can understand why some users could feel deceived. For me, it’s all part of the back-and-forth game with manufacturers to capture the eyes of the public. It keeps things fun to write about, if nothing else, and I never noticed the RG52 Mini getting noticeably warm during my testing. Just a heads up, if you saw pictures and got excited about active cooling.

I had a heck of a time trying to pry the seams of the RG52 Mini’s shell apart to examine the internals. I removed every screw I could find, but couldn’t get the shell to come apart with any of my pry tools. To the point where I wonder if I wasn’t missing something. I’m sure someone will get it open, but I decided it wasn’t worth pushing further when it was starting to feel like I might crack the shell.

Controls

Controls on any device can make or break the experience, but perhaps nowhere is that more relevant than in the budget sector. Decent control feel can elevate a lesser-powered device, while poor implementation can make an otherwise decent handheld feel useless. It’s important, and the RG52 Mini mostly delivers.

D-Pad and Face Buttons

I’m happy to report that I generally have no complaints with controls package on the RG52 Mini. The D-pad is about as bog-standard as they come, and that’s not a bad thing. The pad pivots around a central point, with each of the 8 directional inputs still feeling unique.

Face buttons are in the skittle-dome style, and while I might have liked to see them be just a hair larger for my hands, I think that they’re doing a solid job here. The buttons are entirely pleasant and comfortable to use.

Triggers

Advertising for the RG52 Mini claims the R2/L2 triggers on the rear of the device are Hall effect linear triggers. I have no reason to doubt this claim, but it does strike me as a little strange to choose to point out that you used Hall effect triggers, but not analog sticks. In any case, the triggers feel great, have a decent amount of play, and serve the device well for the games it plays. Works for me.

The analog sticks here are nothing special, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. These are the standard Switch-style sticks that we’ve come to know over the years in the emulation space. They do their job well in my testing, but it’s difficult to say now whether drift will become an issue down the line.

Start/Select: That’s Not Where Those Go

My only real gripes with the RG52 Mini’s controls come from the Start/Select and Back/Home buttons. The design team chose to place the Back and Home buttons up top, where my brain has been trained for decades to reach for Start and Select in this type of design. This may not sound like a big deal, but when my thumb instinctively hits the Back button when I am reaching for Start, it can create problems.

You see, pressing the back button is a one-press trip out of the game you’re playing and back to Emu-Elec. If you haven’t saved your game in some way, this could be enough to make you want to throw the console down and walk away.

A shame, really.

All four of these orange function buttons feel cheap and loose in their housing. It’s a negative mark on an otherwise nicely designed handheld. I’m getting better at the whole accidental input thing, but I have to check myself before reaching to press Start.

Users can, of course, choose to just reassign the function of these buttons from within the OS, but it’s a shame that this oversight made it to the final product as the default layout.

OS and Presentation

Something must have spooked AISLPC when putting together the ROMs package for these devices, because the first thing a user might notice when booting up the system is a total lack of anything from Nintendo, at least on the 64G card that came packed with my console.

The Big N’s absence isn’t too curious given that the company’s recent enthusiasm for going after folks in the emulation world, but this might be the first time I can recall all of the company’s systems being absent. Whether it be NES, Game Boy, or N64, they aren’t here. Not just first-party titles either. The only thing you’ll find under NES is generic bootleg Famiclone games. The console is more than capable of playing the real titles, of course, just don’t expect a loaded package out of the gate.

If the lack of most Nintendo systems was unusual, the inclusion of DS games that are listed under the stock OS as Sega Naomi Arcade titles seems more like a lazy oversight. The developers clearly went out of their way to avoid Nintendo systems, while accidentally (?) including Mario Kart and Pokémon DS games under a Sega Arcade console. Not a deal breaker as the issue is easily fixed in menus, but you hate to see sloppy packages like this.

Anyone who has used any of the recent AISLPC handhelds, like the R36T MAX, will feel right at home with the stock OS on the RG52 Mini. This is a custom EmuELEC ROM with some added support links for users who may not be entirely familiar with the emulation landscape and how this hobby works.

As enthusiasts, I think it’s important to recognize that sometimes we’re a little too close to the hobby, and gestures like this from manufacturers can go a long way to bring new fans into the fold, rather than scaring them off by making them feel overwhelmed with the scope of the hobby.

It’s still a little too early to expect a custom OS from the community, but I imagine some sort of compatibility will pop up as more users get their hands on the device. For now, the stock OS offering is solid, if imperfect. The lack of included ROMs on a system like the N64 seems to indicate a lack of testing as well. I had to play with core settings in Retroarch a couple of times in order to get titles to display correctly. This is a small annoyance for me, but it could certainly be a head-scratcher for a newcomer to try to load N64 games and expect them to work from the jump.

AISLPC RG52 Mini: Verdict

The AISLPC RG52 Mini is a solid entry in the budget handheld space. The Black/64GB model is currently priced at $109.99 on the AISLPC website. I think this price point is fair, but a touch high. I’d be a buyer on the RG52 Mini somewhere in the range of $80. There are notable performance increases over other devices in the category. Additional functionality in PSP and Dreamcast makes the RG52 Mini worth consideration, but with competition like the Mangmi Air X out there, the decision is going to have to come down to price.

If you can snag a deal on one, there’s plenty of value to be had with the RG52 Mini. The use of another Rockchip on the scene keeps things interesting, especially for a beleaguered reviewer tired of writing about the RK3266, so thanks to AISLPC for that. The next wave of budget performance is here, and if you’ve been looking for a way to get more out of your PSP library, this system certainly stands as a viable contender. Just make sure to pick it up on sale.

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