Abxylute E1 Review: OK Fine, It’s Not a Clone. Now What?

Back in March of 2025, I wrote about the Game Console RX6H. Another random RK3326-chipped device to throw on the fire. Back then, I wrote:

Let me take these hits. Take my word when I say this one isn’t worth your money. Even with prices going as low as $25 on sale, I’m not sure if I could recommend the RX6H over more competent options that are already out there. If you’re content with a slightly janky experience and using only the analog sticks for control, then maybe you can find some value in the package on offer here, but I won’t be reaching for this one any time soon.

Keep in mind that I’m the self-labeled “e-waste guy” that’s supposed to find the good in these budget systems, but the only thing I found the RX6H to be was frustrating. The D-pad was terrible, and the whole package felt cheap. Revisiting my review, I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps I’d been too harsh and the RX6H had caught me on an especially punchy day. Five minutes with it down off the shelf, and I stand by the words I wrote in that article.

Now enters the Abxylute E1, ten months later, an RK3566 device that appears outwardly identical to the RX6H, and I’m feeling a little shell-shocked.

Abxylute E1 Specs

Diving Deeper

Opening the two devices side by side revealed that while they are very similar, they are not the same. The E1 is sporting the RK3566 with 2G of RAM as advertised, and the obvious addition of a Mini-HDMI out port makes it easy to tell the two apart.

I was ready to do a write-up about how lazy it was to directly clone a failed Game Console device, but now I’m left feeling even more annoyed, to be quite honest. At least a clone could be attributed to excess chip inventory or something similar. What has happened here is they’ve taken a lesser console, updated some of the internals, and re-released it. The E1 is like the Pro version for a console that nobody wanted in the first place.

Dual Boot Debacle

The confusion doesn’t stop with the hardware side of things. There is nothing on this device or its packaging to indicate that it has anything to do with Abxylute, or that it’s even called the E1. The device I received lists the model number as the HG3509, as does the badge sticker on the back of the handheld.

The dual-boot portion of the device makes little to no sense to me. The advertising for the E1 on Abxylute’s website says that Android unlocks “infinite content – One-tap game downloads”. So the only real function that I can tell is to illegally download ROMs to take advantage of from the Linux side of things. Why this requires Android, I’m not sure.

What I am sure of is that I do not like the instructions that come with the E1. This handheld shipped with an empty 64G SD card. Fair enough. What grinds my gears is that I’m expected to launch into Android, go to a 3rd party unaffiliated link, and illegally download ROMs.

If Abxylute doesn’t want to provide ROMs with its handhelds, then they are well within their rights. Plenty of companies don’t. What I cannot abide, however, is them providing instructions to potentially do something illegal, not via their own servers, but some random 3rd party hosted site. This takes any blame and puts it squarely on the user. At the suggestion of the device maker. This is unacceptable.

These are the steps I’m expected to follow out of the box to play games on the E1:

• Console boots into Linux. Go to the Start Menu and exit to Android
• Once in Android, launch the web browser and navigate to a shortened hyperlink of random origin (China) to download an unverified app
• Once you enter the app (I can’t be bothered), you are presumably able to download ROMs
• You then boot back into Linux to play those ROMs. Note that I said you, not me. The company can get bent if they think I’m following these directions and exposing my home network to whatever this app may have lurking underneath its convenient piracy exterior.

“Who cares?! I’ll just load the SD with my own ROMs!” you might say, but that’s not the simplest thing either. The included SD is broken into two partitions for the two operating systems. I placed ROMs in various directories that I thought were appropriate, with no luck.

The OS could never spot them. I’m sure there’s a simple solution to point to a custom directory of my choosing, but I just couldn’t be bothered to dig any further. The user experience with this device is bordering on hostile, and this is coming from someone who knows their way around these ecosystems. I can’t fathom someone from outside the hobby trying to make heads or tails of this setup.

User Experience and Performance

The E1 isn’t a touchscreen. Navigating around Android is clunky. Community options like GammaOS push Android to handhelds without touch capability, but you can feel how the UI has been tailored for use with a controller. There’s none of that here. Android boots and runs, but I’m not really sure why I need it.

The chances of me using the E1 for web browsing are zero, and Portmaster can already give me the Android games (Balatro) I might want to play on the device. Even then, there are countless other handhelds that I would reach for 10/10 times before the E1.

Performance from the RK3566 is fine. This is a well-worn path at this point. Even if the chip isn’t seen on nearly as many devices as its RK3326 cousin, we know what it can do. Which is to say, a little more than the RK3326. Performance hiccups in consoles like N64, PSP, and Dreamcast are much less frequent, if not entirely remedied. The performance ceiling on the RK3566 will keep you at the same level of console restriction as the RK3326, but the top end will perform a bit better and bring those hard-to-run titles up to playable.

Controls

The control situation on the E1 is pretty much indistinguishable from that of the RX6H. Which is to say, not great. The D-Pad is chonky, uncomfortable, and prone to false inputs. You might fare better using the analog sticks for most games, but a visit to the controls testing app (a valid use for Android!) showed that the sticks are off. The left stick travels further than the right at max input.

Buttons and triggers are fine enough, but nothing to write home about. The L2/R2 triggers are designed to look like they’re analog, but beneath the curve lies just another set of button inputs. Like I’ve said, I was miffed when these were the controls on the RX6H. To push this back at me a year later is only going to increase my distaste for the product.

TL/DR

Even as someone who loves the budget category of this hobby, I cannot recommend the Abxylute E1. This feels like a me-too device released in bad faith to cash in on the current emulation craze. This will be sold to people who don’t know any better for an exorbitant price, who will then get turned off from the hobby entirely because the experience of trying to use the E1 is just so unpleasant.

And that’s before they might receive a letter in the mail from their ISP informing them that by following the packaged instructions on the E1, they have violated their service agreement and committed a crime. Just don’t.