It’s been a little over two weeks since the original announcement of the Anbernic RG 55G1. Speculation quickly rose alongside hype that Anbernic would finally be joining the others in terms of using a Qualcomm chip for their handheld thanks to the G1 naming scheme. Not long after that initial announcement, someone made the mistake of running a Geekbench test on their unit revealing to the world a hint towards not only the specs of the RG 55G1, but also performance numbers, and a less than ideal amount of ram at just 4gb give or take.
Fast fowards to now, and Anbernic has shown off the RG 55G1 in yet another gameplay showcase video, and this time we should hopefully have a bit more of an idea of what we could be looking at in terms of performance. And admittedly, it really isn’t looking too bad. Though, as always, be sure to temper your expectations as Anbernic as well as other companies will usually cherry pick some of the better games to make their device look better in these showcase videos.
Right off the bat we get a glimpse of the RG 55G1’s higher end potential with some gameplay of Portal 2 running through GameNative. The one thing I really take note of in this one is their mention of Turnip drivers. This is something that’s usually been relegated to the higher end Snapdragon chips in handhelds, but recently we learned that Turnip drivers were in the works for the Snapdragon G1 Gen 2, a chip found in the Retroid Pocket Classic. And potentially, the RG G1 as well. This one little tidbit makes me excited, and that travels through to Turnip drivers in GameNative, as well as during their showcase of Vita3K emulation.
Outside of showcases for PS2, 3DS, and Wii, the other thing worth noting in my eyes is that they’re showcasing anything from 4x to 6x resolution scaling for PSP. Considering Anbernic just recently released the RG Vita and Vita Pro, two handhelds that should have taken over as the PSP replacements, it’s possible that this dpad top handheld will do even better in that regard, which to me just adds to the conversation on just how much the RG 55G1 will cost.
The very last thing to note may be pure speculation, but is something that I have a decent bit of hope for, and that’s the screen. During the gameplay of Etrian Odyssey III HD, the screen on the RG 55G1 turns off as the game transitions screens, and I don’t know about you, but that’s about as dark of a screen as I think you can get. Making me put on my hype goggles and hope for OLED, rather than just assume they’ve chosen to edit out the dark grays of a traditional LCD panel. But until Anbernic shares the true specifications, this is all we have to go off of.
As always, take these showcase videos with a grain of salt. Anbernic, AYN, Ayaneo and more are all going to do their best to show you their handhelds in the best light. But even if this is Anbernic’s best of the best, I think there’s still going to be plenty of power in here for a lot of people, me included. The question though still comes down to price and pure performance. Is this going to be an RG Vita killer? A Retroid Pocket 4 Pro replacement? Or is it going to wind up being overpriced and competing with the complete wrong set of handhelds. Only time; and Anbernic can tell.
