Anbernic RG Vita Pro First Impressions

The RG Vita released last month as something of a head-scratcher. As Jim pointed out in his impressions article, the Anerbnic “RG Vita is a question mark in a (PS) Vita costume“. The T618 handheld looks the part, but PS Vita emulation is still in its infancy (to put it mildly), and even if it weren’t, this aging chipset would struggle with the task.

Enter the RG Vita Pro, which Anbernic describes as “more stylish and technologically advanced”. Technically, this was an official description of the box the Pro comes in, but I was too amused by the fact that they’d described a box as looking technologically advanced, too, not to include the quote.

And that comparison of the two boxes pretty much covers how I feel about the RG Vita Pro. It’s a slightly sleeker and more advanced version of what came before. Inspired hardware design that never quite matches up to the magic of the original Sony handheld.

Anbernic RG Vita vs Vita Pro Specs

Controls

If you read Ban’s review of the RG Vita, then the Pro isn’t going to contain any real surprises in the controls department. This is more or less the exact same experience as last month’s handheld.

If you’d been disappointed in the lack of analog triggers on the RG Vita, the Pro isn’t going to win you over. The same clicky button style triggers are here on the new offering as well. Calling something a Pro model in 2026 without analog triggers feels like a bit of a misnomer. If my AISLPC RG52 Mini can manage to include hall effect triggers, I think Anbernic should be able to manage the luxury in their Pro model.

Face buttons are the same, if slightly prettier this time around, with what Anbernic describes as “colorful silkscreen printing”. The multi-color buttons against the all-white handheld shell aren’t my favorite aesthetically, but they’re just as serviceable as what came before.

Display

As Jim noted, the over-sharpening effect on the RG Vita took an unremarkable, but serviceable display, and turned it into something of a halo-ed, smoothed-over mess. I ranked it as my least favorite in a comparison of three recent PSP contenders. I don’t see those issues much in my testing of the Pro so far, but I will still need time to explore the display.

When sat side by side with the RG Vita, the Vita Pro has a slightly more matte display finish than its predecessor. The Vita Pro is sporting another 5.5-inch IPS INCELL display (technically it’s 5.46″ on the base RG Vita), but bumps the native resolution up to 1920×1080 over the 1280×720 found on the original RG Vita.

Presentation and Performance

The Anbernic RG Vita Pro ships as a dual-OS handheld, running both Linux and Android. The handheld defaults to Linux, but holding down the Anbernic button during power-on will boot into a standard Android launcher.

The default Linux experience on the RG Vita Pro is functional, but that’s about as much of a compliment as I can really muster. It is a no-frills bare-bones experience, and while we’ve gone from scratching the surface of PS2 and Gamecube compatibility on the RG Vita, to ~2x native with the Vita Pro, not much has been done in the way of optimizations out of the box. The games included with my device are a sloppily thrown together collection of standard fare and random inclusions; only organized by random 004, 005 type naming conventions.

Moving over to the Android side of things, it’s the standard Anbernic default, every jank-dedicated emulator under the sun experience. I’d imagine some app cleanup and a Daijisho install may be in my future.

I was pleased to see that Vita3K and a handful of ROMs were included with the package. With Vita emulation still in its relative infancy on Android, I was impressed that they decided to go for it and include some software from the device’s namesake. Included games aren’t the heaviest, but Gravity Rush seemed to run quite well in my testing, and the gyroscope controls performed as they should out of the gate. Kudos.

Feel

The RG Vita Pro has a decent weight to it at 277 grams, but it can’t escape the slightly cheap and hollow feeling that came with its predecessor. It’s difficult to point to anything exact, but it just lacks that final level of polish to feel like a premium device.

I owned a Vita back when it first came out, and while it was always going to be a bit of a niche console, there was no doubting its hardware prowess and premium feel. Everything about it felt like a flagship product. The RG Vita Pro just doesn’t evoke the same feelings.

While I can’t go back and get my old Vita for a direct comparison, I will say that I recall my fingers resting on the console as intended. The pads on the RG Vita Pro sit a little too far towards the edges for my fingers to rest comfortably, but they’re fine enough stretching across the rear of the device; in a lot of ways, that sums up the entire RG Vita Pro experience. It’s a fine approximation, but different than what you may have been led to believe going in.

TL/DR

The RG Vita Pro, like the RG Vita before it, was never going to be anything other than a strange release. This isn’t a bad handheld! The RG Vita Pro a capable device. It’s just the inescapable fact that they chose to name it and style it after one of the most iconic handheld consoles of all time. When PS Vita emulation tech isn’t quite there yet to step up to meet the challenge, it’s hard to think anything other than we’re beginning to run out of hardware ideas in a very crowded space.

Anbernic still wants to release a new SKU every month, and there just aren’t that many avenues left to explore. Probably why they look to be getting weird with it for their next release (which I’m all for, BTW). I’m excited to explore more of what this RK3576 chip can do, but if you’re hoping the Pro would bring with it a magical ability to perfectly reproduce your old PS Vita favorites, don’t get too excited just yet.

I’ve had the Anbernic PS Vita Pro in my possession for just under 24 hours. This article was only meant to convey my first impressions of the device. Stay tuned in the coming weeks for our full deep dive review.