Anbernic RG34XXSP Might’ve Been Quietly Downgraded, Again

It hasn’t been the greatest day for handhelds, after seeing the Steam Deck return, only to be accompanied by an astronomical price hike. On the opposite end of the budget range, it seems that Anbernic is pulling another fast one on those who have recently picked up an RG34XXSP.

According to a post over on the r/Anbernic subreddit, the RG34XXSP has been downgraded to include just 512MB of RAM. This is a far cry from the 2GB of RAM that the clamshell handheld was released with just over a year ago (May 2025).

In the post, u/Pixogen did a teardown on their RG34XXSP, revealing that their handheld uses “Samsung 740 K4E4E324EE EGCF 512 LPDDR3”. This is just a single “stick” of RAM, so it’s not like Anbernic is hiding another 512MB somewhere else in a dual-channel capacity.

What makes this even more frustrating, isn’t just that Anbernic made these hardware changes without giving anyone a warning. But it did so right around the same time that it introduced the new “Metallic Blue” color option, offering a look that’s pretty spot on to the Game Boy Advance SP. Plus, there’s still no mention of these changes on Anbernic’s product page, which currently only says “1GB,” which changed after the RG34XXSP was quietly downgraded to 1GB of RAM.

It doesn’t yet seem as though anyone else has posted in that thread about having similar findings with their own RG34XXSP. However, it’s likely only just a matter of time before that changes.

Those who wondering why this might be such a big deal for retro gaming, it’s really not going to be for the majority of older titles. That sentiment quickly shifts once you get into newer systems, and more importantly, PortMaster games.

At the time, the 2GB RG34XXSP offered a massive upgrade over every other H700-powered Anbernic handheld, simply because those other handhelds topped out with 1GB. Frankly, we probably would’ve never even seen the community make it possible to play GameCube games on the RG34XXSP, even if it wasn’t practical to begin with.

What if you already have an RG34XXSP and are willing to pick up the Metallic Blue just to do a “shell swap”? It’s apparently not as cut and dry as one might’ve thought, with one commenter pointing out:

Swapping the display and relying on different drivers is also likely the culprit behind those who are trying to use muOS on the Metallic Blue RG34XXSP models. We’ve seen a few different messages from those dealing with issues when trying to use a custom firmware. These include things such as seeing a “black screen with menu sounds” on muOS, while neither KNULLI or ROCKNIX are able to boot at all.

Unfortunately, this might be the end of the “good times” with the RG34XXSP if you don’t already have one. You might be able to get lucky and find a retailer that still has some old stock lying around, but at this point, it’s nothing more than a shot in the dark.