This is for you, Retroid enjoyers

by Joe

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate! This device took our writing team by storm and has been a part of my daily use since it was delivered to me a month ago. Spoiler alert: It’s easily my handheld of the year (you can check out our full thoughts here, in our official review).

That being said, I have spent a month setting this thing up and making it my own, and with that came hours of trial and error I want to save you, the reader. With that, here are some Retroid Pocket 5 tips and tricks. (To go along with our official setup guide HERE). This is part 1 of 2 so stay tuned and you’ll see even more.

Exterior Mods

Ergonomics

Let’s get to the chase, this console isn’t that comfortable to hold. In the future, we might see a plethora of console scratching 3D printed abominations from Etsy that will fix this, but until then I’d recommend just buying some grip stickers. With the way I grip the device, I used this brand and applied it in the places shown in the picture.

This won’t change how the device fits in your hands, but less resistance can prevent your hand from cramping. Additionally, extra bumpers can prevent your glazed nugget from falling off the table and shattering on the unforgiving floor.

Button Noise

A bit more invasive, but worth it if you can handle console mutilation. RH alumni Aish of Aish Talks Tech invented a mod that significantly reduces button noise by shaving off some of the rubber membrane and applying some tape under the shoulder buttons. He shows it on the RP Mini, but it’s the same process. I didn’t do it on mine because I’m a *checks dictionary* coward. You can find this bold and brash video here.

Developer Mode

You’ll want this. It opens up the device to a bunch of options That you’ll want to use for a few of the following tweaks. Just go to Settings, scroll down to About Handheld Console, and tap “Build Number” seven (7) times until you have “Become a developer”. Developer options are located in the System Settings. Here are a few tweaks you can do in developer mode:

OEM Unlocking

This option opens the bootloader for your RP5. This is used when rooting your device, which will obliterate your 1 year warranty from Retroid (I guess). Unlocking the bootloader is fine to do, but might interfere with web based apps like Netflix and Remote Streaming. I would leave it off unless you’re attempting to root.

Animation Scale

This set of tweaks will affect the time it takes for Android UI items to complete a transition animation. While seemingly pointless, turning these off actually saves your battery a little.

Override Force-Dark

This setting will force every applications UI to have a dark mode on. Notably, this will force the floating icon into dark mode so you aren’t blasted with a blinding white light when gaming in the dark.

Force 4x MSAA

For OpenGl content, this will apply a 4x anti-aliasing filter as a post process. While I recommend using Vulkan when you can, this might be nice if you prefer to stick to the less chaotic OpenGl graphics driver.

There are many more options to select from developer options, but there to me are the safe standouts

Display Tweaking!

If you are like me and are an absolute screen junkie with color accuracy and brightness in mind, this is the section for you. I was very critical of the RP Mini’s lack of real display tweaking and the overall over-saturated color palette. Hopefully, we all remember Jersey Shore Kirby..this time around we have options! We have temperature adjustments! We have… a slight oversaturation still… but it’s much better! There are a few other options you’ll want to use as well. All of these tweaks are under Settings and Display.

• Screen timeout: This affects the time it takes for your screen to go dark.
• Dark theme: Dark theme.

Colors

Here you get 3 options: Intelligent Environment Adaptation, Screen Enhancement, and Standard. I would set it to Intelligent Environment Adaptation, set the color to Cool, and call it a day.

The display itself is slightly redshifted on Standard and Screen Enhancement blows the color up and deep fried your image (yikes).

Graphic Drivers (Made Easy)

Doing alright Link?

Without going into too much of a deep dive to save my word count, graphics drivers are what the emulators use to translate raw graphical data from the emulator to your device. We generally have three standard ones for most emulators: OpenGL (universal and older standard), Vulkan (Newer but more efficient standard), and “Software” (Raw data without external graphics drivers). For 3D games, these are crucial in getting the most out of your graphical fidelity as well as accuracy and performance.

OpenGL, being the oldest, has the broadest coverage compatibility wise while it’s wild younger cousin Vulkan boasts better performance and response rates in lieu of less compatibility (Depending on your version). The Retroid Pocket 5 by system default runs OpenGL 3 and Vulkan 0.3, which is a pretty premature version of Vulkan.

My suggestion for your emulators is to enable Vulkan as a catch all, and then go to OpenGL in times where compatibility sucks. Be sure to enable Backend Multithreading where possible for a significant performance boost (Usually in Advanced settings ie: Dolphin and Aether).

Mesa Turnip Drivers

You may have heard of these in videos and briefly in our RP5 setup guide, but have no idea how to actually implement them. Basically, these drivers bring up your system drivers to more current versions. There’s infinitely more nuance to this, but that’s all you really need to know. These don’t work miracles since you are still bottlenecked by your system, but you will generally notice more accurate emulation and, in some cases, better performance.

In my trial and error, the best Turnip driver you can use on the RP5/Mini is the v24.3.0 Revision 9v2. This driver will bring the Vulkan version up to 1.3.296 and it should iron out any rendering issues brought by stock Vulkan. This driver can also negatively impact performance in some games (Ie, Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker), so just switch those to OpenGL and you’re golden. In Dolphin, you go to Graphics, Graphics drivers, and select the whole ZIP file from the Github link. That’s it.

Docked Mode

Docking to a TV can be surprisingly annoying. It’s not hard to do, and if you go to Settings, Handheld Settings, Connect to TV, and turn on everything, you’ll be good to go for 50% of the process. What gets annoying is the actual HDMI-out process and proper controller configurations. So yeah, I’ll save you time on those.

HDMI-out

The easy answer is to buy Retroid’s dock from the official website, plug it in, and delete this article from your browsing history. Alas…any alternative can vary wildly. For whatever reason, you can’t set the resolution of the console in docked mode, leaving you at the mercy to the maximum your situation can handle. Most HDMI-out solutions will net you a max of 4K/30Hz.

Why? Magic I guess.

My winning solution was to use a 4K/60fps HDMI cable in tandem with my Skull and Co Switch Dock. This gets a maximum output of 4K/60fps, which is ideal since 30fps will not only limit your frame rate, but also add a ton of input lag. Be sure to update the firmware on the dock itself for maximum compatibility when possible. This solution also means you can use the same dock as your Switch. Good job.

Controller

This is strangly nuanced. You’ll basically want a controller that just… works. So let me tell you what doesn’t work:

• 2.4GHz dongles don’t work well. The latency is irrationally large and unplayable.
• Switch Pro controllers don’t work for every application on android Just use something with X or D input. That also means the Switch 8BitDo Ultimate Controller is an easy write off.

What does work is…anything else. I use my extra DualSense (PS5) controller with Bluetooth and my GuliKit King Kong 3 Max after the 1.1 latency update (hooray!). There’s almost no latency on either now and it just works. You can also plug in a controller directly with the Skull and Co dock.

Okay, that’s it. Get lost.

Buy the Retroid Pocket 5

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