The Nintendo Switch-style retro Android handheld to get

The term “gaming handheld” now covers a wide variety of devices, from PC gaming handhelds with laptop-class processing power, to tiny retro game consoles taking design cues from a past era. For example, the OneXPlayer X1 is a gigantic and beastly gaming device that can barely be considered a handheld, while the Miyoo Mini+ is the size of a deck of cards. The Retroid Pocket 4 Pro, by comparison, falls directly in the middle of those two extremes. It isn’t a large and powerful computer like the best PC gaming handhelds, and it isn’t a strictly-retro device powered by a single-board computer. With a MediaTek Dimensity 1100 processor and Android 13, the Pocket 4 Pro is like a mix of a budget Android phone’s internals with the form factor of a Nintendo Switch Lite.

In daily use, this translates to unmatched versatility for the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro, at least as far as retro handhelds are concerned. You can run just about everything, including Android games, emulated sixth-generation console titles, and AAA titles thanks to cloud gaming services. Not every game will work perfectly straight out of the box, but that’s one of the gambles you have to accept with an Android gaming handheld. Overall, most games ran well in my testing, and Retroid’s software gives you the best chance of success. For around $200, this is a fun device that can go with you anywhere. In fact, the tiny and light design made me want to pick up the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro more than my Asus ROG Ally during my review period.

About this review: I tested a Retroid Pocket 4 Pro purchased by XDA. Retroid did not provide input into this review, nor did they see this article’s contents before publishing.

Pricing and availability

The Retroid Pocket 4 and Retroid Pocket 4 Pro are Android gaming handhelds tailored to emulation. The main difference between the two versions are their processors, since the Pocket 4 uses the MediaTek Dimensity 900 and the Pocket 4 Pro uses the MediaTek Dimensity 1100. You can buy the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro directly from Retroid’s website for $199, and it’s also available on Amazon for $249. There are six colorways for the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro available: 16 Bit, Crystal, Ice Blue, Watermelon, 16 Bit US, and Black. I reviewed the 16 Bit colorway of the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro, and it sports the same beige & gray plastic as many older consoles and computers.

Retroid Pocket 4 Pro does not come with any games installed. You must install games through the Google Play Store, sideloading, or using your own legal ROMs. Piracy is illegal, and any references to emulation in this article concern only legal methods.

Specs

Design and ergonomics

Pocket 4 Pro is thin, flat, and resembles the Switch Lite in many ways

You probably haven’t seen a Retroid Pocket 4 Pro out in the wild yet, but I’m willing to bet you’ve seen a Switch Lite before. The design, form factor, and use case for the Pocket 4 Pro and Switch Lite are incredibly similar. They’re both compact and flat gaming handhelds with small screens and built-in controllers. However, the Pocket 4 Pro is actually smaller than the Switch Lite. The Retroid Pocket 4 Pro measures 184.8mm long, while the Switch Lite has a length of 208mm. The device is shorter than the Switch Lite as well, but it’s a bit thicker, measuring 15.8mm thick. Buttons, joysticks, and triggers obviously protrude from the Pocket 4 Pro, so it’ll be a bit uncomfortable in a pocket but will fit inside one.

The Retroid Pocket 4 Pro can go places other gaming devices can’t due to its compact design, and that makes it a joy to use on the go.

There are some downsides to the design which impact its ergonomics. Since the back of the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro is mostly flat, it won’t feel as nice as something like an Xbox Wireless Controller or a PlayStation DualSense controller. However, it’s very similar to flat mobile gaming controllers like the GameSir X2s. You can also buy a grip set separately to make the Pocket 4 Pro feel more like modern console controllers, if you’re so inclined.

The Retroid Pocket 4 Pro can go places other gaming devices can’t due to its compact design, and that makes it a joy to use on the go. I can live with the somewhat subpar ergonomics for this reason. However, the button and joystick layout will be harder to get used to. Unlike most new controllers, both joysticks are positioned below the directional pad and the ABXY buttons, and Retroid uses a Nintendo-style layout for the latter.

There isn’t a right or wrong way to create a layout for something like the Pocket 4 Pro. For some games, it’ll work great. For others, not so much. I would’ve preferred the right directional pad above the ABXY buttons and more of an Xbox-style layout, but to each their own. You can always remap the buttons or even move the physical buttons entirely (albeit in a bit of a hacky way) if you prefer.

Display

It’s just fine, with fairly large bezels and meager specs

The display on the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro isn’t great by any means, but I found that it is usually not the limiting factor which causes games to look unseemly. If you’re playing retro games, those titles will usually have resolutions worse than the 750×1334 resolution supported on the Pocket 4 Pro’s screen regardless. Even in the event that a retro title does have resolution that nears, matches, or beats that of the Pocket 4 Pro, display scaling issues might make the graphics look wonky anyway. Really, I’m not sure the display is something you should even worry about when considering the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro, because if great graphics are a priority, you won’t find them in this entire category of retro handhelds. Upgrading to a PC gaming handheld would be a better way to get a high-quality screen in the handheld form factor.

When playing more recent titles, such as Android games or via cloud, the screen’s small size becomes a problem. It’s only a 4.7-inch panel, which is considerably smaller than the 5.5-inch screen on the Nintendo Switch Lite. This is true despite the fact that the Switch Lite is only slightly bigger than the Pocket 4 Pro overall. Part of the reason for this is the size of the bezels on the Pocket 4 Pro display, which are fairly large. The tiny screen can make small text and other details tricky to see, especially in modern games.

Hardware

There’s just enough to comfortably play casual and retro games

Taking a look at the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro’s hardware, you get quite a lot for $200. This device is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 1100 chipset, which is enough to handle games from the sixth generation of consoles like the GameCube and PlayStation 2. There’s a small fan and vents on the back of the handheld to help keep it cool, and you can overclock it for better performance (and louder fan noises). Retroid made some great choices on the controller side of things as well, including analog triggers and Hall effect joysticks. As a result, the Pocket 4 Pro probably won’t experience stick drift after extended use.

To gauge how the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro compares to recent smartphones in performance, I ran a few synthetic benchmarks. The first, Geekbench, measures CPU performance. Additionally, I ran the 3DMark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test, which is a 20-minute-long test that measures how devices handle sustained loads. As a reference, I included the results here from our Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 testing for comparison, since this powers some of the newest Android phones.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 inside the Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro decidedly handled the MediaTek Dimensity 1100 chip inside the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro, but that wasn’t unexpected. The Pocket 4 Pro still held its own in the tests, averaging about 10 frames per second in the Wildlife Extreme Stress Test. That sounds bad, until you realize that the Wildlife Extreme Stress Test is much more demanding than anything you’ll run on your Pocket 4 Pro. The thing that really surprised me here was the stability of the MediaTek Dimensity 1100 during sustained loads. There were virtually zero statistically significant changes in performance across all 20 loops of the stress test, with a final stability score of 99.5%. For comparison, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s stability score was only 59.7%.

What does this mean for gaming? Essentially, this tells us that the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro will run the same whether you’re gaming for a few minutes or for hours. This makes testing whether emulated games work on the Pocket 4 Pro a lot easier, because just a few minutes of game play should give you an idea of how the title runs on this Android handheld, as you shouldn’t experience any surprises while using the Pocket 4 Pro during longer sessions.

Performance

Retro game emulation generally works well, but be prepared to tinker

The benchmarks are what they are, but it’s the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro’s everyday gaming performance that really matters. During my time testing the Pocket 4 Pro, I found that controller incompatibility issues were a more common problem than performance limitations. When a game doesn’t have the right controls, you can usually fix this by changing the button mapping presets or by using screen mapping. For those unfamiliar, the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro includes screen mapping software that allows you to map on-screen controls to the device’s hardware control. Screen mapping is far from perfect, but it is usable. If you want to play emulated games on the Pocket 4 Pro, be ready to dive into settings menus, screen mapping options, and more customizations to make the gaming experience work properly.

I played mostly PlayStation 2, Wii, and Game Cube games on the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro, and the handheld performed great with most of the titles I tested.

I played mostly PlayStation 2, Wii, and Game Cube games on the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro, and the handheld performed great with most of the titles I tested. The real advantage to the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro is that it runs Android, because you get access to all of the Android emulation tools that already exist. In fact, during the initial setup process for the Pocket 4 Pro, there is a custom setup screen that prompts you to install a few major emulators with just a tap. I can’t say that every game will work with the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro, but I can say that I was impressed with how the device handled the games I tried. It’s also worth noting that the Retroid community on Reddit has an exhaustive list of how emulated games run on the Pocket 4 Pro, so you should check that out before you buy one.

Pocket 4 Pro has full access to the Google Play Store — but only Android 13

Since the Pocket 4 Pro runs Android, you also get access to everything on the Google Play Store. The unfortunate part is that the handheld is limited to Android 13, at least for now. That shouldn’t be a problem for most people, but it does rule out using the Grand Theft Auto trilogy through Netflix, which might matter to some buyers. Android games can also be picky when it comes to controllers. For example, while the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro had the performance chops to run Call of Duty Mobile, the app only accepts certain Bluetooth controllers. I had to use screen mapping instead, and to be frank, the experience wasn’t good. I can confidently say that the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro will be able to run most Play Store games at playable frame rates though, and that’s a huge win for the device.

Cloud gaming is surprisingly good on this kind of Android handheld

I’m slowly becoming a cloud gaming fanatic, and using services like Xbox Cloud Gaming and GeForce Now on the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro was an incredibly awesome experience. Games like Fortnite, which probably wouldn’t run well on the Pocket 4 Pro’s on-device hardware, perform excellently with Xbox Cloud Gaming. There was little latency in my testing, and the Pocket 4 Pro’s support for Wi-Fi 6 might be the reason why. As I mentioned previously, the main limiting factor here is the screen. Console and PC games aren’t designed to run on a screen less than five inches in size, so things can be hard to see.

I’m slowly becoming a cloud gaming fanatic, and using services like Xbox Cloud Gaming and GeForce Now on the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro was an incredibly awesome experience.

Still, it’s really cool that a $200 device this small can run AAA titles via cloud. It’s true that the Pocket 4 Pro can’t run cloud gaming any better than a modern smartphone can, but the integrated controller has a big impact on the experience. Plus, I love that the Pocket 4 Pro can last for multiple hours on a single charge, as long as you don’t adjust the performance settings.

Should you buy the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro?

You should buy the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro if:

• You want a small, easy-to-use Android handheld
• You enjoy playing retro games using emulators
• You want a pocketable device with the Switch Lite form factor and the flexibility of Android OS

You should NOT buy the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro if:

• You don’t want to tinker with settings, controls, or otherwise
• You only want to play Nintendo Switch games
• You’d rather invest in a PC gaming handheld with stronger features

The Retroid Pocket 4 Pro is for the kind of person who loves tinkering with old games and enjoys the handheld form factor. To me, what makes the Pocket 4 Pro great is that it can be used for more than just retro game emulation. Since the handheld runs Android, has a decent processor, and offers a few great connectivity options, you can use it to play both modern mobile gaming titles and even more demanding ones with cloud gaming, in addition to everything you get with emulation on Android.

As someone who has always loved the Nintendo Switch Lite form factor but didn’t like being limited to Nintendo games, the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro is incredibly appealing. However, not everyone will find the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro worthwhile, since their smartphones are likely to provide similar functionality. At $200, the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro is worth a look for people who want a compact device with a built-in controller for mobile gaming. Just be prepared to tinker and customize the Pocket 4 Pro to meet your specific gaming needs.