Here's my review of this wonderful little gaming machine.
Ok, so Iāve carried this little device with me for a couple of months at this point and itās been a great experience. The hardware is fantastic, and while the stock firmware is not the best, OnionOS completely turns the user experience into something unmatched by the rest.
In case you donāt know, the Miyoo Mini Plus is a retro handheld emulation device running Linux under the hood, which is able to run Retroarch and handle all kinds of games for multiple systems from Atari to the Play Station, and even the Nintendo DS.
Miyoo Mini Plus playing Advance Wars
Miyoo has managed to grow a big community during the last couple years, thanks to the success of the original Miyoo Mini and the Plus, its succesor.
Thanks to both devices sharing the same CPU and internals, with the only differences being a bigger body, better ergonomics, and Wi-Fi. All of the software side of things was easy to apply on it, making the existing development and maturity easy to transfer to this.
Hardware
The body of the console feels great on the hands, it does not feel cheap at all and it has a nice weight to it. Maybe itās because Iām not used to it, but since the screen takes pretty much the whole top of the device, I do think it can be easily broken if it falls, it has almost no bezel and while thatās not bad, I do feel like itās somewhat fragile. Iāve seen some rubber cases available for it that would greatly diminish this risk. For now, I trust myself to not let it fall.
The buttons are very good in general. A friend of mine got one and they are all great, however, one of the buttons on mine is a bit squeaky, which is kind of annoying, it is not a big deal though and I forget about it 99% of the time.
The D-Pad is truly fantastic, I have no complainst about it, it feels just like an original SNES D-Pad. I like to use it even when the console is off just to fidget around.
The triggers are nice to press, but I think the positioning should have been much higher. It can get uncomfortable after a while.
If you have adult hands, and you plan to play games that make heavy use of those triggers, especially if you have to press buttons and shoulders at the same time, itās probably better to get grip case to make holding it more comfortable.
Sound is decent but not amazing, there are mods out there to replace the speaker, but I donāt particularly mind it. Iāve played a couple of times with headphones (wired only) and it sounds much better. Note that I am not familiar with the original sound of many old games, but if you are, donāt expect a lot on this regard.
The screen looks really nice and crisp, itās wonderful. However, in some cases the screen can come off of the plastic casing, and I have noticed mine getting a bit wobbly. It is not hard to fix if you have some double sided tape, or some B-7000 glue, and for the price, these quality issues should be expected.
Software
I am running OnionOS, I did not even try the stock firmware, but Iāve heard itās decent if you just want to get up and running on this device. Still, every review seems to agree that Onion is superior in every way.
There are a lot of settings to tweak. It is wonderful and amazing pretty much all the time. Here are some of my favorite features:
Activity Tracker to know how much time youāve spent on a game.
Quick switching between games to go back to where you left off.
Since things run on Retroarch, pretty much everything that does is here.
Enable and disable systems quickly, hide apps you donāt care about.
Plenty of themes and icon packs to choose from.
Quick shutdown that saves state before turning off the device.
Restores your last game and save state on boot.
It should be noted that Onion OS is not a full operating sytem per se, but a set of scripts and modifications on top of the Stock OS that comes with the Miyoo. It canāt be ported to other devices, making it an exclusive but wonderful piece of software for the Miyoo Mini and Mini Plus.
The Experience
So, the software is great, the hardware is pretty good. What about games?
I donāt have performance stats or anything, this is all just my experience
with the few systems Iāve played often, which are mostly GBA, PS1 and SNES.
Pretty much everything from the SNES and below is absolutely flawless. No
complaints at all.
The GBA is awesome too. I have played a bunch of games and Iāve had no
major problems with it for the most part. However, in some occasions I
noticed some flickering sprites, especially on Mario & Luigi Superstar
Saga. This was noticeably reduced after going to RetroArchās Core
optionsāthe default core should be mGBAāand disabling the āGame Boy
Playerā mode.
However, playing something like Golden Sun, which is much more demanding, I
saw no problems at all. Apparently the flickering sprites happen to make
some transparency effects. Whatever the case, itās not that big of a deal.
PS1 emulation is wonderful, Iāve been playing Final Fantasy VII for 5 hours
or so without any hiccups or problems that wouldnāt be present in the
original. The only problem I have is Iām playing the Spanish version of the
game which is at 50Hz instead of 60Hz, and RetroAchievements donāt seem to
work for this version of the game specifically.
There is also no fast fowarding on PS1 emulation because of hardware
constraints. I think you can force it and overclock the machine, but I
donāt really want to risk it.
Overall, RetroAchievements are not that simple, they slowdown save states
and increase the boot times a bit, besides the device usually fails to
connect after booting up and I have to enter the quick switch menu and
select the game again for the login to work. I wish they didnāt need an
internet connection at all. Iāll probably just disable them in the future.
Finishing thoughts
This device is fantastic, it is one of the best purchases Iāve made and
Iāve already played more than 60 hours on it.
While the Miyoo Mini Plus works well out of the box, I still think Onion OS
makes the experience so much better, it is a must have if you want to take
advantage of everything this little console has to offer.
