I’ve had my eyes on a Miyoo Mini for the better part of a year, casually at least. They sold out almost as soon as they became available through the manufacturer for a while, apparently due to sourcing issues for the high resolution, 2.8” IPS screen. I stumbled upon them in stock on the Miyoo aliexpress site shortly before Christmas, and snap-bought the transparent black model. It arrived 2 weeks ago and after a quick trip through installing Onion OS and throwing on some games, I’ve been enjoying jamming some old favourites during bits of downtime. Figured I’d throw down some thoughts below!
The screen is very high resolution and beautiful being IPS. No issues with it at all.
Buttons are nicely made, though the triggers on the back are mediocre - That’s more due to how compact it is, mostly.
Battery is reasonable, nothing to write home about. I haven’t clocked it, but I can get probably 4+ hours of play on it.
Plays just about anything up to PS1 without issues. GBA games have been solid, and jamming a bit of Pokemon Emerald and Advance Wars so far has been super fun. A recent beta of OnionOS actually includes a DS emulator, and a number of titles work great.
OnionOS was a very easy install and significantly improves the experience over stock.
I was worried about the lack of RTC (real time clock) impacting my experience in games that are reliant on it such as Pokemon, but the OnionOS implementation of skipping a set number of hours each boot of the device works perfectly fine with how causally I play.
It’s about the size of a pack of cards, so fits great in my tech kit, my sling, or my chest pocket on some of my shirts. Will be great for travel vs the Steam Deck - Any larger in this form factor I wouldn’t want to go with.
It really does capture that retro feel with the body shape and design - Miyoo slammed it out of the park.
The save on shutdown implementation works great - On boot it just loads you back to where you left off.
Although the Steam Deck is pretty much the ultimate emulation/gaming hand held, it’s not super portable, and with the few weeks I’ve had the Miyoo Mini I feel like it’s a solid low-end companion device that lets me fill 15-20 minutes I’d normally spend doom-scrolling. I think there’s still room for a middle device somewhere between the Steam Deck and the Miyoo Mini, but I’ve gotta figure that out.