Anbernic's RG Rotate Completely Changed My EDC
It's a never-ending search, but it's over...for now.
A quickly-progressing hobby really captures how simple innovation can change your day-to-day experience at the drop of a hat.
Ever since I started buying retro handhelds in 2024, I’ve had this fascination with the perfect EDC. Something that I can carry with me when and wherever I am, and that can be deployed in an instant. This originally took the form of a micro handheld I could fit in the pocket of my dress pants at work, but eventually it became something a lot more methodical and designed.
The first of my EDC devices was the Miyoo A30. It was an awesome little device that served its purpose very well - and it’s a device that I consider to be criminally underrated in the grand scheme of things. What was so amazing about it to me was that it disappeared in my pocket while still having enough power to play most of what I wanted it to at the time. At that point, I was mainly interested in the more retro side of things: Super Famicom, Game Boy Color, and a little bit of light Game Boy Advance or Nintendo 64 here and there. The A30’s chipset and tiny little 2.8” screen carried me for the first few months of my addiction. But there was always the thought of more.
The Miyoo A30, my first EDC handheld
Eventually I started sinking a good bit of money into the hobby, and ended up with some pretty powerful handhelds. The Retroid Pocket 5 was and is one of my go-tos for the things that the lightweight, Linux-based handhelds couldn’t do, GameCube and Switch titles especially. The RP5 was great, don’t get me wrong, and I still use it almost daily now; but it did make me wonder if we would ever get a device capable of the consoles that it could emulate, portable and compact enough to be that perfect EDC. That wasn’t really at the forefront, though, because at the time the smaller handhelds pretty exclusively remained underpowered. What did change in my decisionmaking process around that time was the way I carried my devices.
Shortly after the release of the Trimui Brick (another one of my favorite handhelds historically) I purchased a belt case from a seller on Etsy on a whim. It was a handmade leather flap case with a magnetic clasp and a metal clip on the back to secure it to my belt. Since I work almost exclusively in jeans or dress pants and also carry a gun, it means I’m always wearing a heavy-duty belt. The case that I bought, although incredibly bulky for the device it was carrying, was a perfect fit for me. Now instead of fiddling with my Miyoo A30 in a pocket, the Trimui Brick effortless sat on my hip, always at the ready. When the Brick Hammer released, that immediately became my new EDC. The enhanced build quality of the aluminum shell was perfect for being toted around all day. Although the Brick as a whole was soon phased out by the coming of the GKD Pixel II, which was significantly smaller while not sacrificing much in terms of emulation capability. But with a new device, I needed a new case to carry it in.
I am an avid (read: addicted) browser of AliExpress. I adore buying things I don’t need with money I don’t have and waiting time I don’t want to in order to get packages that I cannot remember in the mail. That, to me, is like the feeling of Christmas. In my incessant browsing, I came across a manufacturer making leather cases for cigarettes and lighters. Apparently that is a relatively common thing in China - enough that there was a dedicated manufacturer for accessories for it (and other things, like car keys) on Ali. Noticing that some of the cases were similar in size, I decided to reach out to see if any of them would work for what I needed. The store, blongk, replied and told me they could customize the size for my device, and then asked for the measurements. Two or three weeks later, I had the case sitting in my mailbox.
It changed everything.
The bulky case I’d gotten on Etsy was just a proof of concept. It survived an entire trip to Japan and nearly a year of workdays, but it never did feel like that perfect EDC I was looking for. The blongk case solved every problem I had with the original, and made the Pixel II melt away into my hip when I carried it. With twigUI, I essentially ended my search for the perfect EDC.
My previous perfect EDC, the GKD Pixel II
About a month ago now, Anbernic revealed and then quickly released the RG Rotate, a goofy-looking square of metal (and plastic, depending on the color you purchase) that seemed utterly pointless to me when I watched the trailer for it.
Then it hit me.
This was actually a genius innovation by Anbernic, rather than a random gimmick for the purpose of nostalgia-baiting potential customers. The Rotate was, in its essence, a cheat code to saving space in a pocketable device. By folding all of the controls underneath the display, the entire footprint of the device was suddenly only the size of the screen and bezels. That in and of itself makes the Rotate a hugely valuable device for someone looking for an EDC.
What makes the Rotate a smash-hit, though, is that it’s paired with the perfect chipset: The Unisoc Tiger T618. This chipset was particularly present in Anbernic’s earlier portfolio, at the time as a more powerful option than the increasingly common RK3326 and RK3566 offerings. It allowed a small amount of sixth-gen emulation, but its main selling point at the time was the overhead it provided for fifth-gen emulation. It was overall superseded by the T820 chipset by Anbernic for a year or two, but recently it has begun to make its way back into the fold…as a budget chipset.
When Anbernic’s #5 series (that is, devices with a 5 denoting that they use the T618, i.e. RG405V) was first introduced, it was to a relatively high MSRP of around $150 USD. Today that money can get you into a Snapdragon processor and significantly faster speeds. So as chipset technology progresses, the T618 eventually managed to become a lower-cost option for Anbernic, finding its way into more recent offerings like the RG Vita, and now the RG Rotate.
This isn’t exactly a review of the Rotato (as we lovingly call it on Discord), but it gives the background on why this device is special as an EDC. The Rotate can fold away to an impressive size, given its 3.5” 1:1 screen, and it has enough power to, with recent advances in emulators like Azahar and Dolphin MMJR2, scrape later-gen emulation for titles that are comfortable enough to play with just a dpad. I pre-ordered one at the first opportunity, and even pre-measured the size I would need for another case from blongk.
My EDC setup with the RG Rotate
Safe to say, it was immediately a hit. This thing absolutely rocks. I mean it - the jump in emulation capability from the RK3326S of the Pixel II to the Android-based experience of gaming on the T618 is like jumping to lightspeed. The Rotate is only a bit wider than the Pixel II, but in the case that I have it doesn’t even feel big at all. It still melts away into my hip; this time, though, its packing serious heat.
I’ve found that my favorite consoles to play are the ones I can put up and down quickly: GBC and GBA are favorites as always, and with the overlays that I’ve been working on for RetroArch, the thing feels like a fully complete experience in my hand. A welcome surprise was how well certain 3DS games seem to run here: having Fire Emblem Awakening back in my pocket for a quick turn or two when I’m at work is such a cool feeling.
3DS running at 60FPS on the Rotate - at work, no less!
I initially battled between my two favorite frontends to run the device on, Cocoon and Canolli, but in the end the full-featured Cocoon won out for me. It really just accentuates the power that you have with the T618, that you have access to all of the boxart and metadata and Android ports and everything else that makes this device so different an experience from one like the Pixel II. I can see myself folding for Canolli as time passes, though, and as I start to want something a little more streamlined.
I’m not doing an in-depth review of the Rotate here, but I am highlighting its strengths to show just how far EDC handhelds have come for me in the past couple of years. I’m excited to see where things end up come the next couple, but for now the Rotate is all I need.
blongk official store (not sponsored)
If you’d like me to review a product, email me: blog@jaw.fyi