u/gtmoo

Modded GBC and Retroid pocket classic

I know the Ayaneo pocket micro/antec core micro gets a lot of hate, but I picked one up a couple of weeks ago and thought I’d share my experience. For reference I live in the UK and got the antec version for under £90 brand new

TLDR: I really like it. For the specific GBA use case I bought it for, it does the job very nicely.

As someone who has way to many devices: steamdeck, switch, dsi xl, Odin 2 mini, Retroid pocket classic, none of these felt really pocketable. The pocket classic is probably the closest, but still not really. I wanted something specifically to play GBA games that I could slide into any pocket and not need to be precious about it.

The ayaneo pocket micro does the job well, particularly for GBA as it’s a perfect 4x integer scale. The screen is bright and colourful, the metal frame feels durable and the all glass display is nice, although smudges like crazy.

I don’t care too much about the battery life. It’s not great, not compared to the Retroid pocket classic at least, but I only ever play for 20/30 minutes here and there and it charges quick so hasn’t been an issue so far at all.

I saw a lot of people online complain about the sound and mine sounded tinny at first, but after tweaking some settings in retroarch I think it sounds much better now.

The sticks protrude way too much, it was a really stupid design choice on ayaneo’s part, but I fixed that by trimming them down and filing down the base of the caps. Now they fit much lower, and are actually more snug than before so no issues of them falling off. I didn’t want to remove them completely because the left stick is handy for rpg games and the right stick I use as the hotkey.

Overall pretty happy with it and would recommend to people if you can pick it up cheap. Easy to bring with me wherever I go, but if I was wanting ps1, psp, ps2, GameCube etc, I wouldn’t bother with this and would just bring my Odin 2 mini