Ayaneo Pocket Vert plays Dreamcast, GameCube, and PS2 games in a Game Boy form factor
Ayaneo announced the Pocket Vert earlier this year starting with teases in July, and only just revealed the specifications last month—but finally, YouTuber ETA Prime has gotten his hands on one, providing a preview of the new handheld. Previous teases slotted the handheld as a direct competitor to the Analogue Pocket, which shares the specification of a 3.5-inch 1600x1400 60 Hz IPS LTPS screen. This resolution is particularly relevant for those emulating Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, since it's a perfect 10x the pixel resolution of those 160x140 screens. This allows for pixel-perfect integer scaling on both devices, which greatly enhances the perceived fidelity of the pixel art—which could otherwise look more blurry with an uneven integer scale. But the internal specifications are also much beefier than the FPGA-based Analogue Pocket (aimed at up to Game Boy Advance titles), showcasing a handheld of incredibly similar screen and build quality that's aiming for a much higher-end experience.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 is orders of magnitude more powerful than anything a sauced-up Game Boy Advance could muster, flaunting the ability to play even GameCube and PlayStation 2 games at much higher resolutions than those original consoles could. With this powerful Android chipset onboard, the Ayaneo Pocket VERT becomes a fairly compelling option for handheld gaming in general, not simply a 2D-bound emulation machine. Using the Play Store, native Android games should be playable at good framerates, and Steam Link or cloud streaming even makes modern console/PC games a possibility in this form factor.
Another key advantage the Ayaneo Pocket Vert boasts over the Analogue Pocket is a set of four shoulder buttons and dual touchpads beneath the D-Pad and face buttons. It's not perfect, but dual-analog control and full button mapping possibilities make the Pocket Vert a much more versatile handheld than the Analogue Pocket. With such a similar form factor but far more modern control options, the Pocket Vert starts looking fairly compelling. The big elephant in the room around this handheld now is its price, which remains unknown. If it's competitive with Pocket, though, that handheld may find it difficult to compete with its far less powerful FGPA configuration.
Of course, not everything in gaming boils down to specifications. There's a reason Analogue Pocket was successful, and it wasn't because it chased high specifications. The value of truly retro handheld gaming is difficult to overstate, and I wouldn't blame you for thinking the ability to play GameCube games or stream Steam games is irrelevant for this form factor. But for people who just want to play games and don't care for the difference between software emulation and FGPAs enabling hardware emulation, the existence of Ayaneo Pocket Vert will make Analogue Pocket a much harder sell, especially if it manages a price close to Analogue Pocket's $219.99.
At time of writing, the handheld is also still pending ETA PRIME's full review—or for that matter, anyone's full review. There could be some key dealbreaker of a caveat here, especially since the market for gaming handhelds, even in this form factor, is more competitive than ever. After all, this handheld still has to compete with Ayaneo's own Pocket DMG, which flaunts a gorgeous OLED. And who's to say you wouldn't be better served clipping a $12 extension to your existing phone, anyway?
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