U8: Cheap gaming handheld for under $50 offers long battery life

We've reported several times about more affordable gaming handhelds, most of which come from China. These gaming systems are much less powerful than full-fledged handhelds such as the Asus ROG Ally X, as they are designed for emulation and retro games instead of rendering the latest triple-A titles. Nonetheless, older games can be a lot of fun, especially on the go.

The new U8 handheld is equipped with a laminated 4-inch IPS display with a resolution of 800 x 680 pixels. It utilizes an RK3326 SoC with four CPU cores clocked at up to 1.5GHz and 1GB LPDDR4 RAM. As is often the case with such affordable retro handhelds, there’s no internal storage, but two card slots are available. One of these microSD cards should contain the operating system, while the other can be used to store games.

The U8 runs on a customized Linux operating system which can emulate games for various platforms, including Sony’s PSP and Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance, just to name a few. As usual, it’s not guaranteed that all games for these consoles will run smoothly, and owners should make sure to respect copyrights for these titles.

That being said, the budget-friendly retro handheld has two joysticks, two shoulder buttons and a traditional headphone jack. Meanwhile, USB Type-C can be used to recharge the 3,500mAh battery or connect a controller or gamepad. Last but not least, the U8 has an official battery life of up to 8 hours. The U8 handheld can now be ordered on Banggood for prices starting at $39 excluding shipping and import duties. Depending on the location, shipping from China will take a few weeks.