Amazon Customer
4:3 Is Still the Right Aspect Ratio for Retro Gaming
A lot of retro handhelds lately seem to be chasing bigger screens, wider displays, and increasingly powerful hardware, but those things do not necessarily make them better for the systems I actually want to emulate. For a huge chunk of older consoles, 4:3 is still the natural fit. NES, SNES, Genesis, PlayStation, N64, Dreamcast, and plenty of arcade games all fill the screen properly instead of sitting between giant black bars. The AIR Y Pro takes that old-school aspect ratio, gives it a sharp 4.2-inch 1280 x 960 IPS panel, and then puts a Snapdragon 865 behind it, which is considerably more horsepower than I normally expect in this kind of compact vertical handheld. The Snapdragon 865 is old by flagship-phone standards, but it remains a very capable chip for an Android handheld. Everything through the classic 2D systems is obviously effortless, and PSP, Dreamcast, GameCube, and a substantial amount of PlayStation 2 are well within reach. Being able to upscale many of those systems on a 4:3 display gives the AIR Y Pro a much broader useful range than the inexpensive vertical handhelds that tend to top out around PS1 or N64. The 4 GB of RAM is where this particular configuration starts showing its limits. It is plenty for the retro systems that suit the device best, and even GameCube generally is not a problem, but heavier PS2 emulation and more ambitious Android or PC-emulation workloads can run right up against that ceiling. The Snapdragon 865 is capable of more than the memory occasionally lets it do. If the goal is primarily retro emulation, I would not consider 4 GB a dealbreaker; if I wanted to push the hardware as far as possible, the 8 GB version would give me considerably more breathing room. At 4.2 inches, the screen is also large enough that 4:3 content does not feel cramped while the 1280 x 960 resolution gives older games plenty of pixel density for clean integer or near-integer scaling. Colors and brightness are good, although this particular panel has