I am the last person who needs another retro handheld that resembles a Game Boy. I own an Analogue Pocket, an Anbernic RG35XXSP, a GKD Pixel, an Ayaneo Pocket DMG, and the recently released Anbernic RG Rotate. That’s five Game Boy clones that can emulate old consoles too many. But like a moth to a flame, the Trimui Brick Pro is calling to me.
At $99, the Brick Pro is relatively affordable for a retro handheld, at least compared to the $240 Analogue Pocket. It’s also available for purchase, which is not something that can be said for the always-out-of-stock Pocket.
As its name implies, the Brick Pro is a more premium version of the Brick, with a larger 3.95-inch (1,024 x 768) IPS display, a bigger 5,000mAh battery, and dual Hall effect joysticks for better input precision. For comparison, the regular Brick has a 3.2-inch screen, a 3,000mAh battery, and no joysticks.
Emulation performance should be about the same, though. It sticks with the same Allwinner A133 CPU, PowerVR GE8300 GPU, and 1GB of LPDDR3 RAM, which should be beefy enough to emulate most retro games up to the Nintendo 64 and some Sega Dreamcast and PSP titles.
For storage, $99 gets you 64GB of built-in eMMC flash storage. Trimui also sells 128GB ($115) and 256GB ($135) versions. If you need more space beyond what’s built-in, you can add up to 1TB via a microSD card slot.
Charging is, thankfully, USB-C, and the aforementioned bigger battery should be good for up to 10 hours of gaming, according to Trimui. The regular Brick only lasts up to 3 hours on a charge.
Two features that my genuine Game Boys never had but the Brick Pro does: vibration and video output. I can’t speak for how strong the vibration is, but as somebody who also owns the TV dock for the Analogue Pocket, I can tell you it’s nice to be able to play on a bigger screen at home. The fact that you don’t need a separate dock for video output on the Brick Pro is a plus over the Pocket.
Again, I don’t need another way to play my collection of retro games, but why do I feel like I do? Anybody else find themselves watching 2-hour videos from RetroGameCorps? I might need a professional to help curb my handheld addiction.
