Anbernic RG Cube Review: Tiger T820 CPU Android Gaming Handheld

The Anbernic RG Cube Android gaming handheld has been out for a bit now. The square screen is the first thing you will notice, it’s great for retro consoles, but how will this deal with wide screen consoles and handhelds? Let’s find out in our Anbernic RG Cube review.

Anbernic RG Cube Review Video

Anbernic RG Cube Overview

We start our Anbernic RG Cube review with an overview. The Anbernic RG Cube is available in four colours, Beige White, Radiant Purple, Black and Grey. It measures around 6.0 x 3.3 x 0.7 inches (15.3 x 8.6 x 1.8 cm) and weighs 260g (0.57 lbs).

The display is the stand out feature of this handheld. It is a 3.95” 1:1 aspect ratio touchscreen display with a 720×720 pixel resolution. This means it’s great for true retro gaming resolutions that have a 4:3 ratio as it fills in more of the screen.

On the front we have all the usual gaming buttons including hall effect analogues. They have LED lighting around them which you can customise in the settings. There are six settings to choose from and the chasing setting is my favourite as it follows your input.

There are also two additional buttons in the bottom left area, the first brings up the Anbernic frontend and the second is a back button.

Along the top are the shoulder and hall effect triggers. There’s a 3.5mm headphone port, micro SD card slot for additional storage and a USB Type-C port for charging. And on the right side we have power and volume buttons.

The back has a slightly textured surface for your fingers to provide some additional grip. And in the top area there is a grill for the fan.

Anbernic RG Cube Technical Specifications

Next in our Anbernic RG Cube review we take a look at the technical specifications as well perform as our own battery life, fan noise and temperature tests on the Android gaming console.

CPU	Unisoc T820 processor, 6nm EUV 5G SOC chip. 8 cores: 1*[email protected], 3*[email protected], 4*[email protected]
GPU	Quad Core Mali-G57 850MHz
RAM	8GB LPDDR4X
STORAGE	128G UFS 2.2
DISPLAY	3.95-inch IPS screen, OCA full lamination, multi-touch, resolution: 720*720
ANDROID OS	13
COMMUNICATIONS	2.4/5G WIFI 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 5.0
BATTERY	Polymer lithium battery 5200mAh, . Support 5V/2A charging, approximately 3 hours to fully charge
SIZE	6.0 x 3.3 x 0.7 inches (15.3 x 8.6 x 1.8 cm)
WEIGHT	260g (0.57 lbs)

We tested the battery life while running Antutu on a loop for the max performance. We got just over 4 hours which is very respectable. For low demanding emulators you can easily get 6+ hours out of the battery.

We checked the fan noise and thermals whilst running Antutu on a loop. We got a highest fan noise of 55 db, and a highest temperature of around 40 °C.

Anbernic RG Cube System Benchmarks 

For the system benchmarks we are comparing the Anbernic RG Cube with lower as well as higher priced Android gaming devices to get a comparison of price versus performance for our Anbernic RG Cube review.

Geekbench 5

First in our tests is Geekbench 5. We see fairly close scores to the Anbernic 556 model which uses the same CPU and GPU.  We are looking at around mid range performance, not far off the Retroid Pocket 4 model, read our review here. Overall decent performance.

Geekbench 6

Next is Geekbench 6 which we are now testing all new devices with. We see lower single core performance than the others, but on multicore we see almost identical performance as the Retroid Pocket 4 model. Not bad at all.

Antutu

On Antutu we see a bit lower than expected performance than the RG556 model. This could be down to benchmarking with different versions for example, as the 556 model was last tested a few months ago. The AYANEO Pocket S takes the lead here with its high end CPU and GPU combination.

3DMark

Our final benchmark is 3DMark Slingshot and Wildlife Extreme benchmarks. We see good scores compared with the RG556 and Retroid Pocket 4 models which we had hoped to see. Overall good scores again.

Android Overview

As part of our Anbernic RG Cube review we will take a look at the operating system and features. The RG Cube runs on Android 13 and has a bunch of emulators set up for you. We do recommend signing into Google Play Store and updating everything to the latest versions as well as on RetroArch.

The Anbernic launcher can be accessed by pressing the button in the bottom left or from the drop down menus.  It will scan your micro SD card for games and place them into their respective consoles and computers categories. It’s not perfect, but it’s fast and definitely does the job. You can of course choose to load the individual emulators from the home screen and set them up that way if you wish to.

You can of course also play Android games, I am not a big gaming Android handheld player but I tried a few of my go to games and they all worked fine. You do have the screen mapping software which is very useful for games that do not have gamepad support. You simply map the game buttons to the area on the screen and you can use the controls to play the game. As always we had no issues using the software.

Video output to an external display is supported via USB-C. You can use a USB-C to HDMI hub such as our DroiX NH8 or NT8 models. Or if your display supports USB-C input, such as our PM14 portable monitor, then you can use a USB-C to C cable. The video will initially show in the square aspect ratio but you can change to desktop mode in the settings for full screen display.

Anbernic RG Cube Emulation Performance

Next in our Anbernic RG Cube review we will show the performance for the more demanding emulators for handhelds and consoles. All 8 and 16-bit systems right up to PS1 and Dreamcast era will absolutely fine on this Android gaming device with no issues at all.

Dolphin

Games are very playable. We did not have any issues with both consoles this emulator supports.

PSP

No issues at all, for many games you can increase the rendering and upscaling for improved visuals. You will either have to play squashed resolution or set to 16:9 in the settings which will show unsquashed but a smaller view.

Citra

You will get some lags while shader caching on games when playing the first time. After that games generally run quite well. The aspect ratio is well suited for dual screen gaming.

PlayStation 2

For PlayStation 2 you will have a mixed experience in performance. We saw on Tekken Tag Tournament mostly 60 frames per second with some occasional drops below that. In God Of War II we did see some frame drops but nothing game breaking. And for OutRun 2006, the game was essentially unplayable as it run too slow.

Vita3K

Lower demanding games like TxK are very playable. Higher demanding games such as Street Fighter X Tekken will be too slow to play, though you might be able to drop the rendering resolution to squeeze some extra performance from it.

Yuzu

Only 2D games or low demanding games will be playable. Anything higher, such as 3D games, you will definitely have performance issues.

Final Thoughts on the Anbernic RG Cube

Let us know in the comments what you think of the Anbernic RG Cube. Do you like the 1:1 aspect ratio or prefer 16:9?

Let’s sum up our Anbernic RG Cube review now with our final thoughts on the Android Gaming Console. The first thing we need to talk about is the screen aspect ratio. If you prefer your older 4:3 ratio consoles then the RG Cube is perfect for gaming on. The games look great when upscaled and have matching bezels for many of the consoles and handhelds.

For newer systems such as the PSP, you will have to play with a squashed widescreen unless you change the graphics settings. And once changed, you have a fairly small viewing area as it adjusts for the aspect ratio. Realistically this is only going to affect PSP, some PS2 and Vita games.

We see very good performance considering the processor. Many PS2 games will run great but there are some that have very poor performance. With Citra we see the usual shader caches lags on more demanding games. And with Vita, low demanding games run fairly well, but lags with more demanding games. And with Yuzu, only 2D games are going to be playable.

The Anbernic RG Cube is comfortable to play on. The textured grips on the back help to keep your fingers from sliding whilst playing. The size is not too bad, it can fit in a jacket pocket quite easily. The battery life is a big plus here, depending on the usage, you can get up to several hours.

If the more retro side of emulation is your main purpose, say up to PS1 and Dreamcast etc, the Anbernic RG Cube Android gaming handheld is a definite one to consider. It is best suited for this task with its 1:1 aspect ratio and great battery life for running the lower demanding systems. 

You can learn more about and buy the Anbernic RG Cube here.

That wraps up our Anbernic RG Cube review. We hope you have found it useful. If you have any questions please feel free to ask in the comments.