The R36S: my first budget handheld, and honestly, I'm sold

Why the R36S

If you want maximum bang for minimum money on a first handheld, the R36S is the obvious starting point. It's the budget darling of the scene. A little Linux-based handheld built around the Rockchip RK3326 chip, a 3.5" IPS screen running a lovely 4:3 at 640×480, and a price on AliExpress that's frankly silly. Depending on the seller and how much storage you want, you're looking at somewhere in the twenty to forty quid range.

It won't trouble a PS2, and N64 is a bit hit and miss, but everything from the Atari days up through the 8 and 16-bit era runs flawlessly, and PlayStation 1 plays a treat. For a first dip, that covers a whole childhood and then some.

The one bit of advice that actually matters: join the subreddit first

Here's the thing nobody tells you up front. The R36S isn't made by one company. It's churned out under a dozen different OEM names, and the market is absolutely riddled with clones. Some are perfectly fine. Some will hand you a headache.

I'm not interested in a headache. So before I bought anything, I lurked on r/R36S and, more or less, just did what I was told. The community there has done the hard legwork of sorting out which AliExpress sellers are legit, and following that guidance, I had zero issues. None.

If you take one thing from this post, make it this. Read the subreddit before you add anything to your basket. It is the single biggest difference between "brilliant little device" and "why on earth won't this boot."

Setup: painless, once you bin the stock SD card

First job, and again this is straight community wisdom, don't trust the SD card it ships with. The stock cards on these cheap units are notorious for failing. So I grabbed a decent card of my own, moved everything across, loaded up my library, and that was genuinely it. Away.

No soldering, no cursing, no three-hour YouTube rabbit hole. For someone used to real hardware and half-expecting a fight, it was almost anticlimactic, in the best possible way.

Living with it

I'll be straight with you. I haven't pushed this thing to its limits. I'm not going to pretend I've stress-tested every emulator on there. But as an everyday "sit down and play something" device, it's brilliant.

And this is where the whole convenience argument clicks into place. A screen you can actually see. Save states, so you can put a game down mid-boss and pick it back up on the sofa later without losing your spot. Every game you fancy, in one place, in one hand. No blowing into a cartridge, no rummaging through the loft. Go nuts.

The highlight for me? Digimon World on the PS1. That game is pure childhood (mine's sat up in the loft with the rest of the PlayStation collection), and firing it up on this little thing to give the R36S a proper run was a genuinely lovely moment. Was it flawless? It was fine. And honestly, "fine" on a twenty-quid handheld, playing a game you adored as a kid, is a small miracle when you actually stop and think about it.

The niggles

It's not perfect, and pretending otherwise would be doing you a disservice.

The form factor is a little on the small side. Fine for me, but worth knowing if you've got big hands. And the shoulder buttons are noticeably clicky and loud. Neither is a dealbreaker.

The lovely part is that none of these quirks are the end of the story. Lurk the subreddit long enough and you'll find people have modded, fixed and improved just about every complaint anyone's ever had with this thing. You'd be surprised what folk have coaxed out of it. Whether you fancy tinkering or you'd rather leave it stock is entirely up to you. Both are valid.