RetroQuest
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Which handheld runs Arcade?

Arcade (MAME and FinalBurn) (Various, 1978) tested on 5 devices, cheapest first.

5 of 5 tested handhelds run Arcade well enough to play, starting at $65.

4 of them hold full speed. Ratings come from 4 publishers who had the hardware; the comparison across all of them is ours.

Cheapest device in this data that handles Arcade
TrimUI Brick ~$65

Sits comfortably in the hardware wheelhouse, and looks exceptional on the 1024x768 panel.

Every tested device

TrimUI Brick

Allwinner A133P · ~$65
Full speed

Sits comfortably in the hardware wheelhouse, and looks exceptional on the 1024x768 panel.

  • Neo Geo and arcade systems are named alongside NES, SNES, Mega Drive and PS1 as platforms that not only run well but look exceptional here.

Tested by: Retro Handhelds Online

Anbernic RG35XX H

Allwinner H700 (quad-core Cortex-A53) · ~$65
Full speed

MAME runs well on the H700 Anbernics, with several arcade cores supported out of the box.

  • MAME 2003-Plus, FinalBurn Neo, Atomiswave and Naomi cores are all available on this family.
  • Some 3D arcade titles need a specific MAME core version to behave; the classic 2D boards do not.

Tested by: Retro Game Corps, Pocket Games

Anbernic RG35XX SP

Allwinner H700 (quad-core Cortex-A53) · ~$70
Full speed

Same H700 arcade support as the rest of the RG35XX family.

  • No analog stick, which suits arcade boards better than it suits anything above PS1.

Tested by: Retro Game Corps

Miyoo Mini Plus

Dual-core ARM Cortex-A7 @ 1.2 GHz · ~$70
Playable

Ships with Neo Geo emulation among its cores.

  • The cited coverage names Neo Geo specifically rather than MAME broadly, so this rating is narrower than the ones above it.

Tested by: Playhouse

Anbernic RG40XX H

Allwinner H700 (quad-core Cortex-A53) · ~$75
Full speed

MAME runs well across the RG35XX and RG40XX series.

Tested by: Retro Game Corps, Pocket Games

Reading this page

Devices are ordered by price, not by score, because the useful question is usually the cheapest thing that clears the bar rather than the best thing available. “Playable” is where most people should stop reading upward: past that you are paying for headroom and upscaling, not for the game running.

Devices absent from this list have no published Arcade testing found. That is a gap in the data, not a verdict on the hardware.

Sources (4)

Every rating on this page traces to one of these. The compilation is ours; the measurements are theirs.

Other systems

NESGame BoyGenesisSNESGBAPS1N64SaturnDreamcastPSPGameCubePS2WiiSwitch