Retroid’s latest handheld game system has the same processor as the company’s last model, but the new Retroid Pocket 3 has a few key updates that should make for a better gaming experience.

The new model has a bigger, higher-resolution display, clickable analog sticks, newer software, and an option to pay a little more for a model with 50% more RAM. The Retroid Pocket 3 is up for pre-order now for $119 and up and should begin shipping on August 20, 2022.

At the heart of the little game system is a Unisoc T310 processor which is a quad-core chip featuring:

  • 1 x ARM Cortex-A75 CPU core @ 2 GHz
  • 3 x ARM Cortex-A55 CPU cores @ 1.8 GHz
  • PowerVR GE8300 graphics @ 800 MHz.

The system has a 4.7 inch, 1334 x 750 pixel touchscreen display with a 16:9 aspect ratio, 60 Hz refresh rate, and a pixel density of 326 pixels per inch and support for up to 450 nits brightness. That screen is sandwiched between game controllers including two analog sticks, a D-Pad, and action buttons plus shoulder buttons.

Other features include a 4,000 mAh battery, stereo 2W speakers, WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0 support, a USB Type-C port, 3.5mm audio jack, and micro HDMI port with support for 720p output to an external display.

The system ships with 32GB of eMMC storage, but there’s also a microSD card reader for removable storage. And while the base model has just 2GB of RAM, it only costs $10 to upgrade to a model with 3GB of RAM.

The Retroid Pocket 3 ships with Android 11 and features a custom app launcher designed for gaming and comes with emulation software pre-installed for playing classic games (assuming you’ve got the ROMs for the games you want to play). Otherwise it should be able to play many modern Android games, and I imagine it would also work reasonably well for streaming games from cloud services like Stadia, Xbox Cloud Gaming, or NVIDIA GeForce Now.

Measuring 184.7 x 81.4 x 24.2mm (7.3″ x 3.2″ x 1″), the Retroid Pocket 3 is a little smaller than a Nintendo Switch Lite. And with a metal frame and aluminum heat sink, the Retroid Pocket 3 is also a passively cooled device, which means it should run silently… something you can’t say about the Steam Deck or other pricier, more powerful handheld gaming PCs.

The Retroid Pocket 3 is available in a choice of black, indigo, white, or orange color options, as well as special “retro” or “16 bit” colors that evoke the original NES or SNES game consoles.

via Retro Kezins

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15 replies on “Retroid Pocket 3 handheld retro game system has a 4.7 inch display, Unisoc T310 chip, and $119 starting price”

  1. Unfortunately the screen resolution is an objection for me. 1334×750 isn’t ideal for console emulation. 750 vertical pixels is a number that doesn’t divide evenly for any consoles that I’m familiar with.

    For something older like SNES (256×224), it’s not going to be a big deal. But something like Dreamcast (640×480) is going to be rough. It’s going to be either very jagged looking, or very blurry looking (depending on how the given software handles interpolation).

  2. I feel like they are now leaving their market segment by making a product that doesn’t fit in the pocket… reminds me of when pebble tired to be all Fitness, and killed itself 🙁

    1. Pebble didn’t kill itself. It was bought out (and dismantled) by Fitbit. I miss Pebble… there are so few smartwatches that only work for app notifications and SMS. I don’t want any fitness utilities whatsoever, and those are the core of pretty much every current watch.

      But after a couple days on the 2+, I’m pretty happy with everything except for the garbage right swivel stick. It’s pretty comfortable to use for 2-3 hours, battery life is impressive, and it works very well over micro-HDMI with an 8BitDo controller. I’m guessing the battery life on the 3 will actually be lower with the better screen. And as you said – it is pocket sized.

      2. If you want a new watch along Pebble’s design philosophy (always on display, long battery life) ironically it doesn’t come from Fitbit who bought Pebble, but Amazfit – the “Bip S Lite” has a very impressive 30 day battery life despite having a Pebble like always on display and fitness functions. What Pebble could have been!

  3. One day…. this news comes ONE day after I ordered myself a Pocket 2 Plus!

    1. Apparently, you’re not missing a lot. It’s the same system and only differs in the right analog stick being real, bigger screen & ram and android 11.

      1. The ram is mute unless planning on playing a few mediocre Android games. Android 11 is crap for emulation as far as I’m concerned. Same exact system as RP2+ so expect roughly identical performance. PS Vita may be easier on the eyes for in game text but with only a max of 1x resolution it will look like garbage. I would have bought this if it had the T-618 used in the Powkiddy x18s.

          1. The big reason I stopped using the X18S is because of Android 11… its not really great for emulation at this point, also stopped emulation on my shield tv pro because 11 broke the file system for emulation. This RP3 is going to be placed in the back just like the powkiddys.

    2. You won’t be missing out on anything. Lili is being slightly deceptive since it is basically just an oversized RP2+ with 2 analogue sticks instead of one analogue and one digital.

        1. And what exactly will you get out of l3 r3? Only a couple of games will use it. Most of the 3d android games that can utilize them are too power hungry to play at a decent frame rate. This is just a place filler for their next system which I would expect to be windows based.

          1. It’s great for remote play. I regularly use PSPlay remote play on my GPD XD+, but it has separate buttons for L3/R3 next to the analogue sticks and it makes it an absolute pain to run in any PS game that uses “click L3 to run”.

            Though what I really want is a “system” button on these things to be the PS button or Steam button etc when remote playing.

    3. You could probably contact them and cancel for the pocket 3 pre-order instead.

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