Generic R36S

About this device

The R36S is a roughly $40 vertical handheld on a Rockchip RK3326 that plays 8 bit through PS1 well. Several different boards ship under the same name, and the community firmware only runs on the Rockchip version.

The R36S is the best handheld anyone sells for around $40, and it is a name rather than a product. There is no R36S manufacturer. Sellers order units from factories and list them under the same name, and factories have changed what is inside the same shell over time. A genuine unit is a Rockchip RK3326 with 1 GB of RAM, a 3.5 inch 640x480 IPS panel and a 3,500 mAh battery, and on that hardware with current community firmware it handles 8 bit, 16 bit, the Game Boy lines and most of PS1 very well. The documented clones use Allwinner chips instead, one of them with half the RAM, and the custom firmware that makes an R36S worth owning targets the Rockchip part. So the device is excellent on three conditions: you receive the genuine board, you replace the stock microSD card, and you install current firmware rather than the archived ArkOS every older guide names. The first condition is not in your control, which is why we list this as buyer beware. N64, PSP and Dreamcast are advertised and do not work properly. There is no Wi-Fi on the base model, no warranty and no support.

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