Miyoo Flip V2 Review – A dose of handheld Nintendo nostalgia

While the Switch 2 is dominating headlines around the world, it’s easy to forget the little guys. There’s plenty handhelds that are out there making people’s lives better without all the pomp and grandeur. Enter the Miyoo Flip, a retro handheld designed for emulation that takes some clear inspiration from one of Nintendo’s most iconic handhelds, the Game Boy Advance SP.

This clamshell device brings all the nostalgia to the yard. Picking it up had me reminiscing for days about my red Game Boy Advance SP with Groudon carefully embossed on the cover, and the days I spent playing Pokemon Ruby, Advance Wars and Fire Emblem. The Miyoo Flip feels like the original device, and given that the SP is arguably still one of the best handheld designs we’ve ever had, that’s a very good thing.

Measuring just over 8cm in either direction and 2.5cm thick when folded shut, it’s genuinely pocketable, though there’s also a very lovely hardshell case in the box that makes it a bit too chunky for your pocket. It easily fits in your bag though, and you don’t have to worry about it getting damaged at all. It’s so small compared to modern handheld PCs and consoles that you don’t need to think too hard about taking it everywhere with you, and our review unit has already been around the world a bunch of times with me without any hassle.

There’s a variety of different colours available, with our review unit arriving in a truly retro black and red livery. It looks like the contents of every kids’ bedroom in the 80s and early 90s, and the lighter plastics used make it feel pretty authentic to the period as well. It doesn’t feel premium, but when it’s priced around £70 you’re probably not expecting it too. What it does feel like is an authentic reimagining of a classic form factor.

It is equipped for more than just Game Boy games though, and the Rockchip RK3566 chipset and the central controls of a D-pad, four face buttons, four shoulder buttons and two inset analogue sticks at the bottom, make it ideal for emulation up to, and including, N64, Dreamcast, PSP and PlayStation.

They’re not the best analogue sticks in the world; not in terms of their actual functionality, but because they’re pretty deeply inset to allow the clamshell to close. They also sit at the foot of the device, which can become pretty tiring for your hands, depending on how you’re holding the Flip. It’s nice to have them though, and they do work well, but I’ve found myself mostly gravitating to the excellent-feeling D-pad, and the console generations that still focused their efforts on them.

Overall comfort is, however, very good. The light plastics make this an easy device to hold for long periods of time, and I do find that I prefer the narrow profile of systems like the Miyoo Flip, Trimui Brick or the classic Game Boy systems, when it’s a smaller device. If you liked the form factor of the Game Boy Advance SP, then.. this is pretty much the same.

The screen is a 3.5mm IPS LCD display with a 640×480 resolution, and it’s bright and colourful with plenty of clarity and decent viewing angles. It’s not ultra-high resolution, but the 4:3 scale means that this is a great device for playing classic titles, whether revisiting favourites like Super Mario World or Guardian Heroes, or checking out titles you haven’t found time to pull out of the cupboard in years. It does mean that PSP games suffer though, with large black bars above and below the wider aspect output. That’s a shame with a system that can readily play the games, but an easy concession given the form factor.

Fundamentally, this is the perfect device for revisiting your Game Boy Advance library. Given that it has to be one of my all-time favourite handhelds, that’s a huge benefit, and with the cannily crafted form factor, the Miyoo Flip is a pure shot of nostalgia. No, it’s not a perfect integer scaled resolution for the GBA, but it’s more than good enough to enjoy these games.

Miyoo included both the original and the revised operating software during our review period, and the updated OS made interacting with the Flip just that much easier. It’s simple, clear and straightforward, and while it is more stripped back than some offerings, it runs flawlessly, though I’m pretty certain I’ve heard that background music before. You do also have the option of running EmulationStation if that’s your preferred launcher, and you can opt for a range of its glitzier frontends if you prefer, though it may take a bit more tinkering to get everything working.

There’s a few handy quality of life inclusions here, not least the appearance of a Mini-HDMI out, a second USB-C socket for attaching a wired controller and two Micro SD card slots for adding even more storage. Thanks to that, this is a tiny device that’s capable of holding pretty much every game made up until 2000 and playing them, and that’s pretty special.

Some early builds of the Miyoo Flip were criticised for the build quality of the hinge, but in this V2 iteration it feels rock solid, unleashing a satisfying and solid click every time you open it, and moving through the three different viewing angles. Beyond that, the 3,000 mAh battery is suitable, if not stellar, and you’re going to get a good five to seven hours out of it depending on the games you’re emulating.

You are paying a slight premium for this form factor, with some serious competition from the standard Game Boy-evoking Trimui Brick that certainly feels more solid in your hand, but doesn’t have any analogue sticks, despite having similar processing power to the Miyoo Flip. The overall experience is much slicker with the Flip than budget retro handhelds like the Boyhom R36H, but it should be when the Flip costs twice as much.