Chinese handheld maker Anbernic is leaning hard into nostalgia with its upcoming RG Vita and RG Vita Pro, a pair of portable gaming devices that borrow heavily from Sony's nearly 15-year-old PlayStation Vita. The company has teased the handhelds but has yet to announce pricing or availability, though early reviews of the base model suggest it will sit firmly in the budget category.
The RG Vita packs a 13.9 cm (5.46 inch) IPS LCD touchscreen running at 1280 x 720 pixels, which is actually larger and sharper than the original Vita's display. Under the hood sits a Unisoc T618 processor with two Arm Cortex-A75 cores and six Cortex-A55 cores clocked at 2 GHz, paired with Mali-G52 graphics. The device ships with 3GB of RAM, 64GB of storage expandable via microSD, a 5,000 mAh battery, and runs Android 12.
The specs paint a picture of a device aimed at retro gaming rather than heavy emulation. According to early hands-on coverage, the limited RAM means the RG Vita ironically struggles with actual PS Vita emulation, though it should handle PSP and older platforms without issue. The design also diverges from Sony's original in a few ways, swapping the Vita's dome D-pad for a membrane version and ditching the rear touchpads entirely. Whether the Pro model addresses these limitations remains to be seen.
