After polling its community on Discord, MagicX has reworked the processor options for its upcoming Mini40 retro gaming handheld. The original plan called for a Rockchip RK3566, a 22nm quad Cortex-A55 chip that has been a staple of budget handhelds for years. Community feedback pushed MagicX to drop it entirely, and the Mini40 will now ship in two configurations: a $79 (€73) model with a Rockchip RK3572 and 2 GB of LPDDR4 RAM, and a $59 (€54) model with an Allwinner A333 and 1 GB of DDR3 RAM. Both run Linux.
The RK3572 is a meaningful step up from its predecessor. Built on an 8nm process, it pairs dual Cortex-A73 performance cores with six Cortex-A53 efficiency cores and a Mali-G310V2 GPU with Vulkan 1.2 support, according to early benchmarks from SBCwiki. It also packs a 4 TOPS NPU and hardware AV1 decoding, though those capabilities matter less on a 10.2 cm (4-inch) 800 x 480 display. The A333 variant, with its dual Cortex-A7 cores, sits firmly in the "Game Boy through PS1" emulation tier but comes in at a price that undercuts most of the competition.
The Linux-first approach is a notable departure from the Mini40's predecessor. The Mini Zero 28 shipped with Android despite listing both Android and Linux on the box, and Linux arrived on that device through community effort: developer Shaun Inman built the Moss-zero28 project on a stripped-down build of Tina Linux that MagicX shared with developers, using it as the foundation for MinUI on that hardware. With the Mini40, Linux is the starting point rather than something community members had to supply themselves.
Regardless of processor, every Mini40 gets the same shell: a 10.2 cm (4-inch) IPS panel, dual speakers, dual microSD card slots, Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.1, a vibration motor, symmetrical recessed thumbsticks, and in-line shoulder buttons. MagicX has published official renders showing Black, Orange, Translucent Green, and Translucent Magenta colorways, though the company is running yet another poll to decide which colors ship first. The company is also still gauging whether demand supports producing both processor variants or just one, and no release date has been set.
