Review: Miyoo Mini

For its price, the Miyoo Mini punches well above its weight class, with a 2.8″ 640×480 display, solid hardware, and performance up to the PS1. In this video we’ll take a deep dive into this new retro handheld and see what kind of potential it can bring to the table.

Buy one here (non-affiliate link)

Timestamps:
00:00 introduction
00:47 tech specs
01:16 unboxing and impressions
03:37 software orientation
05:04 adding games and configuring RetroArch
07:50 RetroArch interface testing
10:21 comparison with other devices
11:44 emulation performance
14:49 Miyoo Mini vs Anbernic RG280V
22:57 summary (likes & dislikes)
25:00 conclusion

Update: I’ve been getting a lot of questions about this, so here are some more thoughts on the screen. In my video, when I said that it has some of the worst *clarity* of any screen I own, I should have used a different word; it was too specific to photo editing and from my food photography/cookbook days. I was referring to the “clarity” slider/profile like in Adobe LightRoom — this increases the contrast of the mid-tones only, and makes images “pop” on a screen. By contrast (no pun intended!), “contrast” affects the low and high tones, and is also a factor when looking at an image. Specifically, I feel that the Miyoo Mini screen lacks mid-tone prominence and dark tones (deep blacks), resulting in a saturation profile that appears “hazy” and washed out. The haziness isn’t a reference to the sharpness of the display, which is fine when navigating the menus (although the front menu looks to have added a bloom effect to the icons). The games are soft looking but that is likely due to poor scaling and bilinear filtering (which sadly can’t be turned off in this RetroArch build).

So in summary, I would grade the screen as follows:

• Design/bezels: 10/10
• Resolution: 8/10 (scaling will be fixed with CFW)
• Color balance: 8/10 (a bit more yellow than blue)
• Tint: 9/10 (just a hair green)
• Saturation: 6/10
• Contrast (dark/light tones): 4/10
• Clarity (mid-tones): 5/10
• Viewing angles: 6/10

I apologize if my criticisms of the screen were taken a different way. I went back and re-listened to my footage, my only comments were on saturation, contrast, and clarity. Overall the screen is nice, and in a vacuum, the issues aren’t readily apparent — but when comparing them directly with another device I thought the distinction was worth mentioning.