GAMEMT E5

← Back to Retro Hub

Device Overview: GAMEMT E5

The GAMEMT E5 is a sub-$50 preloaded handheld that leans on a gimmick almost no rival bothers with: it is also a 17W power bank. The dual USB-C ports on the top edge let it charge your phone from its 5,000 mAh cell, and when you are bored you flip it over and play one of the roughly 1,200 games baked into storage. That framing matters, because it tells you what the E5 is not. It is not an RK3566 device you fill with your own ROM collection and a custom OS. It is a closed, fixed-menu appliance built around a V.R. Technology VT569B, the same budget “plug-and-play” chip family that powers the countless anonymous retro bricks on AliExpress. GAMEMT wraps it in a nicer shell and a real IPS panel, but the silicon underneath is firmly entry-level, and pretending otherwise would set you up for disappointment.

Emulation performance, generation by generation

The VT569B pairs a single Cortex-A7 core clocked around 810 MHz with a modest Vivante 3D GPU and just 64 MB of DDR2 RAM. Read that RAM figure again — 64 megabytes, not gigabytes — and the ceiling comes into focus. Eight- and 16-bit systems are the comfort zone: NES, SNES, Genesis/Mega Drive, Game Boy through Game Boy Advance, Master System and Neo Geo all run at or near full speed, which covers the bulk of what most buyers actually want from a device this small. Push into 32-bit and the picture gets ragged. PlayStation 1 is the advertised headline, and lighter 2D PS1 titles are playable, but 3D-heavy games stutter and emulation stability varies enough that “up to PS1” is better read as “some PS1” than “all PS1.” Anything past that — N64, PSP, Dreamcast, GameCube — is out of reach here regardless of what a marketplace listing implies. Those systems need the Unisoc T620- and Rockchip RK3566-class chips found in the E5 Ultra and E5 Plus, which are entirely different machines despite the shared name. Do not confuse the three when you shop.

Screen, build and controls

The 5-inch IPS screen is the E5’s strongest single component. Independent spec databases measure it at 960×544 — the same resolution the PS Vita used — at roughly 220 ppi and 60 Hz, giving clean, evenly lit output that punches above the price. Some listings advertise 1280×720; treat that as unconfirmed marketing. The body is plastic and ships in cheerful colorways including transparent green, transparent smoke, pink and black-with-orange, each wearing a “GAMEMT” logo beside the display. Controls follow an asymmetric layout with twin analog sticks flanking a d-pad, four A/B/X/Y face buttons, an M/T/K function cluster and L1/R1/L2/R2 shoulder buttons. The sticks are conventional potentiometer units — there is no Hall-effect sensing here, so budget for the usual long-term drift risk, and there is no rumble motor. GAMEMT publishes no weight or dimensions, so plan to judge the ergonomics in hand rather than on paper.

Software and setup

This is where honesty matters most. The E5 runs a closed-source Linux front-end with the games already installed: power on, pick a system, pick a title, play. There is no custom-firmware scene to graduate into. You will not be flashing muOS, Knulli, ArkOS, ROCKNIX, OnionOS or Batocera onto this — those projects target Allwinner and Rockchip hardware, and the VT569B simply is not supported by any of them. Worse, the device was reportedly marketed at one point as using an RK3326, only for teardowns to reveal the VT chip, which extinguished any lingering homebrew hope. Practically, that means you cannot choose your own RetroArch cores or drop in a standalone emulator such as DuckStation or PPSSPP. You can usually add your own ROMs to the microSD card for the systems the built-in menu already understands, but you are living inside GAMEMT’s front-end, not Linux proper.

Price, value and who it is for

At roughly $40, the E5 is priced as an impulse buy, and judged on those terms it is a reasonable one. The panel is genuinely good, the power-bank trick is legitimately handy on a trip, and for NES-through-GBA play it does the job without fuss. But the tiny RAM pool, single-core chip and locked software mean it will never grow with you, and its PS1 billing oversells what the hardware delivers. Buy it as a cheap, cheerful retro-plus-charger novelty for a kid, a commute or a backpack — not as your gateway into serious emulation or custom firmware. Anyone who wants a device to tinker with, or one that reaches N64 and PSP, should skip straight to an RK3566-class handheld (including GAMEMT’s own E5 Plus and Ultra) and spend the extra money. Documentation on the base E5 is thin and inconsistent across sellers, so confirm the exact chip and battery capacity on the specific listing before you pay.