PowKiddy RGB20SX

← Back to Retro Hub

Device Overview: PowKiddy RGB20SX

The PowKiddy RGB20SX exists for one reason: its 4.0-inch, 720×720, perfectly square 1:1 display. That single design choice is the entire pitch. Where almost every rival glues itself to a 4:3 or 16:9 panel, the RGB20SX chases the handful of systems that were themselves square or near-square, and it hopes you care enough about Game Boy, Game Boy Color and the two-screen stack of a Nintendo DS to accept the compromises that come with such an unusual shape. Underneath sits a Rockchip RK3566, a modest quad-core ARM chip that PowKiddy has used across much of its 2023-2024 lineup. It launched in April 2024 at roughly $70, though street prices have wandered between about $60 and $90 depending on the store and the batch. This is a specialist toy, not an all-rounder, and it should be judged on that narrow ambition.

Emulation performance, generation by generation

The RK3566 pairs four Cortex-A55 cores at 1.8GHz with a Mali-G52 2EE GPU. That is entry-level silicon by 2024 standards, closer to a cheap TV box than to the Snapdragon parts in premium Android handhelds, so temper expectations accordingly. Everything 8-bit and 16-bit runs without drama in RetroArch: NES, SNES, Genesis, Master System, PC Engine, plus the Game Boy family that this screen was practically built for. Game Boy and Game Boy Color titles look genuinely excellent here because a square panel lets them fill far more glass than a widescreen device allows. Sony PlayStation runs at or near full speed on most of the library. From there it gets uneven. Nintendo 64 through mupen64plus is a lottery, with the demanding titles stuttering badly. Dreamcast on Flycast is rough despite the chip nominally being capable. PSP via PPSSPP manages the 2D and lighter 3D games but chokes on anything ambitious. The DS is the marquee case on paper, and DraStic can stack the two screens beautifully on this display, but the missing touchscreen (more on that below) undercuts the whole idea.

Screen, build and controls

The OCA-laminated IPS panel is the best thing here. It is bright, colors are punchy, and viewing angles hold up, though the image visibly washes out once you push past roughly 80% brightness. At 254 pixels per inch it is sharp for retro content. The shell is matte plastic and, surprisingly for PowKiddy, feels solid rather than hollow; at 240 grams and 87 x 143 x 22 mm it is a chunky vertical slab. The controls are where the budget shows. Dual symmetrical analog sticks are fitted, but these are conventional potentiometer sticks, not Hall-effect units, so expect eventual drift. The D-pad is mushy with a vague actuation point, the side-by-side L1/L2 and R1/R2 shoulder buttons feel cheap and are awkwardly placed, and the Start and Select buttons are loud, overly clicky, and crowded up against the sticks. Worst of all, there is no touchscreen, so navigating a DS game’s lower screen means dragging a cursor with the analog stick. Connectivity covers dual microSD slots, USB-C, a 3.5mm jack, video output, Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth.

Software and setup

Units ship with ROCKNIX, a Linux front-end descended from the JELOS/EmuELEC family, and the out-of-box configuration is the device’s real weakness. Reviewers repeatedly found the hardware held back by a poorly tuned OS: audio crackle, a menu button that does not map correctly, a wrong battery readout, and systems that run worse than the silicon should allow. The fix is to reflash. A fresh ROCKNIX build, PlumOS, or GammaOS C are the community images people actually run on RK3566 hardware, and a clean install plus manually sorted per-core settings closes much of the gap. Note that the popular muOS and ArkOS projects do not target this chip, so your firmware menu is narrower than on Allwinner-based rivals. None of this is beginner-friendly; if flashing an SD image and hunting for BIOS files sounds like a chore, this is not the handheld to learn on.

Price, value and who it is for

At $70 to $90 the RGB20SX asks a real question: do you specifically want the square screen? If your goal is a device that plays Game Boy, Game Boy Color and DS games with the whole panel devoted to them, and you are happy to reflash the firmware and tolerate ordinary shoulder buttons, this is close to the only game in town at the price. For anyone else it is hard to recommend over the cheaper, better-supported RG35XX-H or an Anbernic Allwinner unit, both of which run everything up to PS1 more smoothly out of the box and have far larger custom-firmware communities. Buy the RGB20SX for its shape and its screen, go in expecting to do the software work yourself, and it rewards a specific kind of hobbyist. Buy it as your first emulation handheld and you will likely be frustrated.