PowKiddy X35S

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Device Overview: PowKiddy X35S

The PowKiddy X35S is a vertical, 4:3 emulation handheld built on the Rockchip RK3566, the same quad-core Cortex-A55 SoC that powers the Anbernic RG353 line and Powkiddy’s own RGB30. It landed in August 2024 as a sub-$75 device aimed squarely at the crowd that grew up on Game Boy, arcade boards and 16-bit consoles rather than anything with a modern 3D pipeline. The tall shell, the front-facing speakers and the d-pad-under-thumb layout are lifted almost wholesale from the RGB20S, but PowKiddy swapped in a newer chip, added a second analog stick and, crucially, an HDMI-out port. If you want one sentence: it is a cheap, portrait-oriented retro box that reaches the PS1 line comfortably and stumbles past it.

Emulation performance, generation by generation

Set expectations by the silicon. The RK3566 is a low-power ARM part with a Mali-G52 GPU, not a Snapdragon and certainly not a Windows APU, so treat anything you read about “PSP and N64” as a ceiling you brush rather than a floor you stand on. Everything through the 16-bit era is trivial: NES, SNES, Genesis, PC Engine, Game Boy/GBA and the CPS1/CPS2/Neo Geo arcade boards all run at full speed under RetroArch cores with room to spare. PlayStation 1 is the sweet spot – the DuckStation and Beetle PSX cores hold 60fps across the vast majority of the library, and you can even enable modest internal-resolution upscaling on 2D-heavy titles. Above that it gets selective. PSP through PPSSPP is playable on lighter 2D and isometric games but drops frames in demanding 3D; N64 via Mupen64Plus is the classic RK3566 lottery, where Mario 64 and Zelda hold up and Rare’s heavier engines chug. Dreamcast on Flycast is similarly hit-and-miss. Saturn, GameCube, Wii, PS2 and 3DS are effectively off the table – do not buy this expecting them.

Screen, build and controls

The panel is a 3.5-inch IPS running native 640×480, fully laminated, at a flat 60Hz. For 4:3 and pixel-art content that resolution is a genuine strength: SNES and arcade games map cleanly with integer scaling and no black-bar waste, which is the whole argument for a vertical device like this over a widescreen slab. At 228 PPI it is sharp enough that scanline shaders actually look convincing. The body is plastic, 177 grams, and roughly 81 x 126 x 22 mm – pocketable, light, and unmistakably budget in the hand. You get dual analog sticks, a full ABXY cluster, a d-pad low on the face, and L1/R1/L2/R2 shoulders. PowKiddy and some listings describe the sticks as Hall-effect and the triggers as analog, but coverage is inconsistent across sources, and I would treat both claims as unconfirmed until the unit is in front of you. Stereo speakers sit on the front, alongside a 3.5mm jack, USB-C and USB OTG.

Software and setup

Out of the box it runs PowKiddy’s own Linux frontend off the internal eMMC – functional, ugly, and not why anyone buys an RK3566 device. The real appeal is custom firmware. ROCKNIX, the community successor to JELOS, officially supports the X35S and is the install I would recommend: mainline Linux, Panfrost/libmali graphics, an EmulationStation front end and clean per-system core management. GammaOS Core also covers the X35S if you would rather have a stripped-down Android 13 base for Play Store apps and Android-native emulators. Note one wrinkle ROCKNIX documents: you burn the generic RK3566 image and then edit the FDT line in the extlinux config to point at the X35S, so it is a hair less turnkey than a device with a dedicated image. Connectivity is the other caveat – the ROCKNIX hardware page lists no built-in wireless, and reporting on onboard WiFi and Bluetooth is contradictory, so assume you may need a USB WiFi dongle for netplay or scraping rather than counting on radios being present.

Price, value and who it is for

PowKiddy launched the X35S between roughly $59.99 and $74.99 depending on the bundled microSD, though third-party stores have listed it as high as $89 to $96, so shop around and buy near the low end. At $60 it is a reasonable vertical retro machine with a better chip than the RGB20S it apes and an HDMI port most rivals at this price omit. It is the wrong buy if you want PSP or N64 as a daily driver, if you need guaranteed WiFi, or if you dislike portrait ergonomics for horizontal games. It is the right buy if your library skews Game Boy through PlayStation, you like the tall form factor for arcade and puzzle titles, and you plan to flash ROCKNIX on day one. Judged as what it actually is – a cheap RK3566 portrait handheld – it earns its keep.