Retro
People agonise over brands and screen sizes for their first handheld, then miss the one choice that actually shapes what the thing feels like to own. It's the operating system. Nearly every retro handheld runs either a stripped-down Linux or a full copy of Android, and that fork decides how much you pay, how much power you get, and how much of your first evening goes on setup versus playing. Get this right and the rest is detail. Get it wrong and you've either overpaid for tinkering you didn't want, or underpaid for a device that can't run the thing you bought it for.
So before you compare a single spec sheet, pick a side. Here's the honest version of what each one gets you, and who should buy which.
Linux: cheap, simple, and playing in two minutes
The Linux handhelds are the cheap end, roughly £30 to £100, and "cheap" here is a compliment. You charge it, switch it on, and it boots straight into a list of consoles and games. No account to make, no app store, no updates nagging you, no emulators to hunt down and configure. Someone has already done the fiddly part and baked it into the firmware, so your job is to add games and press start.
That simplicity is the whole point, and it's genuinely lovely. For a first device, or for a kid, or for anyone who just wants Mario on the sofa without a project attached, it's hard to beat. The catalogue on a Miyoo, an R36S or an RG35XX-class device is exactly this: switch on, choose a game, play.
The honest catch is power. These devices use low-cost, low-wattage chips, and they top out somewhere around the PlayStation 1 to Dreamcast era. Everything up to and including PS1 runs beautifully, and a good chunk of N64, PSP and Dreamcast is playable game by game. But GameCube, PS2 and anything newer is simply off the menu, no matter how you tweak it. That isn't a fault, it's the deal you're taking for the low price and the plug-and-play life. If your whole library is 8-bit through PS1, you are not missing a thing.
Android: more money, more power, more setup
Android handhelds cost more, usually £120 and up, and that money buys you two things. First, real horsepower: the Android devices are where GameCube, PS2, and at the top end a decent share of Switch come within reach. Second, a proper computer in your pocket. It runs apps, so the same device streams your games from a PC or the cloud, plays media, browses, and does the general Android stuff a phone does. For a lot of buyers that streaming and media angle is half the reason they go Android at all.
The price is that you often do the setup yourself. Android doesn't hand you a tidy pre-built game list. You install each emulator from an app store, point it at your games, and tune the settings per system to get things running sweetly. There are front-ends that pull it all together, but even those take an afternoon to get right the first time. Budget an evening of setup, not two minutes, and be honest with yourself about whether that sounds like fun or like homework. For some of us the tinkering is the hobby. For others it's the reason to buy Linux instead.
Killing the battery myth
Here's the one that everybody repeats and mostly gets wrong: "Android means terrible battery life." It doesn't, or at least not for the reason people think. Battery drain is driven far more by what you emulate than by which OS is drawing the menu.
Run a Game Boy or SNES game on a mid-range Android handheld and it sips power, because that little emulator is barely troubling the chip. Now run PS2 or GameCube on that same device and the battery drops fast, because pushing those systems means running the processor flat out and lighting up a bigger, brighter screen. The OS isn't the villain. The workload is. A Linux device would drain just as hard if it could run the same heavy games, which is precisely the point: it can't, so it doesn't, so it looks more frugal.
The useful way to read a battery figure: ask what it was doing. "Eight hours" on a light 16-bit game and "eight hours" on PS2 are wildly different claims, and a listing that quotes the rosy number rarely tells you which one it means. Match the estimate to the systems you'll actually play.
The beginner's steer
For most people buying their first handheld, start with Linux. It's cheaper, it's simpler, and it does the thing the hobby is actually about, which is playing the classics without a fight. You'll spend less, you'll be playing the same night it arrives, and you'll learn what you like before committing real money. Plenty of people never feel the need to go further, and that's a perfectly happy ending, not a stepping stone you failed to climb.
Go Android when one of two things is true. Either you specifically want the heavy systems, GameCube, PS2 and up, and no amount of Linux will get you there. Or you want the extra tricks, streaming from your PC, media, apps, a device that earns its keep beyond retro. And there's a third quiet reason: if you actively enjoy tinkering, if setting up and tuning emulators sounds like a good evening rather than a chore, Android rewards that in a way the locked-down Linux boxes never will.
What you should not do is buy an expensive Android device "to be safe" when your whole want-list stops at PS1. You'd be paying double for power you won't use and a setup job you didn't ask for. Buy for the games you'll actually play, not the logos on the box.
How to shop it here
You can filter the whole catalogue by operating system on the full live board, so you can look at just the Linux devices or just the Android ones and stop comparing apples to oranges. Decide your side first, then compare within it. That's the trick to not drowning in choice: a £50 Linux handheld and a £200 Android one aren't really rivals, they're answers to different questions.
Once you've picked a family, our best value picks rank what's genuinely worth the money at each price, and the best overall list covers the standouts if you'd rather just be told the strong ones. Either way the prices there are what's real this week, not what a listing wishes it could charge. Pick the OS, then let the board do the narrowing.