Retro
Open any handheld listing and you'll see a wall of console logos. N64, PSP, Dreamcast, sometimes PS2, all stacked up next to a £40 price. It reads like a promise, and it mostly isn't one. What those logos really mean is "this can boot a game from that system", which is a very different thing from "this runs that system's library the way you remember it".
The honest truth is much simpler and much more useful once you get it. Emulation is not per-system, it's per-game. A handheld doesn't "do N64" as a yes-or-no fact. It does some N64 games at full speed, some at a playable-but-rough speed, and some not at all, and which games land in which bucket comes down to the chip inside. So let's walk the tiers and be straight about what you actually get for your money.
The one rule that never changes: PS1 and below is easy
Here's the floor, and it's a generous floor. Everything up to and including the original PlayStation is a solved problem on basically any of these devices. NES, SNES, Master System, Mega Drive, Game Boy and Game Boy Advance, the arcade classics, and the entire PS1 library. All of it runs beautifully on the cheapest Linux handheld you can buy, and it will keep running beautifully no matter how much more you spend.
If your dream is Chrono Trigger, Metal Slug, Symphony of the Night and a stack of Game Boy Advance, you do not need to spend big. You need the cheapest thing with a decent screen and buttons you like. Everything above this line is where the real questions start, and where the listings start fibbing.
The single best habit you can build: stop asking "can it run N64" and start asking "can it run the specific N64 games I care about". The community keeps living compatibility lists for exactly this. Bookmark the handhelds.wiki compatibility lists before you buy anything for a specific system.
The tiers, honestly
These are rough 2026 street tiers, not exact prices, and the chip class matters more than the badge on the box. Check the live board for what each actually costs today.
| Tier | Chip class | Runs well | The honest caveats |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under £30 | SigmaStar SSD202D (Miyoo Mini class) | All 8/16-bit, GBA, PS1 | Stops cleanly at PS1. Don't expect more, and you won't be disappointed. |
| £30 to £60 | Allwinner H700 (RG35XX class) | Everything above plus PS1 flawlessly | N64, PSP and Dreamcast only patchily, game by game. |
| £60 to £120 | Rockchip RK3566 | Adds Dreamcast, most of N64, much of PSP | Saturn still patchy. The heavier N64 and PSP titles fight back. |
| £120 to £250 | Unisoc T820 / Snapdragon 865 (Android) | Saturn, GameCube decent, some 3DS | PS2 is genuinely hit and miss, title by title. |
| £250+ | Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and up (Android) | PS2 and GameCube well, a large share of Switch | Switch is never guaranteed, per game and per update. |
The budget battlegrounds: N64, Saturn, Dreamcast, PSP
This is where the money and the marketing collide. On a £30 to £60 handheld, the H700-class chips will proudly boot an N64 game, and some of them run great. Then you load Perfect Dark or Conker and watch it crawl, because those games leaned on hardware tricks that are murder to emulate. Same story with PSP: a 2D-ish or lighter 3D game can be lovely, while God of War or Gran Turismo asks for far more than the chip has.
Now here's the counter-intuitive bit that catches people out. The Sega Saturn is harder to emulate than the newer, more powerful Dreamcast. That feels backwards, and it's real. The Saturn was built around an awkward dual-CPU design that emulators still wrestle with, so a device that handles Dreamcast comfortably can still choke on Saturn. Older does not mean easier. Raw age tells you almost nothing about how hard a system is to run.
So the £60 to £120 Rockchip tier is the sweet spot for these awkward customers. It brings Dreamcast into "just works" territory, handles most of the N64 library and much of PSP, and only leaves Saturn as the stubborn holdout. If N64 or PSP is a big reason you're buying, this is the floor I'd start at, not the £40 shelf.
The mid battlegrounds: PS2, GameCube, and the Android jump
Cross into Android and £120-plus, and the target shifts up to PS2 and GameCube. The Unisoc T820 and Snapdragon 865 class will do Saturn properly at last, handle a lot of GameCube, and start dabbling in 3DS. But PS2 is the new N64 here: it will run, and it will run some of the library well, while other games stutter or need per-game settings to behave. "Plays PS2" on a mid-tier listing means "plays a chunk of PS2 if you're willing to tinker", not "plays all of it".
GameCube tends to fare a bit better than PS2 here, which surprises people who assume the two are interchangeable in difficulty. They aren't. Every system has its own personality under emulation, and that's exactly why the per-game reality beats any spec sheet.
The top battleground: Switch, and why it's never a promise
At £250 and up you reach flagship Android, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and beyond. Here PS2 and GameCube are largely comfortable, and you get a genuinely large share of the Switch library running well. Notice the wording. A large share, running well. Not "plays Switch" as a clean tick.
Switch emulation is a moving target that depends on the individual game and even the game's version, and the whole scene is legally and technically shakier than the older systems. A device can run one Nintendo Switch hit beautifully and trip over the next. If someone sells you a handheld on the strength of "it plays Switch", treat that as "it can play some Switch titles today", and go and check the compatibility list for the exact games you care about before you spend flagship money on them.
The one piece of buying advice that saves the most regret
If a particular system is your whole reason for buying, buy a tier up from where that system first starts to work. The tier where a console "starts" running is the tier where it runs its easiest handful of games and struggles with the rest. The tier above is where the library as a whole becomes a pleasure instead of a project.
Want N64 and PSP to feel right? Don't stop at the £40 device that boots them, reach the £60 to £120 Rockchip class. Set on PS2? The £120 mid tier technically qualifies, but the £250 flagship is where it stops being a fight. You're not paying for the ability to load the game. You're paying for the headroom that turns "it runs" into "it runs like you remember".
That's the honest map. Under £30 for the classics done perfectly, the sweet spot in the middle for the awkward fourth-gen and handheld stuff, and real money only if the heavyweight consoles are the point. Our best value picks and the full live board rank what's actually worth buying at each tier, with the prices that are real this week rather than the ones a listing wishes were true.