Guides, RG503

Anbernic RG353M Review & Guide

by Russ

Another month, another Anbernic handheld, right? The new RG353M surprised me with some overdue component upgrades and a wonderfully compact and thin design. On top of that, it stands on the shoulders of all their other products to finally be a 4:3 retro handheld that does everything just right without any glaring issues.

Buy one here

Timestamps:
00:00 introduction
01:46 tech specs
03:32 unboxing and impressions
07:12 comparison with other handhelds
09:52 software experience
11:03 Linux performance testing
15:00 Bluetooth, HDMI testing
15:53 Android experience and streaming
18:20 JELOS and ArkOS testing
20:26 summary (likes and dislikes)
22:44 conclusion

Moonlight streaming. Here is my guide to get PC streaming set up:

Guide: Moonlight on Retro Handhelds

Also consider using Castor, a way to stream from your PC that won’t take up your whole PC at the same time:

Introducing Castor – Split and Stream your PC!

PortMaster. This tool will allow you to play some select PC ports directly on your retro handheld, including the RG353M:

Guide: PortMaster on Retro Handheld Devices

Also check out my Ports category on this website for game-specific instructions.

Custom firmwares:

ArkOS: To get started, download the RG353V build of ArkOS from the link near the bottom of their wiki frontpage. Flash that firmware to a microSD card (16GB is recommended) using tools like Rufus or Balena Etcher. Once the card is flashed, re-insert it into your PC and you should see a “BOOT” partition. Within there, find the file named rk3566-oc.dtb and copy it to your PC (on your Desktop, for example) as a backup. Next, download this replacement file (right-click and select “Save As”), unzip it, and replace the rk3566-oc.dtb file on your card. Eject the card from your PC, insert it into your RG353M, and it should boot properly. For more information about how to get started with ArkOS, refer to their wiki page.

ROCKNIX (forked from JELOS): To get started, download the RG353P build of ROCKNIX from their releases page (you may need to click on the “show all assets” hyperlink to find the build). Be sure to use the .img build and not the .tar file. . Flash that firmware to a microSD card (16GB is recommended) using tools like Rufus or Balena Etcher. Eject the card from your PC, insert it into your RG353M, and it should boot properly. For more information about how to get started with JELOS, refer to their wiki page.

25 thoughts on “Anbernic RG353M Review & Guide”

  2. Curious to have a comparison with ODROID GO Ultra on the hardware point of view (and why not on the software but I think it’s not very OK for this part on Odroid :p )

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    1. It’s difficult to compare the two. The S922X chip in the OGU is much more powerful, but the device doesn’t have any OS that can take advantage of that power right now. In terms of build quality, the RG353M wins hands down. The screen is bigger on the OGU but it doesn’t have touch capability like the RG353M. So right now, I’d rather use the RG353M because of the mature software. Six months down the road? We’ll see.

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  3. Hey Russ, thanks for doing this. I’m not quite understanding what you’re saying regarding the touch controls. Does the touchscreen work using the default Batocera settings? Is this something that will be fixed in an update down the road? I’d love to play DS games, but it sounded like (again, apologies if I misunderstood) we need to boot into a special app to play those games.

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    1. Yes, for now the touchscreen doesn’t work properly in the Linux/Batocera operating system. It is something that Batocera has been working on so if Anbernic forks a more recent version of their OS in the future it might be a possibility. But for now, the best way to play touchscreen DS games will be through the Android side, using the Drastic emulator that comes pre-installed on the system.

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  5. Thanks for this review Russ! I received my RG 353M recently and needed a slim protective case for it. I discovered that dimensionally the 353M is almost the same size as a GBA, just a little less tall and thick. The GBA neoprene sleve that RetroModding sells for <$12 is a perfect fit for the 353M. Photos of the fitment: https://www.instagram.com/p/ClSLD03PgAf/

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  7. How can I swap between stock and custom firmware? Is it as simple as swapping out SD cards? Also, how do I upgrade to a better SD card for the stock firmware? Is that as simple as manually transferring the files?

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  9. Hi Russ,

    I’ve been looking through your guides, but I haven’t found the answer on how to delete save files, particularly Grand Turismo 2. Every time I load up the game it auto loads from the save files. I have this issue with Grand Turismo 1 also. Is there a way to delete the save files so I can start from the beginning? Thanks!

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  10. sir can you help me about how to backup os firmware anbernic rg353m?
    i love stock sir 😅
    please somebody help me 🙏

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  11. @kaslang – take a look at https://www.reddit.com/r/RG353M/comments/yxg84q/new_start_here/ as that has links to all of the stock Anbernic OEM images.

    @Albert, the save states should be in the playstation roms folder along with the game roms. You can always rename them first before deleting if you’re not sure what is a game rom file and a save state file. You can also go into RetroArch settings and turn off auto save for playstation emulation.

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  12. Hello, Can anyone advise how I can add new games rg353m? I added the new games in roms folder of my SD card, but the system won’t refresh or register the new add. Any help would be appreciated.

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  13. Thank you for the guide, the amount of time you’ve saved me hours of googling for these handhelds is immeasurable at this point lol
    Also I just want to say, this guide links to a 2022 version of JelOS, please consider linking to their main page or releases page or something

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  14. Having trouble getting any NDS games to load after setting up Ark OS on the 353M
    I have a 2 sd setup with the games in the second slot. Other systems seem to work fine but the DS games are having trouble booting into drastic I guess – any ideas? (the reset drastic setting under tools doesn’t seem to fix the issue either)

    Thanks for any help/suggestions!

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  15. Installed 353m image for 353ps and works but when trying it on 353m getting issues with sound and many games just won’t load

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  16. Does this device have rumble hardware or not? I am running ROCKNIX and struggling to get rumble to work. I don’t have the stock OSes around anymore to go back and test on those if there was ever working rumble. There is ArkOS documentation for this device implying there is rumble and saying how to enable it per emulator, but it’s not working for me on ROCKNIX at least. The product page for the device on the Anbernic site doesn’t mention rumble. I haven’t down a teardown or anything. I found reddit threads with people asking about rumble but with no definitive answer. I have tested GBA and PS1 rumble with no luck.

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    1. I would recommend ROCKNIX, a fork of JELOS that is still updated. On their github’s releases page search for “353” and you should find the download. It’s the one called ROCKNIX-RK3566.aarch64-20240815.tar at the time of this writing but there may be a newer version later.
      They recommend removing Android from your device. There are instructions here:
      https://rocknix.org/devices/anbernic/rg353pmvvs/#installation
      If you don’t remove Android from the device, you’ll run into some issues with sleep, and any issues you report to their issue tracker may be closed as not supported, just FYI.

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    2. Amendment to my other comment which I can’t seem to edit or reply to, you want the .img file not the .tar, I pasted the wrong name in the other comment, but this is also covered by the guide above.

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  18. My RG353M has plagued me with booting into ARKOS works 1 out of 5 attempts, and it requires multiple boots to get into me playing any game. This could be 5 to 10 minutes in a day.

    I’ve tried ARKOS with the RG353M .img from their website and RG353V with the replacment .dtb file from Russ’s guide.

    Any suggestions to getting my 353M botting right and I can enjoy playing games on it?

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    1. Some things to try if you haven’t already tried them:

      • Get new SD card(s) from a reputable brand like Samsung or SanDisk in case yours are failing
      • Remove Android from your device if it’s still on there (ROCKNIX docs have instructions for this)
      • Try using ROCKNIX instead of ArkOS.

      Personally, ROCKNIX always boots on my RG353M, but there is an ongoing problem where sometimes my Games SD card doesn’t show up and I have to reboot from the menu for all the games to show. I reported it but they blamed my SD card, which I replaced and then still had the issue. It works most of the time and it doesn’t take that long to reboot. My files aren’t actually getting corrupted or anything, some sort of intermittent boot-time issue.
      BTW, as far as I can tell, ArkOS is based on a very old Ubuntu version from 2019, while ROCKNIX is using a very new/fresh kernel, mesa, etc. So performance should be better and issues should be fixed faster. Updates are pretty frequent also.

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