Retroid Pocket Nova is a relatively new emulation handheld that quickly got itself a cult following in the community. It’s a seemingly contradictory device with quite some compromises, but it works really well if you know what you’re buying.
Nova combines:
- a 4:3 OLED screen perfect for older games (up to the PS2 era)
- a dpad-focused control scheme perfect for even older games
- enough raw power to play anything you throw at it from the appropriate era and then some
- enough power still left to enable almost any shaders on top of the game
- the best controls on the market that I’m aware of
- a small and lightweight form factor (255 g)
- a plastic front, contrasting the common full-glass front (some may like it, I don’t)
The chipset powering it (Snapdragon 8 Gen 2) is very well known, so I won’t bother retracing what others already described countless times. I’ll focus on my own experience with the device instead.