Anbernic announces the RG DS Plus

Update: 9/11/2026: 12:00 PM EDT

Pre-order link is live on Anbernic’s website.

Update: 9/8/2026: 10:50 PM EDT – Seeing the price for the RG DS Plus being posted over on Retrohandhelds.gg:

For the First 72 Hours: RG DS Plus will be $84.99
After the First 72 Hours: RG DS Plus will be $94.99

The RG DS Plus will be going live on both Aliexpress and Anbernic’s own website September 15th, at 6:00PM Beijing Time (3:00AM Pacific).

Does the team over at Anbernic ever sleep? It seems that there is always a steady drip of quirky handhelds being announced by them. We recently had the RG Rotate, RGSP, RG55G1, and now we have the RG DS Plus. That’s a lot of handhelds to release in such a short amount of time!

The upcoming RG DS Plus is a dual-screen handheld that comes with some improvements over the original RG DS, along with some notable drawbacks as well.

The Good:

The RG DS Plus will now come with larger, higher-resolution dual screens with 4X scaling. The previous model offered a dual-screen experience with 4″ 640×480 screens. The new model is a step up to 4.3″ 1024×768 displays.

Many complained about the hinge on the original RG DS, and Anbernic has addressed that issue with its updated model. The RG DS Plus will come with a redesigned 15°–180° hinge. This dual-alloy hinge will allow stepless positioning for different viewing angles.

The new model will come in three colors: Matte Black, Coral Pink, and Metallic Blue. It will also come with a capacitive stylus that slides into the device for safekeeping.

Rumors are that this device will be sold for under $100 USD. Read below as to why this might be the case.

The Bad:

RAM has been reduced from 3GB to 1GB. There is no internal storage, so have those microSD cards at the ready. In a weird move, the second analog stick has been removed. But to be fair, if you’re buying this device to play Nintendo DS games, do you really need analog sticks?

By now, you probably guessed it, but with the move to 1GB of RAM, this dual-screen handheld does not support Android. This will be a Linux handheld, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as the CFW community will be sure to support this device, especially if it sells well at the sub-$100 price point.

So what systems can you play on this device? Like all the RG devices, this handheld will be able to play the classic systems with no problem. So your Atari, NES, Super Nintendo, Game Boy, etc. will all work fine. You’ll also be able to play games from the Nintendo DS without any issues. Most N64 and PlayStation 1 games should work fine, but there will always be exceptions. With this handheld featuring only one joystick, some might be tempted to try out PSP games, but you won’t get a great experience due to the limitations of the Rockchip RK3568 processor.

Who is this device for? First, the collector. Someone who needs to collect them all. Stop giving me those looks! Then there are those gaming on a budget who want to play older classic systems in a dual-screen setup with a heavily supported Linux custom firmware community.