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Design-wise, whilst at first glance the two look very similar, if you look more closely, you can see subtle redesign changes, such as changing the squared corners you find on the RG353M and making them more rounded. I did find that this allowed the RG405M to be slightly more comfortable to hold for extended play sessions. It’s an easy upgrade recommendation if your last device was the RG350 or RG351 as the RG405M emulates more powerful systems and also lets you access the Android play store (pre-installed). It’s still an incremental upgrade from the RG505 but the aluminium shell and overall hardware really delivers a premium retro gaming experience at a decent price:performance ratio. It’s a statement of the company’s craftsmanship and it’s on display here. Update August 28th 2023: The Vulkan development is starting to be incorporated piece by piece into the Canary builds and as of Canary build 2598, Nintendo 3DS emulation is actually somewhat playable on the RG405M. The RG405M is easily capable of emulating Sega Saturn games. No special tweaks or settings are necessary to run any Sega Saturn games.
You will now be booted into fastbootd mode, ensure that you see the fastbootd text on your RG405M/RG505 before proceeding The RG405M now has a 4” IPS touchscreen display, a slight increase from the RG353M 3.5” screen. The resolution of 640 x 480 stays the same though. The 4:3 ratio on a 4” screen is perfect when playing your retro games.
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Based on debloated and clean LineageOS 19.1 build, Android 12 for a smoother experience. GammaOS includes Google Services and Play Store. GammaOS Lite excludes Google apps and services for extra performance headroom. Other additions on the Android side is the emulator frontend from Anbernic, pre-installed Play Store and a new boot animation. The frontend is serviceable and a welcome addition, although you might find better options on the Google Play Store. I was rather positively surprised to be welcome by a custom Anbernic boot animation as it indicated that the company might be favouring the Android route going further. Connect your RG405M/RG505 to your PC or Mac via USB cable while booted into Android, open a command prompt window, and issue the following command: There are many free Retroarch cores available that are also good for emulating N64 games if you prefer a free option but I find the features and ease of use of M64Plus FZ just so much more convenient.
It has a 4” IPS touchscreen display with a resolution of 640 x 480 and its 4:3 ratio is the perfect size for playing most retro games. One downside of the device’s screen, however, is that the IPS panel can sometimes have an inconsistent brightness when viewed from particular angles and in certain lighting. Its display isn’t exactly top-of-the-line, but at its price point, it definitely gets the job done. Screen-wise, you’ll still be fine emulating games from consoles like the PS2 without having issues seeing what’s happening in the game, but it’s still small enough to feel like a handheld. GammaOS is based on LineageOS 19.1 (Android 12). It provides a debloated and performance optimized experience for users who are looking to get the best out of their Anbernic RG405M and RG505. From there, simply create a folder on the SD card and start copying your ROMS over to the SD card. To simplify and organize your files, I recommend creating a folder called ROMS and a series of subfolders inside this with the names of each of your systems that you plan to emulate (e.g. Sega, SNES, GameCube, etc). If you are on GammaOS, you will boot into a recovery screen, use the volume down button to navigate to the Enter Fastboot menu selection, press the power button once.While there are plenty of reasons to celebrate this aluminum all-star, there are some downsides as well, perhaps more than one would imagine given all the unbridled praise I just gave the device in the last paragraph. Depending on your D-pad placement preferences, your favorite screen resolution, and your love or hate for Skittles (I’ll explain later), the 405m may or may not be for you. Is it the right size? Is the screen big enough? Does the metal get hot or cold like every single metal handheld does? I will attempt to answer the hard questions and the incredibly obvious ones to the best of my ability as we take this journey once again down the retro handheld rabbit hole. Hope you’re wearing your puffy blue dress on this very merry un-birthday because this tea party is going to take a bit. Hardware The Anerbic RG405M comes with the Android 12 operating system installed out of the box. It’s been optimized for the device. From the moment you boot it up, you’ll notice that all of the device’s necessary emulators come pre-installed, so you can get right to playing games immediately. Another handy touch is that you’ll find that the Google Play Store also comes pre-installed for you, so if you feel like getting down on some Android games or streaming Netflix or Hulu, have at it. SafetyNet fix, present as Pixel phone: for fixing TMNT etc (Activated by toggling Magisk > Settings > Enable Zygote and reboot your device). Ignore any warning about additional setup required, this is a false flag. Magisk is working fine.
Smaller consoles like PSP, Nintendo DS, Gameboy Advance and best SNES games will work flawlessly here especially on the larger 4” display, and so it should with these kinds of specs.Daijisho launcher as front-end, pre-configured with RetroArch for some systems. (Optimized settings for GB,GBC,GBA,NES,SNES,Genesis,PSX) (BIOS files need to be supplied by you). Another new aspect to this handheld is its curved sides. I wasn't sure how I initially felt about this design but didn’t mind it while I started using the device. It does rest better in the hands than a more rectangular device but opinions might vary. v1.3.3) Fix an issue with provisioning flag not being set and read correctly on some devices. Stops RetroArch and Daijisho settings from being reset to defaults, and stops long boot times for affected devices. v1.3) Add SafetyNet fix, present as Pixel phone: for fixing TMNT etc (New installs only, I don't want to overwrite any existing Magisk config. Activated by toggling Magisk > Settings > Enable Zygote and reboot). Existing installs can use this workaround: #5 (comment) TGameCube and Wii games all perform very well here; the only thing to keep in mind is that depending on the title, you may need to change the input settings from the default to your preferred playstyle.
I also recommend that you use the Safe/Optimal setting preset rather than the Fast/Unsafe preset as I have found better performance with the safe settings. Remove/rename any existing fastboot.exe application that exists on your PC to prevent issues with flashing such as the flashing stalling at vbmeta_a. Open a command prompt, type in the following command: where.exe fastboot.exe. This will show you where your fastboot.exe is being called from. Anything that is not in the C:\Program Files (x86)\ADB and Fastboot++\fastboot.exe location should be renamed to something else. Rename to something like oldfastboot.exe PPSSPP has a free version and a gold version. There is no difference in functionality between the two. The gold version is only if you feel like donating your fee to the developer for his hard work.Open the EraseUserData.bat script, it will begin factory resetting your device in preperation for GammaOS. This step can take up to 10 minutes so be patient. When the script is complete, the command prompt window will close itself after 60 seconds. v1.2) Presents the physical gamepad as an xbox controller. This may require you to reconfigure your emulators and game controller settings if already on GammaOS. The RG405M is easily capable of emulating Nintendo DS games. As an android device with a touch screen, it can also emulate the touch screen of the original DS. No special settings or tinkering is really required to play any Nintendo DS game on the RG405M. Thus, with more demanding systems, performance will really depend on the game and how much time you’re willing to spend to tweak settings. For most games I tried, I’d say I had decent to bearable performance and I’d mostly be playing some Gamecube titles on the RG405M myself. Of course your preferences and needs might vary, and this device not being able to boot two different OSes like some other Anbernic devices might be a downer. The same goes for Gamecube and Wii games, it works well with most games straight out of the box, but will require you to do some button mapping and tweaking by jumping into the emulation settings but that’s pretty easy to do. You will find larger games to be hit and miss in terms of emulation quality.
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