Android (Q): Best android tablet for Emulation (High end systems, N64 and over)?

2DSGamerdude · Jun 8, 2020

hi all,
lately I've been thinking of buying a android based tablet for emulation specify in order to be able to play some emulators that I cannot do yet portably,
eg the following:

Emulators that I would like to find and android tablet for: N64, Virtual boy, Sega Saturn, Gamecube (3x of these are high end emulaoturals).

but um before I go and buy any tablet for any sum of money I would like to ask what would be the best android tablet that can best
emulaourial the stuff I want above and that is wroth spending money towards?

I've seen that an android tablet needs to have:

1) a good CPU/RAM
2) most recent android version (Android 9.0 pie and over)?
android 7/8 won't do for emulation?

also, are budget tablets good for this kinda use?
not sure if I could find a good budget tablet for emulation of these systems?

thanx

emigre · Jun 13, 2020

High end Android Tablets are a rarity. I have the Tab S6 which is the best placed for Gamecube. Check out this video from ETA Prime:

A budget tablet for Gamecube just doesn't exist from what I can see.

Rafciu · Jul 3, 2020

Xiaomi mi pad 4 should do fine up to Gamecube, but i'm not sure if it can handle dolphin on 3x.

2DSGamerdude · Sep 12, 2020

Rafciu said:
Xiaomi mi pad 4 should do fine up to Gamecube, but i'm not sure if it can handle dolphin on 3x.

hay Rafciu
i found a way to play these systems portably,
not using a tablet but using a smartphone

last month i bought a redmi note 8 pro for less than 200 euro
and it works great for the systems that i want to emulate on the go

(N64/VB/GC/WII/Saturn/Dreamcast).

all work great with the free emus on andriod

i even bought a nice frontend for keeping all my systems in one place
Reset colletion (i had to buy it), but for 6 euroes it was totally wroh it.
and i have a IPega 9087s gamepad that i found for 28$ (i had to wait 1 month for it, but's it works great with my note 8 pro

.

Rafciu · Sep 14, 2020

2DSGamerdude said:
hay Rafciu
i found a way to play these systems portably,
not using a tablet but using a smartphone

last month i bought a redmi note 8 pro for less than 200 euro
and it works great for the systems that i want to emulate on the go
(N64/VB/GC/WII/Saturn/Dreamcast).

all work great with the free emus on andriod

i even bought a nice frontend for keeping all my systems in one place
Reset colletion (i had to buy it), but for 6 euroes it was totally wroh it.
and i have a IPega 9087s gamepad that i found for 28$ (i had to wait 1 month for it, but's it works great with my note 8 pro .

Yeah phones thease days are amazing regarding emulation. I have Oneplus 7t it can handle even 3ds !! As i gamepad Ipega is good choice. I had Ipega red knight but i accidentally drop it and after that some inputs had issues so i bought Flydigi wee 2 and i think its even better than red knight. Have fun with Your phone and gamepad

r0achtheunsavory · Sep 14, 2020

#1 - Any kind of gaming on Android seems to suck due to latency from the bizarro world OS (unless something has massively changed in recent releases)

#2 - The best Android tablets have OLED screens with PWM (pulse width modulation) and cause horrific eyestrain just like every PWM monitor on the planet

I don't really know what the situation for jailbroke IOS is like, but I doubt it could be worse than dealing with PWM screens and bad for gaming Android OS.

2DSGamerdude · Sep 14, 2020

Rafciu said:
Yeah phones thease days are amazing regarding emulation. I have Oneplus 7t it can handle even 3ds !! As i gamepad Ipega is good choice. I had Ipega red knight but i accidentally drop it and after that some inputs had issues so i bought Flydigi wee 2 and i think its even better than red knight. Have fun with Your phone and gamepad

yeah, it's great so far like 90% of my GC games work great, most of my wii liabary minus a few games, the other systems (n64/saturn/dreamcastvb) work prefectly that is a given, those systems would work great on a 100euro or so device like redmi note 7, but i got the 8 pro for gc/wii games.

not sure how much better gc/wii games are on the 9 pro? since it has a snapdragon 720 CPU instead of mediatek G90T?

the ipega pad is great, i've been playing it for a week since i got it and it still has juice (not needed a recharge yet).

the only thing i don't like is the placement of the X & B buttons, i wonder if you could open up the device and swap the buttons around so they action buttons look like a gamecube layout?

Rafciu · Sep 15, 2020

2DSGamerdude said:
yeah, it's great so far like 90% of my GC games work great, most of my wii liabary minus a few games, the other systems (n64/saturn/dreamcastvb) work prefectly that is a given, those systems would work great on a 100euro or so device like redmi note 7, but i got the 8 pro for gc/wii games.

not sure how much better gc/wii games are on the 9 pro? since it has a snapdragon 720 CPU instead of mediatek G90T?

the ipega pad is great, i've been playing it for a week since i got it and it still has juice (not needed a recharge yet).

the only thing i don't like is the placement of the X & B buttons, i wonder if you could open up the device and swap the buttons around so they action buttons look like a gamecube layout?

There alot of Youtube emulation channels that test different configurations regarding emulation. Snapdragons for now have best performance. I remember the time when i had Samsung galaxy s8 as a phone it was amazing, premium look, really good screen i like watching netflix on that device but it has one major problem - Exynos processor. It sucks on emulation i managed to have some decent speed with dolhpin mmj but i used alot of hacks to do so and phone itself gets really hot (i cant hold it in hands) so i decided my next phone will be with Snapdragon. Only Demon ps2 is not properly optimized for snapdragons. Here is a test how Snapdragon 720 performs:

Regarding ipega and all gamepads, my only concern is D-pad... i like playing fighting games but if i compare dpad from ipega/wee2 to xbox one dpad i always choose xbox.

mesmeriize · Sep 16, 2020

For majority of games working fine on 4x+ on 3ds and psp/ ps2 and every system below, rog phone 3 with 6.6 inch screen and fan cooler. That's the best of the best. If you want to turn the phone into a Nintendo switch, wait for the Kunai 3 controllers and grip. If you want to connect it to TV, wait for release of the dock. Haha

Android (Q): Best android tablet for Emulation (High end systems, N64 and over)?

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