Anbernic's square screen RG CubeXX out this week, Ayn's Odin 2 Portal coming soon

Come the festive season, come a new batch of sleek hardware to tempt us nerds into upgrading our retro gadgets.  

The latest model off the never-ending Anbernic production line is the RG CubeXX, a square-screen model aimed firmly at the budget retro crowd, and arriving just in time as a cool stocking filler. 

Featuring a 3.95-inch wide-view IPS screen providing a crisp 720*720 display, it is powered by Anberinc's usual 1.5GHz H700 quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 and a dual-core G31 MP2 GPU, all running a Linux OS to drive your choice of emulators and games. 

Going on-sale this week in black, grey or white, with various storage options, there's a modest $7 discount for early buyers off the $67 RRP. If you are new to the brand there's a huge range of devices across all budgets on Amazon too.

The CubeXX comes with 32GB of storage and up to 512GB through the twin card slots on the top. The side grips look pretty chunky on the stock photos, and I'm a fan of the curved edging, which just looks more comfortable than previous Anberic modelss and most gadgets of this type. I'm still not a fan of the light-up sticks, but otherwise it looks like a solid and compact model. 

Retro Handhelds got an early model last week and their review badges it as the new 1:1 Budget King, and the video shows off a smart-looking front end interface. Gadget hoarders have another box to grab, while those, like me, who might be getting a bored of the narrow confines of the Miyoo Mini Plus and similar devices might fancy something with a bit more finger space. 

If you want something a bit sleeker, the new Ayn Odin 2 Portal is up for pre-order, starting from $299 with a 7-inch OLED 120Hz screen and bags of storage for games all the way up to PS2 and Dreamcast, powered by a Snapdragon 8G2 processor and Adreno GPU core.  

Not sure if the "Portal" name is lining them up for a slap (and some free publicity) from Sony's lawyers. With Base, Pro and Max options, there's enough power any gamer, and makes me wonder where a PSP2's specs would fit in among this lineup? 

Running Android, it opens up the complete world of gaming and should be able to push even the most challenging 32/64-bit titles with ease.