If you recognise the name ‘Anbernic’, it’s likely because you’ve had your eyes on the company’s gorgeous retro gaming handhelds. You might want to think twice before buying one, though, as some folks have accused it of quietly downgrading the DDR4 memory to DDR3 and cutting memory size in half, with Anberic reportedly only denying the latter part of that allegation.
As reported by our friends over at Tom’s Hardware, a user on Reddit noted that the Anbernic RG 34XXSP they bought reportedly came with 512 MB of LPDDR3 memory, instead of the 1 GB advertised on the website.
A quick look through an archive of the Anbernic websites shows the RG 34XXSP used to advertise 2 GB of LPDDR4 memory, but now merely says 1 GB. Speaking to Tom’s Hardware, Anbernic says “the current standard memory capacity is 1GB” and that the 512 MB model was “an unexpected error”. It also claims it will “assist with a replacement as a priority” for anyone affected.
That means anyone who has bought an Anbernic device recently should check that it does indeed have the advertised memory. As noted on Reddit, the downgrade to 512 MB of memory is “low enough to become an actual usage problem”.
Notably, Anbernic did not seem to respond to the LPDDR3 downgrade claim, and replacing ‘LPDDR4’ on the website specs certainly doesn’t paint the best picture about what memory you can expect in your device. As has become the norm with the memory crisis, that means buying the handheld now gets you a worse one than you would have gotten just a year ago, for the same price.
512 ram RG34xxSP – Update – Samsung 740 K4E4E324EE EGCF – 512 LPDDR3 from r/ANBERNIC
The problem many have with this downgrade is that it doesn’t appear to have been signposted by Anbernic itself, outside of a specs sheet most will glaze over. If it instead got a price increase, people would notice immediately, but simply changing the spec sheet won’t be enough to inform many of what has actually changed.
The memory crisis has hit many gaming companies over the last year. Just a few months ago, Wallace Santos, the CEO of gaming PC builder Maingear, told me, “In the two plus decades I’ve been doing this, this is the first time where I’m seeing no light at the end of the tunnel, at least for the next two years. It’s not a multi-week problem, it’s a multi-year problem that we’re facing right now.”
We’ve seen price increases, in turn, from Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Valve on their respective gaming devices. And that’s before mentioning the Steam Machine, which I’m not fully convinced we’ll see soon, or at a reasonable price. Still, if you’ve got an Anbernic device, it might be worth cracking that bad boy open to see if all is in order.
Best handheld PC 2026
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