I reviewed the original Trimui Smart just over a year ago, in that review I was quite impressed with the build-quality as well as its performance. Now we have the Trimui Smart Pro, which promises to move things up a notch in all of those areas.
Gogamegeek sent me the black version for review purposes, prior to it being available for purchase on their website. You can also purchase a white or grey version too, all with either no games included, right up to 256GB SD card full of games. Prices range from $89.99 – $129.99 depending on the which one you choose.
The Smart Pro is powered by the Allwinner A133 Plus, with 4x A53 cores which are clocked at 1.8 GHz. It also features a PowerVR GE 8300 GPU running at 660 MHz. It also has 1GB of LPDDR4x RAM, and my review unit came with 64 GB of storage via an SD card, as well as 8 GB of onboard eMMC storage. It’s a shame it only came with the 64GB SD card, as this reduced the amount of games for testing, especially with the PSP.
One main feature of the Smart Pro is the lovely 4.96” 720p screen. It looks stunning, and the games really do look great on it. There is also a larger 5,000 mAh battery which gives you plenty of juice for extended gameplay sessions, I easily got around 5hrs. It also has Wi-Fi 5 for online gaming and streaming.
The design reminds me of a PS Vita, especially with the button layout. The D-pad and ABXY buttons are all of a decent quality and felt very familiar to me when using them. They have a nice clicky feel to them, and everything was responsive.
Build quality is fairly decent, compared to some other budget handhelds. In fact I was fairly impressed with how it felt in my hand. But that 720p screen is the main standout feature, and I dare anyone to say it doesn’t look good.
Below the buttons, you have the two joysticks, which again, feel responsive and have a nice rubber surface to them, for additional grip. What I did like were the two recessed LED rings around the joysticks. They will change colour depending on what you are doing, such as red when charging. They don’t have a rainbow effect like other more premium handhelds, but they are a nice addition.
Audio again is fairly decent, and as long as you don’t have the Smart Pro turned up too loud, it does a decent job. At the top of the device, you get your shoulder buttons, which are adequate and again responsive. I did find the L2 & R2 buttons a little tricky to get too, as they are smaller in size, especially when using the joysticks. But overall this would be my only criticism.
The Smart Pro has a Linux-based operating system and is quite unlike anything I’ve seen before on a retro handheld. It’s built on the Tina Linux, and really does work quite well indeed. It’s very straight forward to understand, with a number of tabs along the top, including emulator (which then shows you the various platforms), best category which has a Pokémon collection in it. This OS is work in progress, and so you should expect various updates and changes, as well as a few bugs.
When it comes to performance the Smart Pro is a very capable handheld, so much so that it even plays God of War on PSP really well. Emulation of all platforms is great, NES, Master System, Game Boy, Game Boy colour, PC Engine, Sega Genesis and Game Boy Advance all run flawlessly.
More demanding emulators, such as the Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64 and the Dreamcast also work fine, but do have a few hiccups here and there depending on the game, but hopefully with future updates they will also work well.
PS1 again runs very well, and everything I tried ran smoothly and on this screen look great. The same goes for PSP emulation, it’s recommended to use 2x native resolution with auto frame skip active, which you won’t be disappointed with. As I previously mentioned God of War runs really well, which is a saving grace as it’s probably one of the best PSP games to date.
Overall the Trimui Smart Pro, was a very welcome surprise. At this price range, it’s definitely up there as being one of the best budget handhelds released this year. It’s not perfect, no gaming handheld is, but you won’t be disappointed with what the Smart Pro can do.
You can buy your Trimui Smart Pro by clicking here.
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