Powkiddy Q90: Mini console with huge potential for $35.99

Especially now, in times of home-office and social distancing, you need a few things to do at home. Consoles are a great way to make time pass quickly. But instead of buying an expensive Playstation 4 or Xbox ONE, you can also use emulator consoles like the Powkiddy Q90. This costs just over $30 and you can play your favorite games from your childhood and youth.

• Powkiddy Q90 Mini console
  • at TomTop for $35.99 | Cafago for $36.34

Technical data

Despite the relatively small 3 inch screen, you can see all games well. The only thing that disturbs a bit is that it reflects very strongly. This makes playing in strong sunlight sometimes impossible. Especially very dark games like Quake are extremely affected.

What is a bit strange: there is no information about the internal memory. I assume 16GB, but it could be more. Furthermore, memory cards up to 16GB should be supported, but larger ones are also compatible.

The scope of delivery of the Powkiddy Q90

There is actually not too much to say here. The box in which the console is delivered fulfills its purpose, but it does not have a really eye-catching design as known from the big manufacturers. In fact, the packaging of such Chinese consoles is in most cases rather unimpressive. Inside the box, besides the console itself, there is a short manual in English and Chinese and a USB to USB-C charging cable. This is actually a positive little surprise, since comparable models are almost always equipped with Micro-USB.

Those who are a bit familiar with Nintendo consoles will quickly notice that the Powkiddy Q90 looks extremely similar to the manufacturer’s latest handheld. Especially the light blue version of the Q90 looks like a mini version of the Nintendo Switch Lite, which is funny, considering that the Lite is already a smaller version of the regular Nintendo Switch. Personally, I’d also go for the light blue version, since the transparent one we have here for testing has the Nokia battery on the back that is a bit distracting to the overall picture.

The shape, the arrangement of the keys and even the connectors for headphones and everything else are arranged very similarly. Although some knobs and buttons are slightly offset or have been swapped, the inspiration from Nintendo’s console is undeniable. Only with the analog stick, one decided to choose a different variant. This one is much smaller and unfortunately has less grip than the original.

The system overlay is then again reminiscent of the well-known retro consoles from China. In fact, it looks much more reduced. Personally, I even find that quite good. After all, you buy an emulator console like this to make up for your favorite classic games, not to use it as an MP3 player. But it’s quite nice that you can individualize the design of the overlay a bit, I chose the Zelda design for example.

A little bit less power

The console runs smoothly and almost all games start without problems and are very pleasant to play. An exception are the Playstation games. But this was to be expected, because the Powkiddy Q90 is simply not equipped with enough processing power for these games.

So you should rather limit yourself to the emulators and pre-installed games of older consoles and handhelds. Especially the GameBoy and GameBoy Advance games run very smoothly and from the first minute you feel like you’re back in your childhood.

The game collection of the Powkiddy Q90

Before we go into more detail about some of the games, a few details need to be mentioned. With actually all China consoles we have written about so far, be it the RG350 or the LDK, we have warned that the manufacturers and retailers advertise with astronomically high numbers when it comes to the number of available or pre-installed games. But the Q90 actually meets these requirements and as far as the test has shown, most of the games are really playable. In my opinion this also makes it unnecessary to install other emulators or games. Although most of the games are only available in English, some of them only in Chinese, I didn’t find this really negative.

Since there are really far too many good games on this console, I will not start listing my favorites now. All of the installed games are very well done and I couldn’t find one that doesn’t work so far. But as a big Pokémon fan, I have to mention that almost all the parts that came out for the GameBoy and the GameBoy Advance can be found on the console and play as well as they did back then!

How good is the Powkiddy Q90?

Let me make it short: For a price of just over $30, with a choice of hundreds if not thousands of pre-installed games and the possibility to install even more emulators and games, the Powkiddy Q90 is for me one of the best China consoles available at the moment.

Of course, this console also has some problems, the analog stick bothered me most personally, but as a complete package I find it almost unbeatable in the price/performance ratio. It even knocked the RG350 off my personal throne of retro consoles.