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Anbernic 477m Review

Anbernic 477m Review

Table of Contents

Summary

The 477m is a clear cut powerhouse, in a gorgeous Yet weighty, cnc aluminum shell. While its sheer power is mighty, it lacks driver support, and has odd out of the box triggers.

Specs as Reviewed – Anbernic 477M (Chocolate Bronze)

  • Color: Chocolate Bronze (also available in Silver Blade)
  • Material: Aluminum alloy CNC-machined shell
  • Display: 4.7-inch LTPS In-Cell display with OCA full lamination, multi-touch, 1280×960 resolution, and up to 120Hz refresh rate
  • CPU: MediaTek Dimensity 8300 (4nm 5G SoC), octa-core — 1×A715 @ 3.35GHz + 3×A715 @ 3.20GHz + 4×A510 @ 2.2GHz
  • GPU: Mali-G615 MC6
  • RAM: 12GB LPDDR5 (8gb was available at launch)
  • Storage: 256GB UFS internal storage (128gb was available at launch)
  • Operating System: Android 14
  • Connectivity: Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3
  • Audio: Dual high-fidelity stereo speakers
  • Battery: 5300mAh lithium polymer, up to 7 hours of playtime
  • Charging: USB-C 27W fast charging (5V/9V input)
  • Expansion: TF card slot supporting up to 2TB
  • Joystick: Large-angle 3D Hall-effect analog sticks
  • Lighting: 16M-color RGB joystick lighting (customizable, with breathing, rainbow, and marquee modes)
  • Cooling: Active cooling with high-speed fan + heat pipe system
  • Sensors: Six-axis gyroscope, vibration motor, and ambient light control
  • Dimensions: 176 × 89.4 × 16 mm
  • Weight: 0.354 kg

Design & Build Quality

The 477m is a standard candy bar design, featuring symmetrical sticks, and inline shoulders. The shell is made of cnc aluminum, I have the pleasure of reviewing the Chocolate Bronze model. In a few words I would describe it as ultra premium. The aluminum has a clean, cool finish. It doesn’t feel thin or cheap.

Controls & Ergonomics

In typical Anbernic fashion, this is where the device begins to show its “monkey paw traits“.

The d pad is the typical Anberic mushy style dpad. Although on my bronze model I do feel the tolerance for the dpad was slightly off on my model, as I can move it rather far around the shell. I did reach out and customer service said this is normal.

Face buttons are very nice a mushy satisfying press. The buttons are universally keyed meaning they can be swapped around to your desired layout. My unit is set to a Xbox style layout.

On the rear of the device are two very thin plastic humps that act as a way for the WiFi and Bluetooth antennas to maintain reception, these feel cheap against the metal body, but won’t peel or chip or anything.

The first major down fall of ergonomics comes with this units stock bumpers and triggers, these are a very very clicky, parallel to the board Anbernic style inline microswitches. What this means……

  • the unit could suffer from a broken microswitch if a bad drop and fall occurred
  • the overall ergonomics for most games will feel very weird and muscle memory will need to be retrained.
  • shoulders and trigger presses are loud.

The device overall, for me falls in between a switch lite, and a game boy advanced in terms of Overall in hand feel. Obviously it is heavier than both of these, but when in hand I can’t help feel like I’m playing on something similar to either of those.

Rg477m featuring Hypestix in clear.

Display & Audio

The lcd display in the 477m is a sharp nice experience, it comes in at 4.7 inches, and sports a resolution 1280 x 960. It is 120hz which is fantastic for black frame insertion. color reproduction is accurate, although it does seem to retain an image when switching screens in high contrast scenarios. (the worst I’ve experienced this with was in gameboy color games.) the screen aspect is 4:3 so it is not perfect for all the devices it can emulate.

Audio is clear and acceptable through the downward firing speakers, I think the device could have benefited from front facing speakers. The 477m claims it has a “hifi” mode, which does seem to sound very good when connected with wired iems.

A bright punchy display with no light bleed

Performance & Thermals

The performance and thermals go hand in hand when looking at the 477m. The device easily handles everything I’ve thrown at it.

Arcade mame, Atari 2600, pc engine, nes, gameboy, snes, n64, gameboy color, gameboy advance, gamecube, Nintendo ds, Wii, Nintendo 3ds, switch, sega master system, game gear, sega megadrive, sega 32, Dreamcast, Neo geo, ps1,ps2,ps3,psp and native android.

When I say thermals:performance go hand in hand with the 477m what I mean is that when running things For ps2 and GameCube level is when thermals start to climb slightly, topping out at the warmest I’ve gotten it in switch and ps3.

Where it begins to show its “monkey paw traits” again lie with the fact it’s a dimensity chip set, so although it is insanely muscular and powerful. It is relying solely on that raw power and muscle as driver support is missing. What this means is that not every game will work for some of the later systems specifically Switch which seems to benefit greatly from drivers.

Battery Life

Under lower loads again up to about the ps2-gamecube level this device excels at many hours upwards of 6-8 hours of gameplay. But once we begin to reach the levels of ps2-GameCube the device starts to last closer to 2-4 hours depending on if you have WiFi, Bluetooth on Or off and what your screen brightness and volume settings are.

On the heavy weight systems, switch and ps3 mainly, I can easily drain it in as little as 2 hours.

It does support up to 27watt fast charging, which does seem to manage to charge the device from 0-100 in about 2 hours. One thing these android devices would all benefit from is smart charging to set a 80% max level.

Software & UI

Out of the box the software and os was alittle buggy, but within 2 weeks Anbernic had a patch available. Some of the common bugs prepatch….

  • loud fan when in performance mode, with either auto or high settings only.
  • Device would stall and stutter and black screen reboot itself.

Post patch software version 1.30 has given us, a cool mode for the fan when in performance which seems to be a great balance.

My device is using the stock android experience, and I use ES-DE as a front end. One nice thing about the software on the 477m is the launcher button is configurable, meaning that I can use either Anbernics own launcher or ES-DE with the provided button.

When I boot my device up, it launches directly into ES-DE where I have everything I could need to access imported into it, including android apps and settings. This really truly does make the device feel console like. The only exception currently is ps3 as ES-DE support is still developing for ps3.

Es-de featuring @techdweeb theme.

Modding & Accessories

The 477m ships with a soft touch tpu case, that is very nice, a very snug uniform fit on the 477m. It does not improve or hinder ergonomics dramatically, but many do enjoy it.

There are many 3d printed grips and cases available on marketplaces. I own a 3d printed flip grip that does indeed improve the overall hand feel of the device, however I don’t enjoy the added bulk.

The device is small enough to fit in many bags and cases.

The 477m features removable stick caps, and fit Hypestix and many other popular stick toppers.

Get Better Buttons has designed shoulder and trigger buttons for the 477m these are truly incredible! They really are transformative in how this device functions and takes a way a major flaw in design.

  • these are high quality 3d printed buttons that change the design to a standard stacked layout instead of inline.
  • These do not change the fact that they are still micro switch presses and not true analogue triggers.

Gamma Os is coming to this device soon, and will provide even more QOL updates and features!

The guts.

Known Issues / Bugs

  • As far as Known bugs post firmware 1.30 the device will always reset its fan mode on reset.

Final Thoughts

The 477m is a really well thought out device with a ton of power under the hood, with a few little quirks to work through. I recommend this device to anyone looking for a powerful unit capable of playing most things. With that said you need to understand the difference in the dimensity vs a snapdragon when it comes to driver support and game comparability.

with a little base level tinkering and front end configuration, a little light modification in the Get Better Buttons.

You end up with a device that feels very reminiscent of a switch lite but ultra premium.

If you don’t mind the extra weight and price of an all metal android handheld, the 477m is a no brainer.