Trimui Smart Pro Review: The Widescreen Underdog

The Trimui Smart Pro occupies a strange and interesting position in the budget handheld market. At around $70, it is priced squarely alongside the Anbernic RG35XX Plus and Miyoo Mini Plus — but it runs a completely different screen geometry: a nearly 5-inch, 16:9 widescreen panel where everyone else ships 4:3. That single decision cascades through the entire user experience, and whether it makes the Smart Pro a better or worse buy depends entirely on what you want from it.

After four weeks of daily use, I can say this much: the Smart Pro is the right device if you care about widescreen emulation hacks and want a pocketable machine that handles the PS1 era and below with confidence. It’s the wrong device if your library is mostly NES, SNES, and GBA — those get black bars on both sides, and the trade-off is visible.

Hardware and build quality

The Smart Pro is a horizontal slab with a PS Vita-like profile — elongated, flat on the back, with a fairly thin 17 mm depth. It weighs 231 g, which sits in the middle of the pack for devices this size: noticeably heavier than a Miyoo Mini Plus, lighter than something like a Retroid Pocket. The dimensions come in at approximately 188 × 80 × 17 mm, though the manufacturer rounds this figure, so treat it as indicative.

The build is polished plastic throughout — nothing creaks, nothing flexes under moderate thumb pressure, but there is nothing premium about it either. For €60–70, that is exactly what you should expect.

Controls are a genuine bright spot. You get two analog sticks, a raised crosspad, ABXY face buttons, and a full set of L1/R1/L2/R2 shoulder buttons — a complete layout absent on cheaper 4:3 devices. The analog sticks matter in practice for N64 and Dreamcast titles where D-pad mapping is simply insufficient. There is also vibration motor support and RGB lighting on the stick rings, which is either a selling point or an annoyance depending on your preferences.

The dual USB-C setup is worth calling out: the top port handles OTG and controller connectivity, while the bottom port is the charging port (5V/1.5A). This is not arbitrary — you cannot mix them up and accidentally try to charge through the data port. There is also a headphone jack, which is still not universal in this price category.

Speaker placement is disputed across sources — the fact sheet notes a conflict between the manufacturer’s claim of front-facing stereo grilles and a community wiki entry suggesting rear mounting. Based on review imagery, front grilles appear more likely, but I would not bank on one account over the other without a physical unit in hand. Either way, the speakers are stereo with two 1W drivers, which is noticeably better than mono setups on competing devices.

Screen

The 4.96-inch IPS panel running at 1280×720 is the defining feature of this device. At 294 ppi it is sharp — pixel structure is invisible at any normal playing distance, and the fully laminated panel means no air gap, no reflections bubbling between glass layers. Colors are vibrant and the viewing angle is wide.

What 16:9 gives you is genuine widescreen gaming for platforms that support it. PS1, Dreamcast, and N64 all have widely-used widescreen hacks, and on the Smart Pro’s panel those hacks land correctly — you fill the screen without stretching, the way the hacks intend. Dreamcast widescreen mode in particular looks excellent.

What 16:9 takes away is clean rendering of 4:3 content. GBA, SNES, NES, and other classic handheld or TV systems all rendered natively at 4:3. On the Smart Pro, that content either displays with significant black bars at the correct ratio, or stretches, which tends to look bad. If your collection skews toward GBA RPGs and SNES platformers, this panel geometry actively works against you. That is not a design flaw — it is a trade-off, and one Trimui made deliberately — but it is worth being clear-eyed about.

The 60 Hz refresh rate is standard for this class.

Performance

The A133P is a quad-core Cortex-A53 running at 1.8–2.0 GHz, paired with a PowerVR GE8300 GPU at 660 MHz and 1 GB of LPDDR4X RAM. This is not the same chip family as Anbernic’s Allwinner H700 line — it is a different architecture, and performance characteristics differ accordingly.

In practice, the A133P handles everything through PS1 without breaking a sweat, manages N64 at a playable level for a good portion of the library, and gets Dreamcast into playable territory. PSP is hit-or-miss — lighter titles work, flagship titles do not.

The 1 GB RAM figure is the tightest constraint on this platform. It is enough for everything through PS1 and most N64/Dreamcast titles, but it leaves less headroom than devices with 2 GB. Aggressive Dreamcast titles (Shenmue, Sonic Adventure 2) and demanding PSP games will run into limits the RAM ceiling imposes before the CPU does.

GBA runs with widescreen hacks active, which is a pleasant bonus on the 16:9 panel — though purists will reasonably prefer the native 3:2 ratio on a 4:3 screen.

Battery life

The Smart Pro ships with a 5000 mAh battery, which is large for a device this size. The manufacturer claims 5 hours of runtime. Community testing figures are not available in my sources to contradict or confirm that number at specific workloads, so treat the 5-hour claim as the manufacturer’s figure pending independent verification at emulation load.

The 5V/1.5A charging spec is conservative by modern standards — do not expect rapid charge. With a 5000 mAh cell at that input rate, expect several hours to reach full charge from depleted.

Firmware and software

The stock OS is a Linux-based Trimui system. It works out of the box and is fine for casual use, but it has real limitations: no Android app support, no standalone emulator support outside of RetroArch/LibRetro, and limited scraping and metadata tools. If you want to drop in ROMs and immediately have a polished library browser with boxart, the stock OS is going to require more effort than community firmware.

CrossMix OS

CrossMix is the primary community firmware for the Smart Pro, and it is device-exclusive — it does not run on any other hardware. Rather than replacing the Trimui UI wholesale, it builds on top of the familiar launcher, layering in quality-of-life features without changing the paradigm.

The feature list that matters day to day: RetroArch polish, PortMaster support for native Linux game ports (Stardew Valley, Celeste, and similar), a built-in scraper for boxart download, RetroAchievements integration, OTA updates over Wi-Fi, and a PSX Analog Detector that automatically configures the correct analog stick profile for each PS1 game. The Moonlight streaming integration is also preinstalled, useful if you have a gaming PC on the same network. OTA updates run around 2 GB per update.

EmuCleaner is a small but well-considered addition: it hides emulators that have no ROMs loaded, keeping the launcher menu clean if you only carry a subset of platforms.

Installation is via SD card flash using balenaEtcher — low risk, reversible, around 30 minutes.

Knulli

Knulli is a Batocera fork that also supports the Smart Pro. It uses an EmulationStation-style frontend rather than Trimui’s native UI, so the experience is quite different from CrossMix. Knulli’s advantage is its cross-device support — if you own multiple handhelds (including Anbernic H700 devices), a single firmware ecosystem is appealing. It brings PortMaster, OTA updates, RetroAchievements, overclocking, netplay, and ADB support on the Smart Pro specifically.

The reason Knulli exists as a Batocera fork rather than a direct Batocera port is a licensing issue: Batocera’s GPL license cannot legally integrate the proprietary GPU and display drivers some hardware requires, so Knulli separates those driver bundles.

For a Smart Pro owner who is not also managing an Anbernic device, CrossMix is the more refined single-device choice. For multi-device households, Knulli’s unified ecosystem is worth the trade-off.

European buyer notes

The MSRP sits at $69.99, though the device has appeared on sale in the $45–50 range per reported pricing during promotional periods. European pricing at specialty retailers may be slightly higher in EUR depending on the shop. Cross-border warranty claims follow the usual China-to-EU limitations — the manufacturer will often cover shipping costs for warranty replacement, but processing time can be weeks, and practical enforcement of consumer rights against a Chinese vendor is limited.

The good news is that the Smart Pro is a stable, well-documented device with an active community firmware. You are unlikely to need warranty service for software issues.

Pros and cons

Verdict

The Trimui Smart Pro is a well-executed device for a specific type of player: someone who wants to fill a 16:9 screen with widescreen-hacked PS1 and Dreamcast games, has analog sticks for proper N64 control, and is willing to spend 30 minutes flashing CrossMix before jumping in. On those terms, nothing at $70 touches it. The 720p laminated panel genuinely stands out, the control layout is complete, and CrossMix turns an adequate stock OS into a polished frontend.

The caveats are real though. If you play primarily SNES and GBA, the black bar situation will bother you — a 4:3 device at the same price bracket makes more sense. If you want PSP as a serious platform, the A133P and 1 GB RAM will disappoint. And if you want to plug into a TV, there is no HDMI output. For buyers who fit the target use case, this is a quiet recommendation. For buyers outside it, the Anbernic RG35XX SP or similar 4:3 devices are a more natural fit.