This cheap handheld can emulate games, but also plays your physical GBA cartridges

The Analogue Pocket still stands out today thanks to its integrated cartridge slot, allowing you to play your physical games on a more modern handheld. Unfortunately, it doesn’t emulate digital game ROMs. But what if you don’t want to choose between a conventional emulation experience and physical cartridges? That’s where the GAMEMT MTX comes in, from the same company that brought you the Pocket Super Knob 5000.

GAMEMT has recently released the MTX (h/t: Retro Handhelds). This is an emulation-focused handheld that also comes with a Game Boy Advance cartridge slot. This means you can play physical GBA cartridges via emulation, or switch to emulating other consoles via ROM files.

It’s worth noting that the original Game Boy Advance could run Game Boy and Game Boy Color games too via its cartridge slot, but it’s unclear whether the MTX supports these older cartridge formats.

The new handheld also supports software emulation of other game platforms, including the SNES, Genesis, PS1, and PSP. That’s good news if you only have a tiny collection of GBA cartridges or if you simply want to enjoy more platforms.

Otherwise, the MTX has a 4-inch IPS LCD screen (720 x 720), 1GB of RAM, 8GB of expandable storage, and a 3,000mAh battery. Don’t expect analog sticks, although you are getting four face buttons and four shoulder keys. The handheld also ships with an AllWinner T509 processor, which consists of a low-powered quad-core Cortex-A53 CPU and a PowerVR GE8300 GPU. This GPU was a fixture in sub-$150 phones back in 2019 and 2020. In terms of I/O, the handheld packs an HDMI port, a headphone jack, a microSD card slot, and two USB-C ports.

You can buy the GAMEMT MX via the official website or AliExpress. The device has a recommended price of $84.99 but a promotional price of $79.99. So if you like the idea of playing physical GBA games on a more modern handheld but don’t want to pay over $200 on an Analogue Pocket, this might be for you.