Retroid offered very limited returns for its unfixable handheld

The Retroid Pocket Mini has an unfixable issue that’s causing certain graphical effects for emulated games not to work properly. Retroid, the China-based company that makes the Pocket Mini, announced on Discord that it will accept returns of the device but only during a limited March 8th to March 14th window — and capped at just 200 returns from owners who live outside of China, as RetroHandhelds reports.

Earlier in the week, the outlet says Retroid acknowledged it couldn’t fix the issue, which affects how the screen shows scanline and pixel grid shaders used to give classic emulated games the appearance of being played on the CRT displays they were designed for. The effects can show up as “misplaced scanlines, uneven pixels, or a slightly distorted image,” RetroHandhelds writes.

In this morning’s message, Retroid says carrying out this return campaign is a “large and costly endeavor,” and that it expects “a lot of return requests outside of screen-related issues.” Retroid also mentions it is asking customers to pay to ship their returns, which it promises to reimburse. Finally, the company added that it will offer all Pocket Mini owners “a $10 stackable coupon” for two of its future handhelds.

As Russ from the Retro Game Corps YouTube channel notes in a post on Reddit asking for recommendations to pass along to the company for dealing with the situation, Retroid is in a hard situation as a small company that now faces having to pay for very expensive shipping on returns. But that doesn’t change the fact that many gamers who bought the $199 handheld specifically to play retro games are left with a device whose otherwise impressive display does a bad job with some of the oldest tricks in the emulation book.