What I meant was that it is a part of it, but yeah definitely the majority of the difference is in the quality of the emulators.

Well part of the answer to that is simply Moore's law, computers have just gotten faster and more efficient in 6 years, the other is that PS2 emulators themselves have had some great progress lately.

Here's some gameplay on a $150 android handheld, see for yourself.

A lot of the issues you're describing can probably be attributed to the stock firmware. For whatever reason the manufacturers of these devices ship them with firmware on it that functions and manages to do little else.

There are a lot of community options (depending on the device of course) that make them far easier to use and in some cases more performant too.

Yes, they can be a little pricey but for less than 100 bucks you can probably fit it in your budget. If you can't, well, the device you're using reddit on can probably also emulate games, so, you can get your fix that way.

Well he said tops out at $200ish in price but that is the absolute max. Most of the market is in the 50-100 dollar range and imo they don't compete with the steam deck. Something the size of the DMG Gameboy (or, in the case of some of the mini handhelds like the Miyoo mini, the size of a Gameboy cartridge) with excellent battery life is simply not in the same product category as the Steam Deck. Sure, the Deck can emulate a few of the more recent consoles (as well as y'know, PC games) but it is absolutely massive, has a battery life of like, 5 hours max if you're playing NES games or whatever, and this one is personal taste but the dpad kinda sucks for retro games. Like, it's usable but I don't really want to play any platformers on it.