🔥 Best Controllers for Retro Gaming and Emulation in 2026
The 8BitDo Pro 2 is the all-around best controller for retro emulation in 2026. Wired hall-effect via GameSir G7 SE. Five picks, covered.
Buying Guide Articles
22 SpecPicks buying guide articles, sorted by trend score. The full archive is at all articles →
Vertical
Sort
Category
🕹️ Retro Gaming — buying-guide 22 articles
More from the SpecPicks archive
Older long-form guides and explainers from the legacy editorial archive — same trust, same affiliate disclosure as the modern feed above.
- Best Retro Handhelds in 2026 — From $35 to $500
- Best Budget Gaming PC Build 2026 — ~$1,000 ($800 on Sale)
- Emulation Hardware in 2026: FPGA, Software, and Cart-Reader Ecosystems
- RTX 4070 Super vs RX 7800 XT — Which to Buy in 2026
- Best 1440p Gaming GPUs in 2026
- The Complete Voodoo5 5500 AGP Driver Guide (2026 Edition)
- How to Build a Windows 98 Retro PC in 2026
Hardware Benchmark Data
Gaming FPS, AI inference tok/s, and synthetic scores for GPUs, CPUs, RAM and SSDs — sourced from TechPowerUp, PassMark, Tom's Hardware, and community measurements.
GPUs: Intel Arc B370 GPU · Intel Arc B390 GPU · AMD Instinct MI355X 288GB · Intel Arc B570 · NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti · NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 · NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti · NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 · NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 · NVIDIA RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell · NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell · Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB · Radeon RX 9060 XT 8GB · Radeon RX 9070 · Radeon RX 9070 XT · Arc B580 · NVIDIA B200 · NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER · NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER · NVIDIA H200 SXM 141GB — more →
CPUs: Intel Core Ultra 5 250KF · AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D · Apple M3 Ultra · Ryzen 5 7500X3D · Ryzen 9 9950X3D · AMD Ryzen 5 9600 · Apple M4 · Apple M4 Max · Apple M4 Pro · Intel Core i5-14500 · Intel Core Ultra 5 245K · Intel Core Ultra 7 265K · Intel Core Ultra 9 285K · Ryzen 5 9600X · Ryzen 7 5800XT · Ryzen 7 9700X · Ryzen 7 9800X3D · Ryzen 9 9950X · AMD Ryzen 5 7430U · Intel Core i5-14600K — more →