For anyone thinking about picking one up explore buying a used vita. It can do everything this does (sans GameCube) but it can play vita games as well. Sd card adapters are <$10
It's a decent handheld but Sony's paranoia really kneecapped it. And it doesn't quite have the ease of use as a lot of the retro handhelds available today.
Also I just ftp and drop roms on the sd card too.
To get the mod working I had to compile the software for macOS 10.13 as some libusb function wasn’t working correctly and wouldn’t inject the payload to the vita. This was well out of my comfort zone.
Honestly, vita is life!
It really was let down by the business folks at Sony. I guess the upside is that it paved the way for the Switch and Nintendo really learned from Sony's mistakes (but even then, my Vita sees a lot more usage than my Switch).
What's sad is that modding anything requires a level of technical knowledge and patience that most will not have. I fully agree with you though - i bought a used Vita and could not be happier with it as a handheld console.