I don't own an Snes anymore, but I'd be interested in speedrunning the game. I'm thinking of getting a clone console for price and convenience reasons, cause I have a lot of more games for nes, gb, gba etc. Was just wondering since I know it sorts of act's as an emulator if it was one considered legal? Also does anyone have one to recommend? I keep seeing Retron5 for what I need but if there's any suggestion I'm up for it.

I understand original console is better, but I don't own any of the other consoles anymore, so I'm trying to find a middle ground as I rebuild my collection slowly and speedrun anew.

Thanks!

If I recall correctly, the RetroN 5 runs a fairly old (and license violating, since no sources are available) version of SNES9x Next that might fall into the list of banned emulators as per game rules.

Since the sources for the emulators built in into the console are not available to the general public, the only ways to evaluate its accuracy can be either disassembling the firmware of the console to check the emu version or have mods do an empirical analysis of a recording.

My two cents: if you're going to tackle running the game, you're definitely going to get better accuracy by emulating the game on your PC instead of an underpowered "single purpose emulation box". Whenever you feel confident with going further down the RTA rabbit hole, you can bite the bullet and pick up a console + a flashcart for it or an actual SM cartridge.

According to this review, the RetroN 5 uses Retroarch, so as with running Retroarch on PC it all depends what core it's using. https://www.retrorgb.com/retron5review.html

Assuming there's no way to tell which core it's using, then as LucentW said I would suggest just starting with a known-good emulator on PC. Versions 1.50 and later of Snes9x will run on just about any system, and if you have a good PC then you could even run Bsnes. The behavior of those emulators is well-known, and your runs will be directly comparable to those of the community.