RetroN5: Hands on first look

[Satoshi_Matrix]

I find it rather strange that Hyperkin took a hard stance against roms with the Retron 5, but with the X86 it seems they have no problem with people finding disk images and loading them to an sd card.

I don't think its quite correct to say that hyperkin is taking a "hard stance against roms", just that it isn't their focus. I'm certain that it's a marketing decision that Hyperkin is making to stand out form the competition.

If you compare it to other clones that run carts, then Hyperkin can just say "but ours runs them better and has a bunch of extra features as well!"
If you compare it to other emulator machines like the Ouya, Hyperkin can say "but ours runs the original carts!"

If the RetroN5 just ran roms, it would be exactly like the Ouya, but missing a good number of the features that the Ouya has which would automatically make the RetroN5 inferior. It needs that cartridge support in order to be unique.

Are Hyperkin shoving a linux version of Dos-Box into a box with a keyboard?

That's precisely what they're doing.