I work for a tech company, and I learned that they can make these devices so cheap by taking chips from other old devices and devices that have been thrown away and repurposing them for emulation handhelds like this. That’s why they scratch off the serials.
I don't want to go all "environmentalist," (and I know China is probably only doing it to make money) but it's really a fantastic way to recycle. 👌 I'm pretty sure last year's popular "Miyoo Mini" recycled a lot of obsolete cell phone parts.
A decade ago you could buy a tablet from microcenter for 10 buck's. I remember going a across a commenter on reddit saying that they read an article that the ps4 controller costs 15 bucks to make(that may have been the dual sense actually,. They're Chinese made electronics and plastics, I wouldn't be surprised if it costs a couple bucks) I'm sick of hearing from RUclips reviewers on 20-30 dollar controllers at the very least complaining about lower grade plastics and then justifying it cause of the cost. The overwhelming bulk of the cost is the engineer who designed the controller to have a feel that defies the laws of.physics. That's why I'm into controller collecting cause I feel I'm actually paying for/tracks an engineers hour has opposed to a 20 dollar chinese made blender that has been touched up/refreshed from a design that was patented a half a century ago. I bought an NYXI,a chinese brand themselves selling 50 dollar Switch controllers that don't even have HD haptics,and I received an email complaining pandemics situation justifying a dollar or so increase. 50 buck bucko'roos wasnt enough to eat the cost? You had to complain to the customer? This proves to me that this is a mindset thing.(all those companies making record profits while they were bellyaching about supply chain costs due to the pandemics)
@@sdtqwe4ty7742 1st, check your source if it's correct for the $15. Also, they need packaging and paying for the machines and other overhead costs that exist other than the price of the materials... think about how expensive the machines to make the parts is... And then, they need to make an actual profit and pay their employees and for their buildings and stuff... and also the price for research and development Businesses often have a lot of overhead that is added into their products.... Often times, people want to assume that products are only the price of the materials... but that sadly isn't true...
@@sdtqwe4ty7742 TL;DR Often times, businesses have a LOT of factors that go into the product other than the price of the materials, ranging from buildings, machinery, workers and profit...
If it weren't for its faults, it would be soooo close to being a gift to buy 5 of and give to adults for nostalgia or young ones in the family. Imagine if someone could've given you this in the 90s? They'd rise to #1 coolest uncle ever.
@B Bloomfield i got my nephew a raspberry pi with retropie installed and set it up for him with thousands of roms. He is now obssessed with mario and had a mario themed birthday party recently. I take full credit for his love of video games 😊
@@taidgheshea9625 Ahhh good old times, i had gbc and nes games on my Symbian emulator on 6630, N70, and then N95, and what about Ngage games, ahhh 😢❤😢❤😢❤
Nice, I also found a vita for $30 off offer up last year, girl said it didn't turn on and all I did was just unplug the battery and plug it back in and it turned on. The right speaker was blown but still well worth it for that price.
@@xxnoxx-xp5bl It's been good for ages. RetroArch and a small overclock will get it perfect. The standalones are pretty meh, but as a guy that covers a lot of annoying to emulate SNES games using the Vita, it's pretty solid.
I just got mine yesterday, and honestly, for the $20 I paid for it, it is not that bad. Under SNES and GBA runs pretty well. Screen tearing is not great, but for some light work, it is tolerable for me. Data Frog is actually actively updating it, too, though it appears their latest build performs worse for SNES, wrong direction! There is some developer interest in it too but not clear yet if there is any actual opportunity there.
I wasn't excited about this thing for myself...but I was excited about the idea of giving these things away as cheap gifts to friends or kids. Not being able to run gba games 100% proper kills this for me. Thanks for the video man!
You might want to look into getting a used DSi or two and hacking them. They usually get about as cheap as this handheld, And they'll do GBA perfectly off an SD card. Plus NES and even a little bit of SNES.
@@sceerane8662 Hadn't even considered looking into old nDS or DSI's as I figured they'd be very expensive. But I'll check into them now for sure! I have a few friends that would just love to have something like these. Thanks for the suggestion!
I will say that while this seems shockingly good for the price, if you’re looking for a similar device performance-wise while also having CFW and (definitely minimal) SNES capability, I’ve been a big fan of the Powkiddy V90 for a while now. It provides a nice performance with a GBA SP form factor, and a $40-$50 price tag. At this point, I still have yet to see a nicer budget device.
To it's credit, my main downside with with the RG353P were it's tiny buttons. I know the buttons themselves aren't that tiny, but it throws me off so much when the device is trying to look like a SNES controller, but lacks those nice big buttons.
Got myself a copy of this recently, what I can say is you absolutely get what you pay for and there are ways to pay less for it (data frog don’t manufacture these, they resell them), but for MAME, it’s good!
Just bought this for $15 and free shipping. and im in China. I dont have high hopes for this handheld, i think it will be a cool shelf display for my man cave
Just got mine yesterday in the mail and honestly for essentially 20$ I think it’s great deal. Sure some of the games don’t run the best but for a cheap thing to throw in your bag it’s great
I guess it all comes down to how popular it becomes. If it can take a software update maybe things could be optimized on it. It just sems like it needs a lot tweaks and for a company to put in all that time and effort for $20 device, would be hard to justify. If they sell a ton, and people see there is a use for a device like this, then custom roms will show up.
When I decided to buy one of these, it was with the hope that the hardware was decent. I haven't gotten mine yet, but it sounds like that might be the case (minus the issue with some of the face buttons getting stuck under the shell, which some reviewers have encountered). My hope is that the popularity of this will motivate someone to create a customer FW for it. If that happens, and this can play all of the supported systems well, this could be an absolute steal at $20-25. It would behoove Data Frog to let this happen, as it would probably drive their sales through the roof.
@@MaxOakland I finally got mine, and the hardware is surprisingly good for the price. I actually really like the feel of the face buttons (though the L1 and R1 buttons kind of suck). The emulation, though, is absolutely terrible. Most games are so bad I would classify them as unplayable, and some games (like Super Metroid) are literally unplayable because they won't boot. This will really need custom firmware to keep it from just being a nice-looking paperweight.
The fact that this takes an 18650 is . . . Inspiring? I'd love it if more things would take removable lithium cells. Would love to have a more powerful l handheld that took like two hot-swapable 21700s or something.
got mine through yesterday and to be honest, for the price, its pretty good. Not perfect but I'm happy with it. BTW the buttons are lilac and purple, on your video Taki they appear grey and blue. One point is that my concave buttons are B and Y and on yours they are A and X so i'd imaging during hand assembly on the production line, they weren't told about this.
I'm honestly very impressed with the UI of the OS. I just got an Rg300x, and the OS on the Datafrog seems a lot more user friendly, and more visually appealing with artwork for games and even a search function. Pretty impressive.
Reminds me of the LDK Game in terms of system support. Some vendors have yet to drop their prices for it though, but I'd personally put it just a little higher than this (probably $30 or $35)
@@TakiUdon I guess it depends on what you guys consider a sequel, but to me the RG280V seemed like a "sequel" of sorts to the LDK game. Same form factor but better build quality and runs PS1 fantastically. It may not be officially from the LDK makers, but I felt like RG280V is just the perfect device for people who liked the LDK game.
That battery can easily be replaced with a 5800mAh rechargeable battery for under $10 too, that should give it some serious life. Overall, it seems like a pretty solid budget choice for a casual player, or to keep kids busy. This feels like a device that the community could customize the OS and turn it into something pretty decent.
So many of these handheld devices struggle to run SNES at the correct speed. The powkiddy Q90 is still a rather good handheld at a cheep price yet I'd like to replace it someday. Thanks for the honest review.
Do you know if it possible to find games on the powkiddy without having to navigate through all the titles when searching for your favorites? I am using the sd card that came with it, but it's a pain having to toggle between so many games just to find one. : (
@@Bizzare77777 I'm not aware of an option to move titles into a favourite list on the powkiddy, yet I'm only using the standard version without upgrading it with software.
I wish somebody would just release a fantastic SNES controller themed handheld that could run NES up to N64/PS1 that played full speed with no screen tearing. I would pay a LOT of money for something like that!
The new sf-2000 are being shipped with updated hardware and they have the key mapping on them. Out-of-the-box you might be pleasantly surprised how it plays now seeing how this review is 5 months ago and the ones that are coming out now they have black blue yellow, all kinds of colors. Not that colors make it any better but I will tell you my favorite is the black one. I have one of each color. I'm still trying to find a white one. They have also been redesigned. The buttons look different along with some labeling of ports. Maybe you should buy one of the updated ones and give another review😁
How’s the durability? I’ve been looking for a handheld to get my daughter some exposure to the classics but many have exposed screens. This Game Boy style cover might be just what we need.
I think because they apparently use whatever available parts, quality differs for each handheld. Mine runs most the SNES games too slow. But the GB, GBA, NES games and many Sega games run well. If you press start and select at the same time, the hanheld has four save slots for each game, which you'll want to use because the individual games don't tend to hold their saves. But the save slots work flawlessly. I am playing a lot of games I always wanted to play, so this has been a great value. I hope to get a better one at some point to play N64, Dreamcast, PS1, SNES at some point; but this was a great starter handheld emulator for me.
24.19$, no coupons available for me (only Buy 5 get 1% off) and, 11.21$ shipping for my country (Serbia, south-eastern Europe). Not worth it. For that money I could buy Powkiddy q90 or v90. :D Nice video. Thanks for showing this. Really appreciate it.
For this to run Genesis and MAME decently but not SNES, it would likely be using a build of PicoDrive and either an 0.080 series or an early 0.100 series MAME along with the fairly old SNES9x 1.37 (or whatever the 2005 version was numbered) that most portables like RetroArch-3DS default to using for SNES.
Shame it doesn't play SNES perfectly. Was ready to drop money on this as a dedicated SNES handheld given it's form factor and how cheap it is, but oh well guess I'll just stick to enjoying SNES on my hundreds of other handhelds lol
Mine arrived this week. Its "okay" for 24€ but the R-Button didnt click XD Have to open mine to repair it. It lags a lot at many Snes and Advance Game. Hope there will be a way to put another Firmware on it. I like the Formfactor, and it looks nice as a decorative part in my Gaming Shelfs but i keep playing on my Anbernic :)
Screen tearing in general doesnt bother me unless its affecting the game in such a way where i dont know what's going on, mainly due to getting into the zone or tunnel visioning once i really get playing. Sadly the inconsistent loading quality makes this a hard pass for consideration. That said for a 20$ price tag and a decent battery you could try and rig together game demos of random gameplay in rom form and just have this act like a background piece on a shelf, similar to moving picture frames.
The $20 mark for GBA emulation handhelds still goes to the Powkiddy Q90/V90 models. Just take your pick. You can go for the one that looks like a Switch Lite mini, or the one that looks like a GBA SP.
So the $20 system is something to avoid altogether. However, something can come out around the $30 to $40 range that can be great. It just needs a good internal system.
nothing to avoid anymore. it got updates and the very first cfw and retroarch are in the making. i got me one device + 2 controllers for 17$ and its doing a great job for tv gaming (no screentearing)
I just got mine the other day. And for what I paid and it can do, I like this little device. Definitely gonna give it to my son to use as a daily driver.
Good to know about the Master System games support, I'll add some to mine. I pretty much considered this for MAME use. The Megadrive is a real shame, due to no mapping settings, I can't play games like Revenge of Shinobi where they have the 'R' button mapped as 'C' button. So only some basic Megadrive games which uses only 'A' and 'B' I can work with. But was only £20 so, it's a shame, as with that simple change this would have been much more enjoyable for me. I'm going to get some MS games on there now though
I’m not a super game expert. I just wanted all the games i grew up playing in the mid 90’s and early 2000’s. I bought this thing and so far it has every game I’ve looked for. I’ve been playing Donkey Kong Country(SNES) and TMNT Turtles in Time lately on it and they run great. It’s nice to have 4 save states for each game. Sometimes the game loads slow on the first launch so I just quit and re-launch real quick then it runs fine the rest of the times
Bought one based on this video. I had spotted it myself but didn't think it would even have any real ROMs onboard. Hopeful that we get some custom firmware in the future 👍
both Y-run B-jump and B-run A-jump configurations feel awkward for your thumb, but the default for this B-run A-jump is much better simply because it takes less effort to execute jumps quickly for platformers like mario. try it, it takes less distance movement, less effort, and thus it's less tiring. a much less awkward configuration would be to use a separate finger button, like the shoulder buttons, for jumping,
I love the design. It looks awesome. It’s too bad the firmware on these handhelds is so consistently bad. Like, why would anyone want bilinear filtering?
modern TVs support both ntsc and pal - so i would advise everyone to go for the ntsc mode ( if possible )- as the difference between 50hz and 60 hz .. is actually around 20 percent increase in speed of the game
I ordered 2 yesterday. $13 and free shipping, and $18 with 2 controls. Also Datafrog seems to release firmware 1.5 with remapping menu, better performance.
I don't understand why anyone would ever want something like this. Screen tearing, no emulation settings, can't even play GBA and SNES... It may have a good price to performance RATIO, but the actual performance is so poor that I'd rather spend my $20 at McDonald's for crying out loud. Just get an rg35xx - it's still super cheap, but at least it's not a pointless piece of e-waste 🤦♂️ Good video though, thank you for your content, Taki!
Wow, that's amazing! It's always great to see affordable options for retro gaming enthusiasts. I love how versatile this emulator handheld is, being able to run games from the SNES and Sega Genesis. It's impressive how technology has come so far that we can fit all these classic games in such a compact device. This would be perfect for playing all my favorite retro games on the go. Thanks for sharing this awesome find!
At that price point, you really need to wonder why they spent money on an analog stick, when that money would have been useful for an upgrade literally anywhere else on the device. Nobody needs an analog stick for emulating those consoles. I don't pretend to know everything, but I feel pretty confident saying that almost no one WANTS an analog stick for those consoles.
As a personal opinion. It reminds me of an FC3000 with an SNES style controller instead. So it's very wishy washy. Hopefully a CFW gets made on it so it can emulate more and make games run better.
Im impressed that this handheld uses 18650 for power. It is a bummer that theres no available modified firmware or OS. Maybe that could help with performance or screen tearing. With that said, not bad. Maybe next time they will be able to get everything right and keeping the 20 dollar price.
Cool video! I'm actually quite happy with the device - for the price! 🙂 One of the main problems I see is with the display: a lot of dust and hairs build up very quickly between the display and the plastic cover: without unscrewing the thing, you'll never get them out again. And I only use it in the apartment. If you took it with you, it would probably look 'unsightly' after a very short time. Does anyone know if you can simply swap the SD cards between two devices? I have 2 devices and would like to continue using the second one if the first one is broken or too used. Can I then just put the card from the old device into the new one or will data (saves!) be lost? Many greetings from Germany to all gamers!
I was just thinking that they should be keeping the older emulation devices like the Pocket Go for sale at a cheaper price. With so many companies pushing the high end expensive devices, I appreciate someone trying to push the low end
You can pick up a higher quality 18650 with 2500-3000mAh. They’re not exactly cheap, but they’re great cells. Something like the Samsung 30Q (3000mAh) or the Samsung 25R (2500mAh)
I definitely want one of the SNES controller shaped devices. Almost got the Anbernic version, but I was too impatient for the shipping and got a rectangle instead.
Have you tried hooking up a keyboard to it? I'd imagine it has some hidden features that are only unlocked by using a mouse/keyboard. It does have the ability to hook up USB devices.
Thank you yes it's kind of crap but it would be nice to see more options in this price range could be something cheap to throw at somebody's child or something
The analog stick works surprisingly well for a system this cheap,the d pad not being able to do a 45 degree angle sucks though and makes it useless for any game that requires it.
I bought this at the same time as a rg35xx the Anbernic is here still waiting on the other. But like you said for 25 bucks it's worth a roll of the dice
I think it’s a bummer that the hardware isn’t able to at least emulate SNES games at full speed, especially since that design just rocks (barring the unusual choice of putting an analog stick in there). I hope the community can at least optimize the emulators so they’re more reliable than what it currently has, I purchased one anyway as a fool.
Some of my experience: -GBA games suck playing with it +Everything else is MOSTLY fine, especially gameboy and famicom(snes and nes) +A lot of classics in them, original mario games, pokemon etc. -Annoyingly games with non english language in them (like chinese or japanese games sometimes the english and chinese version of pokemon, clutters the system) and you cannot sort games by genre or make favourites only by console type. Really great console if you want to specifically play gameboy/colour and nes/snes games with it. Cant do much wrong for 20 bucks.
SO THE LINK IS WHERE YOU REALLY GOT IT LIKE THAT EXACT ONE RIGHT??YOU THINK THEY SELL IN BULK LIKE IF I GET 20 AT ONCE ? NEED TO KNOW IF THIS IS THE LINK WHERE YOU GOT YOURS BOSS MAN.::
Ill stick to my anbernic rg353v. But i do love how this device is snes themed. I too am a sucker for that. I see anything that looks like the american snes and i abolutely must pick up my snes and play it. Best console of all time. The only reason i didnt get the snes anbernic is because handheld consoles tend to be heavy, and my hands have a hard time with handhelds but the original gb formfactor is doable for me. So i got the model 1 gb colored rg353v and i love it. Found a guy on etsy who makes skins so now mine is truly an original gb.
Actions Semi-based ones default to the jack for headphones, only switching to the TV out manually in the settings. Those sold like X-series (6, 7, 12, 40, whatever) are, for example.
I wouldnt mine if they got rid of the joy stick, offered a upgraded battery (perhaps with more games added, like a premium version). If they could improve the screen tearing and somehow make the buttons better. This would be a fantastic device, i too stumbled upon this device, and im weary aha. Seems great as it is, wish it could have a V2. Sucks these sorts of places to buy get flagged and or deleted.
I have a problem with SNES-themed handhelds. I must buy them.
Understandable 😂
This device is such a wonderfully amazing turd.
That's me with anything that looks like the old DMG-001 Gameboy haha
Are you going to buy the 353ps?
The SNES controller is just so... handsome. Made me droll as kid (never got it).
I work for a tech company, and I learned that they can make these devices so cheap by taking chips from other old devices and devices that have been thrown away and repurposing them for emulation handhelds like this. That’s why they scratch off the serials.
I don't want to go all "environmentalist," (and I know China is probably only doing it to make money) but it's really a fantastic way to recycle. 👌 I'm pretty sure last year's popular "Miyoo Mini" recycled a lot of obsolete cell phone parts.
A decade ago you could buy a tablet from microcenter for 10 buck's. I remember going a across a commenter on reddit saying that they read an article that the ps4 controller costs 15 bucks to make(that may have been the dual sense actually,. They're Chinese made electronics and plastics, I wouldn't be surprised if it costs a couple bucks)
I'm sick of hearing from RUclips reviewers on 20-30 dollar controllers at the very least complaining about lower grade plastics and then justifying it cause of the cost. The overwhelming bulk of the cost is the engineer who designed the controller to have a feel that defies the laws of.physics. That's why I'm into controller collecting cause I feel I'm actually paying for/tracks an engineers hour has opposed to a 20 dollar chinese made blender that has been touched up/refreshed from a design that was patented a half a century ago.
I bought an NYXI,a chinese brand themselves selling 50 dollar Switch controllers that don't even have HD haptics,and I received an email complaining pandemics situation justifying a dollar or so increase. 50 buck bucko'roos wasnt enough to eat the cost? You had to complain to the customer? This proves to me that this is a mindset thing.(all those companies making record profits while they were bellyaching about supply chain costs due to the pandemics)
@@sdtqwe4ty7742 1st, check your source if it's correct for the $15.
Also, they need packaging and paying for the machines and other overhead costs that exist other than the price of the materials... think about how expensive the machines to make the parts is...
And then, they need to make an actual profit and pay their employees and for their buildings and stuff... and also the price for research and development
Businesses often have a lot of overhead that is added into their products....
Often times, people want to assume that products are only the price of the materials... but that sadly isn't true...
@@sdtqwe4ty7742 TL;DR Often times, businesses have a LOT of factors that go into the product other than the price of the materials, ranging from buildings, machinery, workers and profit...
That's how new x99 board still sold today. Not only x99, but something like h55, h61, h81 etc as well
I LOVE the replaceable battery. All device manufacturers should be doing this.
They used too
@The Tired Horizon It's not hard, but it can and should be easier.
Hot take. 🙄
@@jamesh3267 I'm sorry they're not hip and contrarian enough for you
@@jamesh3267 If you don't advocate for right to repair you are a fool
For under £19 it's hard to argue with, great that it uses a standard 18650 battery and usb C too!
If it weren't for its faults, it would be soooo close to being a gift to buy 5 of and give to adults for nostalgia or young ones in the family. Imagine if someone could've given you this in the 90s? They'd rise to #1 coolest uncle ever.
@B Bloomfield i got my nephew a raspberry pi with retropie installed and set it up for him with thousands of roms. He is now obssessed with mario and had a mario themed birthday party recently. I take full credit for his love of video games 😊
@@MusicGameFinatic999 you da man!!
@@MusicGameFinatic999here did you find the roms? My dog is asking for
Indeed! It’s SUPAH FRESH!!!💪🤓
Funny how Android phones from 2012 could run most GBA games at 100% but so many dedicated "gaming" handhelds still can't.
Dude, I was running up to megadrive, snes, gba, and even some nintendo 64 games on my kindle fire 2011 and samsung galaxy pocket.
I had GBA games running on a Nokia n85 in 2009
@@taidgheshea9625 Ahhh good old times, i had gbc and nes games on my Symbian emulator on 6630, N70, and then N95, and what about Ngage games, ahhh 😢❤😢❤😢❤
Dude, it's just $20. What did you expect?
@@mayank4156Hey there, Datafrog shill!
Recently got a $30 Vita that I fixed up by just replacing a few small parts. Always helps to keep an eye out for those gems.
Deal of the year
Vita for $30 ? Even with minor fixes, that is a epic deal, nice find.
Nice, I also found a vita for $30 off offer up last year, girl said it didn't turn on and all I did was just unplug the battery and plug it back in and it turned on. The right speaker was blown but still well worth it for that price.
Has SNES emulation been optimised on the Vita in the past 12 months?
@@xxnoxx-xp5bl It's been good for ages. RetroArch and a small overclock will get it perfect. The standalones are pretty meh, but as a guy that covers a lot of annoying to emulate SNES games using the Vita, it's pretty solid.
I just got mine yesterday, and honestly, for the $20 I paid for it, it is not that bad. Under SNES and GBA runs pretty well. Screen tearing is not great, but for some light work, it is tolerable for me. Data Frog is actually actively updating it, too, though it appears their latest build performs worse for SNES, wrong direction! There is some developer interest in it too but not clear yet if there is any actual opportunity there.
Where did you find the updated firmware?
Yeah, please do tell: where did you find the firmware?
I'm also interested in
Yeah, I just want something for my dad to play SNES on.
Probably can google it but at least for now I wouldn't update because of the performance degradation
I wasn't excited about this thing for myself...but I was excited about the idea of giving these things away as cheap gifts to friends or kids. Not being able to run gba games 100% proper kills this for me.
Thanks for the video man!
You might want to look into getting a used DSi or two and hacking them. They usually get about as cheap as this handheld, And they'll do GBA perfectly off an SD card. Plus NES and even a little bit of SNES.
@@sceerane8662 Hadn't even considered looking into old nDS or DSI's as I figured they'd be very expensive. But I'll check into them now for sure! I have a few friends that would just love to have something like these. Thanks for the suggestion!
5:55 Also the fact that the lines are diagonal instead of horizontal means they may have used a portrait-mode display and put it in sideways.
I will say that while this seems shockingly good for the price, if you’re looking for a similar device performance-wise while also having CFW and (definitely minimal) SNES capability, I’ve been a big fan of the Powkiddy V90 for a while now. It provides a nice performance with a GBA SP form factor, and a $40-$50 price tag. At this point, I still have yet to see a nicer budget device.
To it's credit, my main downside with with the RG353P were it's tiny buttons.
I know the buttons themselves aren't that tiny, but it throws me off so much when the device is trying to look like a SNES controller, but lacks those nice big buttons.
The buttons? They didn't bother me at all. The games running at 30 percent speed is what sucks.
Ugh, this looks really good. Screen-tearing and GBA/SNES issues is honestly the only downfall. Hoping that custom firmware comes about.
Got myself a copy of this recently, what I can say is you absolutely get what you pay for and there are ways to pay less for it (data frog don’t manufacture these, they resell them), but for MAME, it’s good!
I am just rather surprised the ROMs are in alphabetical order! And using an 18650 cell? That's pretty awesome actually.
Just bought this for $15 and free shipping. and im in China. I dont have high hopes for this handheld, i think it will be a cool shelf display for my man cave
$15 for a shelf display is decent
I got two for $16 each, shipped to Thailand, gave one to Dodo just for the lulz. On the edge of my seat waiting for that review...
Pretty impressive for only $20.
Better off with a modded psp
Just got mine yesterday in the mail and honestly for essentially 20$ I think it’s great deal. Sure some of the games don’t run the best but for a cheap thing to throw in your bag it’s great
Ok wulffden. Always with the bag.
I'd definitely buy it for $20 if it ever showed up in my country for that price, if nothing else it looks great.
The CPU is a Hichip H1512- a low end mips.
How do you know?!
@@TakiUdon someone dumped the SPI and it's named in the very sparse loader.
@@TakiUdon Data Frog has just told me its running at 600mhz.
Custom firmware possible? 🤞🏽
@@J.A.Z-TheMortal not a full cfw, but some mods yeah.
I guess it all comes down to how popular it becomes. If it can take a software update maybe things could be optimized on it. It just sems like it needs a lot tweaks and for a company to put in all that time and effort for $20 device, would be hard to justify.
If they sell a ton, and people see there is a use for a device like this, then custom roms will show up.
When I decided to buy one of these, it was with the hope that the hardware was decent. I haven't gotten mine yet, but it sounds like that might be the case (minus the issue with some of the face buttons getting stuck under the shell, which some reviewers have encountered).
My hope is that the popularity of this will motivate someone to create a customer FW for it. If that happens, and this can play all of the supported systems well, this could be an absolute steal at $20-25. It would behoove Data Frog to let this happen, as it would probably drive their sales through the roof.
Id buy one if the software was good so yeah!
@@MaxOakland I finally got mine, and the hardware is surprisingly good for the price. I actually really like the feel of the face buttons (though the L1 and R1 buttons kind of suck).
The emulation, though, is absolutely terrible. Most games are so bad I would classify them as unplayable, and some games (like Super Metroid) are literally unplayable because they won't boot. This will really need custom firmware to keep it from just being a nice-looking paperweight.
@@shade20x64 that's way too bad. These companies need to stop with the horrible firmware. It's kinda ridiculous
@@MaxOakland Agreed.
The fact that this takes an 18650 is . . . Inspiring? I'd love it if more things would take removable lithium cells. Would love to have a more powerful l handheld that took like two hot-swapable 21700s or something.
i agree, this is one big plus of this device.
This is the perfect gift to give your nephews or kids over the holidays.
got mine through yesterday and to be honest, for the price, its pretty good. Not perfect but I'm happy with it. BTW the buttons are lilac and purple, on your video Taki they appear grey and blue. One point is that my concave buttons are B and Y and on yours they are A and X so i'd imaging during hand assembly on the production line, they weren't told about this.
I kind of feel like Y and B would be a better option for the concave buttons if the button mappings could change for NES/GB.
I'm honestly very impressed with the UI of the OS. I just got an Rg300x, and the OS on the Datafrog seems a lot more user friendly, and more visually appealing with artwork for games and even a search function. Pretty impressive.
CFW on this would be so much fun.
I can assume that with tweaking every system presented would run perfectly.
$20 - i was 99% sold, 18650 user replaceable CELL = i'm 9000% sold, just ordered!!! THANKS!!
Reminds me of the LDK Game in terms of system support. Some vendors have yet to drop their prices for it though, but I'd personally put it just a little higher than this (probably $30 or $35)
We never got a good sequel to that device...
@Taki Udon No we haven't, and that really sucks. Imagine something like this handheld but WAY more moddable and with better build quality!
@@TakiUdon I guess it depends on what you guys consider a sequel, but to me the RG280V seemed like a "sequel" of sorts to the LDK game. Same form factor but better build quality and runs PS1 fantastically. It may not be officially from the LDK makers, but I felt like RG280V is just the perfect device for people who liked the LDK game.
That battery can easily be replaced with a 5800mAh rechargeable battery for under $10 too, that should give it some serious life. Overall, it seems like a pretty solid budget choice for a casual player, or to keep kids busy. This feels like a device that the community could customize the OS and turn it into something pretty decent.
So many of these handheld devices struggle to run SNES at the correct speed.
The powkiddy Q90 is still a rather good handheld at a cheep price yet I'd like to replace it someday.
Thanks for the honest review.
Do you know if it possible to find games on the powkiddy without having to navigate through all the titles when searching for your favorites? I am using the sd card that came with it, but it's a pain having to toggle between so many games just to find one. : (
@@Bizzare77777 I'm not aware of an option to move titles into a favourite list on the powkiddy, yet I'm only using the standard version without upgrading it with software.
I wish somebody would just release a fantastic SNES controller themed handheld that could run NES up to N64/PS1 that played full speed with no screen tearing. I would pay a LOT of money for something like that!
The new sf-2000 are being shipped with updated hardware and they have the key mapping on them. Out-of-the-box you might be pleasantly surprised how it plays now seeing how this review is 5 months ago and the ones that are coming out now they have black blue yellow, all kinds of colors. Not that colors make it any better but I will tell you my favorite is the black one. I have one of each color. I'm still trying to find a white one. They have also been redesigned. The buttons look different along with some labeling of ports. Maybe you should buy one of the updated ones and give another review😁
Thanks for the review, though it's a pity you didn't test how bad the AV-out was.
I hope the mod community embrace this device and fix the software (like they did with the RS-90) 🥺
If the CPU is even capable of running GBA at full Speed 😂
Would have been smart to pay 30usd with usuable Speer, 20usd papeeweight? Nope
Seriously! Id love one but the software sounds rough
Looks amazing for the price! If I had this when I was 12 I'd be super excited! Thanks for the review.
For 20 bucks is a cute console. If eventually somebody make a custom OS maybe became decent
Are the covers high resolution?
I mean for 20$ it might be worth it for the effort someone took to match all these with roms :D
XD
How’s the durability? I’ve been looking for a handheld to get my daughter some exposure to the classics but many have exposed screens. This Game Boy style cover might be just what we need.
Go for the powkiddy V90 with its clamshell style to cover the screen.
I think because they apparently use whatever available parts, quality differs for each handheld. Mine runs most the SNES games too slow. But the GB, GBA, NES games and many Sega games run well. If you press start and select at the same time, the hanheld has four save slots for each game, which you'll want to use because the individual games don't tend to hold their saves. But the save slots work flawlessly. I am playing a lot of games I always wanted to play, so this has been a great value. I hope to get a better one at some point to play N64, Dreamcast, PS1, SNES at some point; but this was a great starter handheld emulator for me.
24.19$, no coupons available for me (only Buy 5 get 1% off) and, 11.21$ shipping for my country (Serbia, south-eastern Europe). Not worth it.
For that money I could buy Powkiddy q90 or v90. :D
Nice video. Thanks for showing this. Really appreciate it.
Thanks man, is the first video i watch that talks about important things when it comes to game in this console
For this to run Genesis and MAME decently but not SNES, it would likely be using a build of PicoDrive and either an 0.080 series or an early 0.100 series MAME along with the fairly old SNES9x 1.37 (or whatever the 2005 version was numbered) that most portables like RetroArch-3DS default to using for SNES.
Precisely and correctly pinned! It indeed does use all of the above
@@bnister Groovy, thanks for the confirmation! Now if only there were a way to update it...
Shame it doesn't play SNES perfectly. Was ready to drop money on this as a dedicated SNES handheld given it's form factor and how cheap it is, but oh well guess I'll just stick to enjoying SNES on my hundreds of other handhelds lol
I love that you put the price in the RUclips image. You should do that with all your videos.
Mine arrived this week. Its "okay" for 24€ but the R-Button didnt click XD Have to open mine to repair it. It lags a lot at many Snes and Advance Game. Hope there will be a way to put another Firmware on it. I like the Formfactor, and it looks nice as a decorative part in my Gaming Shelfs but i keep playing on my Anbernic :)
Screen tearing in general doesnt bother me unless its affecting the game in such a way where i dont know what's going on, mainly due to getting into the zone or tunnel visioning once i really get playing. Sadly the inconsistent loading quality makes this a hard pass for consideration. That said for a 20$ price tag and a decent battery you could try and rig together game demos of random gameplay in rom form and just have this act like a background piece on a shelf, similar to moving picture frames.
The $20 mark for GBA emulation handhelds still goes to the Powkiddy Q90/V90 models. Just take your pick. You can go for the one that looks like a Switch Lite mini, or the one that looks like a GBA SP.
So the $20 system is something to avoid altogether. However, something can come out around the $30 to $40 range that can be great. It just needs a good internal system.
nothing to avoid anymore. it got updates and the very first cfw and retroarch are in the making. i got me one device + 2 controllers for 17$ and its doing a great job for tv gaming (no screentearing)
Wow, well I gotta say the search function pushes this into a higher category. Very cool!
I just got mine the other day. And for what I paid and it can do, I like this little device. Definitely gonna give it to my son to use as a daily driver.
game play starts here 6:36
Good to know about the Master System games support, I'll add some to mine.
I pretty much considered this for MAME use.
The Megadrive is a real shame, due to no mapping settings, I can't play games like Revenge of Shinobi where they have the 'R' button mapped as 'C' button.
So only some basic Megadrive games which uses only 'A' and 'B' I can work with.
But was only £20 so, it's a shame, as with that simple change this would have been much more enjoyable for me.
I'm going to get some MS games on there now though
E-Mail the manufacturer for button remapping, apparently there are Firmware updates so they care about customer s 😅
@@kitecattestecke2303 really? I'll give a try then. If possible to then would be good. Megadrive and MAME are what I want to play mostly on this
I’m not a super game expert. I just wanted all the games i grew up playing in the mid 90’s and early 2000’s. I bought this thing and so far it has every game I’ve looked for. I’ve been playing Donkey Kong Country(SNES) and TMNT Turtles in Time lately on it and they run great. It’s nice to have 4 save states for each game. Sometimes the game loads slow on the first launch so I just quit and re-launch real quick then it runs fine the rest of the times
Bought one based on this video. I had spotted it myself but didn't think it would even have any real ROMs onboard. Hopeful that we get some custom firmware in the future 👍
CFW is in the making as we speak, also retroarch will come out soon ish.
Anything shaped like a SNES controller gets my attention.
Sadly screen thearing is a deal breaker for me because annoys me when playing. But that price and shape is nice.
Analogue is not pointless when you can relaxed your thumb moving around, and super useful for shmups.
both Y-run B-jump and B-run A-jump configurations feel awkward for your thumb, but the default for this B-run A-jump is much better simply because it takes less effort to execute jumps quickly for platformers like mario. try it, it takes less distance movement, less effort, and thus it's less tiring.
a much less awkward configuration would be to use a separate finger button, like the shoulder buttons, for jumping,
I love the design. It looks awesome. It’s too bad the firmware on these handhelds is so consistently bad. Like, why would anyone want bilinear filtering?
modern TVs support both ntsc and pal - so i would advise everyone to go for the ntsc mode ( if possible )- as the difference between 50hz and 60 hz .. is actually around 20 percent increase in speed of the game
This is mildly impressive
company: *makes rom handheld*
"let's cram as many versions of adventure island as possible in that thing"
I ordered 2 yesterday. $13 and free shipping, and $18 with 2 controls. Also Datafrog seems to release firmware 1.5 with remapping menu, better performance.
Do a Retest. Mod you Froggy with Tadpole and also you can change cores now!
I don't understand why anyone would ever want something like this. Screen tearing, no emulation settings, can't even play GBA and SNES... It may have a good price to performance RATIO, but the actual performance is so poor that I'd rather spend my $20 at McDonald's for crying out loud. Just get an rg35xx - it's still super cheap, but at least it's not a pointless piece of e-waste 🤦♂️
Good video though, thank you for your content, Taki!
3:16 replaceable battery??! Take my money!
6:40 The A and B buttons are angled like that on a Game Boy anyway.
You grip the Game Boy in a different way than this.
Wow, that's amazing! It's always great to see affordable options for retro gaming enthusiasts. I love how versatile this emulator handheld is, being able to run games from the SNES and Sega Genesis. It's impressive how technology has come so far that we can fit all these classic games in such a compact device. This would be perfect for playing all my favorite retro games on the go. Thanks for sharing this awesome find!
Shut up.
At that price point, you really need to wonder why they spent money on an analog stick, when that money would have been useful for an upgrade literally anywhere else on the device. Nobody needs an analog stick for emulating those consoles. I don't pretend to know everything, but I feel pretty confident saying that almost no one WANTS an analog stick for those consoles.
While I agree, it's probably for the Arcade emulator and in that context, it can be useful.
Theres a video here on youtube showing a cfw working on a sf2000 with retroarch, still super early but i do believe they’re gonna get it running.
As a personal opinion. It reminds me of an FC3000 with an SNES style controller instead. So it's very wishy washy. Hopefully a CFW gets made on it so it can emulate more and make games run better.
Short answer: no. Better save for the RG35XX since you'll have better support with
Garlic OS and full PS1 support.
7:09 the shot of the gameboy kind of contradicts what you were just saying haha
I hope in the future this gets some better updates that will help
Same here. I want one but not at this quality
Says gba runs bad shows it working perfectly
i was diagnostictated eith pulmonar cancer, your my favourite youtuber
Im impressed that this handheld uses 18650 for power. It is a bummer that theres no available modified firmware or OS. Maybe that could help with performance or screen tearing. With that said, not bad. Maybe next time they will be able to get everything right and keeping the 20 dollar price.
Cool video! I'm actually quite happy with the device - for the price! 🙂
One of the main problems I see is with the display: a lot of dust and hairs build up very quickly between the display and the plastic cover: without unscrewing the thing, you'll never get them out again. And I only use it in the apartment. If you took it with you, it would probably look 'unsightly' after a very short time.
Does anyone know if you can simply swap the SD cards between two devices? I have 2 devices and would like to continue using the second one if the first one is broken or too used. Can I then just put the card from the old device into the new one or will data (saves!) be lost?
Many greetings from Germany to all gamers!
So when does RadishOS come out for this?
I was just thinking that they should be keeping the older emulation devices like the Pocket Go for sale at a cheaper price. With so many companies pushing the high end expensive devices, I appreciate someone trying to push the low end
The Joystick looks like a vestigial limb on this handheld, but I imagine the parts are super cheap in bulk so A for effort I suppose?
As soon as you called the analog stick "almost pointless" I knew where this was going...
You can pick up a higher quality 18650 with 2500-3000mAh. They’re not exactly cheap, but they’re great cells. Something like the Samsung 30Q (3000mAh) or the Samsung 25R (2500mAh)
for the price? more than perfect
I mean pretty damn good for 20 bucks, I might pick one up for a dedicated nes and gbc machine
I definitely want one of the SNES controller shaped devices. Almost got the Anbernic version, but I was too impatient for the shipping and got a rectangle instead.
If you want a cheap retro device that can play all these systems better I would recommend the powkiddy v90 plus its super pocketable
Have you tried hooking up a keyboard to it? I'd imagine it has some hidden features that are only unlocked by using a mouse/keyboard. It does have the ability to hook up USB devices.
Thank you yes it's kind of crap but it would be nice to see more options in this price range could be something cheap to throw at somebody's child or something
9:11 - I say the same thing to when troubleshooting a PC and then it just works after a restart.
9:19 "this makes no sense what the hell" LMAO we can hear you! :D I guess maybe it's like pre-compiling something ?
The analog stick works surprisingly well for a system this cheap,the d pad not being able to do a 45 degree angle sucks though and makes it useless for any game that requires it.
I bought this at the same time as a rg35xx the Anbernic is here still waiting on the other. But like you said for 25 bucks it's worth a roll of the dice
I think it’s a bummer that the hardware isn’t able to at least emulate SNES games at full speed, especially since that design just rocks (barring the unusual choice of putting an analog stick in there). I hope the community can at least optimize the emulators so they’re more reliable than what it currently has, I purchased one anyway as a fool.
Some of my experience:
-GBA games suck playing with it
+Everything else is MOSTLY fine, especially gameboy and famicom(snes and nes)
+A lot of classics in them, original mario games, pokemon etc.
-Annoyingly games with non english language in them (like chinese or japanese games sometimes the english and chinese version of pokemon, clutters the system) and you cannot sort games by genre or make favourites only by console type.
Really great console if you want to specifically play gameboy/colour and nes/snes games with it. Cant do much wrong for 20 bucks.
SO THE LINK IS WHERE YOU REALLY GOT IT LIKE THAT EXACT ONE RIGHT??YOU THINK THEY SELL IN BULK LIKE IF I GET 20 AT ONCE ? NEED TO KNOW IF THIS IS THE LINK WHERE YOU GOT YOURS BOSS MAN.::
Ill stick to my anbernic rg353v. But i do love how this device is snes themed. I too am a sucker for that. I see anything that looks like the american snes and i abolutely must pick up my snes and play it. Best console of all time.
The only reason i didnt get the snes anbernic is because handheld consoles tend to be heavy, and my hands have a hard time with handhelds but the original gb formfactor is doable for me. So i got the model 1 gb colored rg353v and i love it. Found a guy on etsy who makes skins so now mine is truly an original gb.
2:55 Is this a headphone jack or video output jack ? I’m struggling to find low budget pocket console with headphone jack instead of video jack
Its an AV out I believe.
Actions Semi-based ones default to the jack for headphones, only switching to the TV out manually in the settings. Those sold like X-series (6, 7, 12, 40, whatever) are, for example.
I wouldnt mine if they got rid of the joy stick, offered a upgraded battery (perhaps with more games added, like a premium version). If they could improve the screen tearing and somehow make the buttons better. This would be a fantastic device, i too stumbled upon this device, and im weary aha. Seems great as it is, wish it could have a V2. Sucks these sorts of places to buy get flagged and or deleted.
finally, one of those with AV out and the ability to play custom roms!