Game Player X40 Pro Review
Jul. 4th, 2022 02:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroThis is also in the same series as the X6 and X9-S that I played with a few years ago (which are usually, but not always, Powkiddy-branded). It runs another variant of the same OS and carries a lot of the same issues.
Pros: It’s the size of a Switch with a 7” screen, but lighter. The SNES emulation is good, markedly better than the older devices in the same family. It has a dedicated Esc button that pulls up the save-state menu, and I’m always a fan of the dedicated menu button. It appears set up to do HDMI output and plug in a second controller, but I haven’t tested that.
Cons: The shape is kinda awkward to hold, even with my big hands. (It’s not quite the same shape as a Switch.) It doesn’t save SRAM at all, and doesn’t support cheats. There’s only a rudimentary system for remapping buttons (though it does let you remap system-by-system) and the buttons on the device are labeled/arranged wrong. The buttons also aren’t nearly as responsive as you’d want for action games. My device came with the L1 button stuck down, though it was still sensitive to touch and could be used that way. There doesn’t seem to be any way to change the screen resolution, which means you’re stuck with fullscreen stretch. There doesn’t seem to be a way to fast-scroll through the games list (particularly an issue when there are 3600 SNES games on this thing) and there’s no “play most recent” menu. There are two pages of icons for specific games (which doesn’t seem to be something you can edit), and then the “Downloads” menu to access the rest of them.
Thoughts: I’m considering trying to do surgery on this, which would warrant a follow-up entry if I do. Assuming I could get the case open, I’d love to fix that L1 button and potentially rearrange the face buttons so the letters are correct. I also want to delete all of the repeated roms in the memory so there’s only one copy of each game and it’s easy to scroll through. But what I really want is to flash the OS with something better—if this was running TRIM-UI with the bigger screen, it could be pretty darn respectable. But I have no idea if that’s possible. (It seems absurd that with all the better emulation OS setups out there, they’re still churning out new systems with this one. But then again, they’re still churning out 500-in-1 Famiclone handhelds, too.)
Overall: Right out of the box, this is a decent device for playing arcade games on a large but still portable screen, and a mediocre but functional one for NES/SNES/GBA games. It has better performance than the X9-S but the larger size is both good and bad. If I successfully mutilate it into something better, I’ll follow up.
Pros: It’s the size of a Switch with a 7” screen, but lighter. The SNES emulation is good, markedly better than the older devices in the same family. It has a dedicated Esc button that pulls up the save-state menu, and I’m always a fan of the dedicated menu button. It appears set up to do HDMI output and plug in a second controller, but I haven’t tested that.
Cons: The shape is kinda awkward to hold, even with my big hands. (It’s not quite the same shape as a Switch.) It doesn’t save SRAM at all, and doesn’t support cheats. There’s only a rudimentary system for remapping buttons (though it does let you remap system-by-system) and the buttons on the device are labeled/arranged wrong. The buttons also aren’t nearly as responsive as you’d want for action games. My device came with the L1 button stuck down, though it was still sensitive to touch and could be used that way. There doesn’t seem to be any way to change the screen resolution, which means you’re stuck with fullscreen stretch. There doesn’t seem to be a way to fast-scroll through the games list (particularly an issue when there are 3600 SNES games on this thing) and there’s no “play most recent” menu. There are two pages of icons for specific games (which doesn’t seem to be something you can edit), and then the “Downloads” menu to access the rest of them.
Thoughts: I’m considering trying to do surgery on this, which would warrant a follow-up entry if I do. Assuming I could get the case open, I’d love to fix that L1 button and potentially rearrange the face buttons so the letters are correct. I also want to delete all of the repeated roms in the memory so there’s only one copy of each game and it’s easy to scroll through. But what I really want is to flash the OS with something better—if this was running TRIM-UI with the bigger screen, it could be pretty darn respectable. But I have no idea if that’s possible. (It seems absurd that with all the better emulation OS setups out there, they’re still churning out new systems with this one. But then again, they’re still churning out 500-in-1 Famiclone handhelds, too.)
Overall: Right out of the box, this is a decent device for playing arcade games on a large but still portable screen, and a mediocre but functional one for NES/SNES/GBA games. It has better performance than the X9-S but the larger size is both good and bad. If I successfully mutilate it into something better, I’ll follow up.
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