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The Gpi Case

Posted: 12 Oct 2019 14:31
by admin
This may well be the best retro-gaming handheld... if there was not some flaws that you could live with or that you could consider as show-stoppers, depending on what you are targeting...

The features I like

- Excellent IPS screen. WOW ! This screen is what makes the Gpi Case really shine! No matter the angle, the picture
is bright, crisp, full of contrast, and colors are warm.
- Separate volume control
- Headphone plug
- Possible to charge the batteries
- You can pick the distribution you want : retropie, recalbox, lakka, ...
- Has L & R buttons
- Has great emulators, depending the distribution you will use. PS1 games are running fine, same for arcade games, and the rest of the older 8/16 bits consoles.

Things I don't like

- The batteries. Why did they chose 3 AA batteries, which are not practical & take a lot of space ? Ok, they wanted to pay credit
to the original GameBoy, as I understand it, but they would have made a better choice by using a 18650 battery (like the GameHat), a BP-5L battery (like the RG-300), or better, a large 4000 mah li-ion battery.
- The battery life is not outstanding (up to 3 hours).
- The price. If you add the GpiCase price + the raspberry pi zero (or zero/w) + a brand new set of AA rechargeable batteries (and you have to buy 6 given it takes 3 of them !), you will easily reach $100.
- The distributions are quite "new" and some emulators suffer from bugs.

In summary

I really like this handheld. The screen is fantastic, the fact that it uses Retropie or Recalbox is great, because this is a great OS, with lots of emulators and the developers community is very active.
But it's expensive, and is flawed by a poor battery life and the use of 3 x AA batteries.
If you don't need the extra-emulators and if you don't mind using the OpenDingux os, you could well chose the Retrogame RG-300 which offers a very nice battery life, a nice screen (the latest version has an IPS screen), good controls (with L & R buttons), and emulators which are running very well (excepted the PS1 emu). It's also lighter than the GpiCase, and much cheaper.


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