Thanks for the lively discussion as always! A few notes (and I'll probably add to this later): - The thing where the Home button kills RetroArch has to do with using Daijisho as your home launcher, so this isn't an issue exclusive to the KTR1. It's just that the Home button here is placed in a way that I press it accidentally. Here is a demonstration: imgur.com/a/8BOgkxE - The dev is aware of the Home button issue and is working on making all buttons fully mappable. Right now you *can* map the top-right button to something else, but it still keeps its Home button functionality too, effectively overriding whatever you set. - Unchecking the "Use Dual Core" option in Citra MMJ removes the stuttering in some games, thanks to Paul for the tip. Other games like Super Mario 3D Land continue to stutter, and don't play at fullspeed either. - If you order the model with the d-pad up top, it will come with the Nintendo ABXY pattern. - For my testing, I spent about four hours on GameCube/Wii and PS2 each. During that time I looked for example games that provided a spectrum of results, to give viewers an idea of what to expect with their own game catalog. There will be many other games that play just great on those systems, but bear in mind that there will be others that won't! And it will be possible to get better performance on some of these games, but it will take time and experimentation. - There should be a software update available by the time this device ships, and the dev indicates that will improve performance. - The screen resolution is 1620x1080 (vice 1690x1080 that I put in my specs). Late-night editing strikes again!
Love it, the quirks of the review unit seems to have put a lot of pause on people, which can be justified since like you said before it's not good to buy based on promises of what it could be in the future. But I personally think this will turn out excellent when all it said and done, just like the past 2 years you just have to wait for it all to fall into place lol
Another thing to add about the rattle too is that it should be fixed in the future with rubber sleeves for the stems on the shoulders and triggers (missing on the review units). And... no Wifi antenna on the review units which is why you had to sit next to the router lol
Is this device going to be able to play xenosaga episode 2 and 3 ? Once one of these devices can do that I am in. I want to play those while on my commute on the train.
I really appreciate your reviews. You thoroughly discuss more practical details which most people don't cover. You also have comparisons to justify your thoughts. Everything is VERY detailed and useful.
I love how long your videos are Russ. Especially when I'm about to buy a device, some of these 10 minutes ish reviews by other RU-vidrs just don't go deep enough. I feel like when I'm paying out the $100-200+ that emulators cost these days I want as much info as possible. Thank you
He's very thorough, I agree. It's nice to get as much of an in-depth look at a system as possible when considering a purchase. Or heck, even just to check out the system out of curiosity. I mean I feel like I understand virtually every flaw with the system without having ever even seen one in real life.
@@Robin_3v especially on a behemoth of a handheld console 💀 i hate people who shill the steamdeck, expecting everyone to love the big, bulky, and ugly console
I really wanted to hear you say that MMJR stands for "subscribe to Retro Game Corps" 🤣 Excellent video, as always. I appreciate how thorough you are. I always feel like I know these devices so well after watching you videos. Cheers, Russ!
This unit just about hits the sweet spot for size, power and portability, and the 3:2 screen is awesome. I hope the competition takes notice and I hope the creator of this device can take constructive criticism and fix all of the weaknesses. It's a good time to be a retro-gamer!
Hi, Russ! Have you tried the sharp-bilinear shaders in retroarch? What they do is scale the image to the highest integer below the screen's resolution and then apply a bilinear filter scaling from there to fill the rest of the screen. Now that you can stack shader presets in retroarch, i find it really useful. Another benefit i find in the KTR1 is that CRT shaders work substantially better with bigger resolutions. I remember 1440p and 4K being the ideal but 1080p is still way better than 480p, so you can take more advantage of shaders and bezels like the ones from the mega bezel project with the KTR1
Those 3DS graphic stutters remind me of my experience on the Odin Lite using older builds on OpenGL. Vulkan improves it but runs a bit slower on the Vulkan compatible builds, as you discovered. You could try and disable multicore rendering (I think that's the setting), that seemed to alleviate the stuttering for me on my Lite.
Hey Paul, this is a great tip, thanks! This fixed the stuttering in many games, and while some don't play at full speed, there are quite a few that I would consider playable. Sadly, there are still graphical issues with Ocarina of Time and some others, but the experience is pretty good now. I'm going to leave this info in a pinned comment, thanks again!
I love the concept/idea and the story behind this device a lot, but I don’t think I’m in any hurry to snag one for the time being. I have an RP3+ that I absolutely adore and use daily, and this doesn’t strike me as being worth it as a possible upgrade Still, I love seeing more of these devices being made and hope that it brings a lot of happiness for those who pick one up!
same boat, until something is really giving me a sizable performance bump in the same form factor or smaller I will hold on to mine though after really taking a good look again, I don't think I can get down with the trigger/bumper setup, the RP3+ totally has spoiled me on that
Been waiting for this review for a looong while! Am disappointed by the only slight bump in performance. I think I just need to be patient for next year. Maybe by then we will have an RG405M style handheld that can flawlessly play GC/PS2/Wii. For now ill just play those systems on my steam deck. Thanks for your work Russ!
I've been trying to tell the community that the KTR1 isn't the savior for playing 6th generation titles. I understand the optimism with some of the videos but I really don't think it has that capability. For everything else it's great though.
Possibly end of next year, but like we would have to jump the SOC performance by a ton. For instance, everyone is making and stuck on t618 currently, and that is weaker than the Odin still. Even the Odin with a SD845 doesn’t do all that flawlessly. So either you need a new company to shake everything up, or trust that current manufacturers jump well past the sd845 at a low price point, which I just don’t see happening for a long time.
I have the same problem of accidentally hitting the Home button instead of Start on my Odin. A free Android app called Button Mapper was the solution. I mapped a single press to "Back," which in retroarch does nothing, but in most emulators opens up the quick menu. Then I mapped a double-press to Home so that I still have access to that functionality, and a long press to open up the app switcher. It's not a perfect solution but at least now I'm not getting kicked out of my app when all I want to do is pause.
Always an informative and detailed preview so thanks Russ. Yet another decent handheld that packs good features yet still not powerful enough to standout from the sub $300 competition which is a real shame but also expected for the price range.
Chris PS2 is definitely possible on a Helio G99, I know from personal experience. It's not going to play literally every single PS2 game in existence, but I guarantee you it'll run like 2/3rds of the games at native resolution. Unless you're extremely petty or nitpicky it's not a big deal to have minor graphical issues or slight lag here and there
@@Apollo-iq1vx this ^ there are way weaker devices that can handle some ps2, and even more powerful devices that can't run the while library. I imagine the retail ktr1 will handle most of the games people would want to play portably
The power of this is fantastic, the non-stacked triggers and lack of Linux sucks, I hope this is popular enough that a Version2 gets released with stacked triggers and linux
I had ordered one and I am happy about it with 8GB RAM it fulfilled all my requirements it is pocketable 7000 mh battery life can play almost all PS2, WII, GAMECUBE. I don't care about the drawbacks as it is not that much and the developer is one guy who is working hard for making this handheld. We should appreciate his hard work and wish him to make more consoles in future as well 👍
If they permitted full signal on 8 directions, you would go faster on diagonals. I don't know in older games, but if you develop a game now, you would have to normalize the input so that it's circular like these
Just received it the other day. A bit later than June :D Very, very nice. Had to switch to "white", but it's more like old PC beige. Looks, feels, and works fantastic :)
I think this is a perfect fit for me, none of the negatives you mentioned really concern me except potentially the button feel and build quality, I'll wait to see if others also have serious reservations about these issues.
@@GreenTeaViewer I eat like freaking crap though man even though I mainly dreak water. It's definitely a food issue. One definitely has to balance out their food intake even if they drink water it seems. I hate itttttttttt.
@@GreenTeaViewer Thanks man. I'm going to try my hardest and get to a normal weight before this Christmas! I wish you the best in 2023 and beyond friend.
I was hoping you would be able to rebind the 4 buttons in the front so that start and select are on the top instead like the Switch. The current layout is very bizarre. Maybe in the future there will be a way to do that.
Apparently when you select the layout, it also changes the buttons. You get the Dreamcast/Xbox layout with the stick on top and the Nintendo layout with the d-pad on top. And while I appreciate that the "white" version has the SNES colors with the Nintendo layout, they really missed an opportunity to make the Dreamcast/Xbox layout have the correct Dreamcast or Xbox colors.
Excellent review! It seems like the KT-R1 was largely a victim of unfortunate timing. When it was announced there was nothing close to it's power level on the market so it was a really exciting proposition, but by the time it actually came out we already had a wide variety of similarly powered and probably better built devices to choose from. I really appreciate the thorough review though, and testing Star Fox Adventures for the GameCube! That's the one GameCube game that I always want to know how it's going to run on a device, and so far it seems like unfortunately nothing other than the Steam Deck can really play it well.
Anybody can announce anything. Timing really can be everything sometimes. Speaking generally when I say that it feels like some people are allergic to just get an Odin Lite still lol.
@@cheekydaze6018 I'd definitely be down to get an Odin Lite if it was just a little more powerful and could play GameCube more effectively without tinkering, but as it stands the really demanding GameCube games that I'd like to play (Metroid Prime 2, Star Fox Adventures, Rogue Squadron II, etc.) just don't run well on the Odin Lite without hiccups or slowdowns. The Steam Deck is a bit big for my liking though and I really prefer gaming on Android, so I'm hopeful that the upcoming Aya Neo Pocket Air will be the high powered GameCube capable Android device I've been waiting for. =)
If you want something Ps Vita sized that can play PS2 games the KT-R1 is your only option - there is the rg405m at a similar form factor but the performance is worse in all emulators.
Great video as usual, but goodness, I've been watching your channel since the start (been having a great time!) and I swear every time we get to the d-pad fighting game test, it's heartbreak. Unironic question: are there _any_ of these machines with a pad suited for someone wanting to mess around with Third Strike on the go?
Good review! I'm sticking with my Steam Deck even though I pretty much exclusively use it in docked mode. I am looking forward to seeing the next wave of more powerful portable devices that can comfortably run most Dreamcast/PS2/GameCube/Wii game (and perhaps beyond) without too much need to tweak a ton settings. Though, we'll just have to wait and see as the technology improves.
@@maxamillion2k7 Yeah, I've actually heard good things about that one, too. May eventually bite the bullet and pick it up, but just weighing my options.
Thank you for reviewing this device I’ve never heard of with that incredibly difficult to use website. Hopefully this handheld is better than their online store
The seller has them on eBay, I ordered it today (6gb model in black)..... Thanks for the review on it, I wanted a pocket version for it.... Got it, nice device, pocketable, now just to get it all set, Android devices needed a lot of work... You will like the fact that home button has been moved to the below the buttons...
Looking forward to seeing other upcoming handhelds with this chip. All of the complaints you had on this unit were highly valid and would be a turnoff for me enough so that I'd avoid this particular layout/choice of components.
@@harleyn3089 that chip uses a lot more power and needs a fan since it's 4 big cores, so you have to pick your battles. It'll never fit a small device.
The SoC choice is a big letdown but I guess that's a result of long development times. Big meh for me though. If i didn't already have an RP3+ I would likely get the 4GB version of this. Also, non-stacked triggers???
The range of performance from GameCube and up is pretty crazy. It's crazy to me that you can't play every GameCube game (without a lot of hacks), but you are able to emulate some switch games.
Maybe it's because modern games seem to be more optimized than older ones? Game engines are quite good these days and libraries seem quite helpful. And I remember some older systems being criticized for having horrid architectures and being a pain to develop games for.
@@skycloud4802 And Nintendo is "kind" enough to make their consoles so low in graphical power that emulation is so much easier rural than other current Gen consoles lol
@@JonathanHolt1988 it doesnt work like that though, if that was the case, this thing should emulate without a problem xbox360/ps3/wiiu (let alone wii&gamecube), but it doesnt. It's just that the switch has a very developer friendly(/well understood) chipset, so it's also easier to emulate. So easy, that's it's easier for most hardware to emulate switch than ps2
Switch games were developed on hardware that has an arm chip and architecture from a 2015 android tablet. Gamecube play station 2 and wii were have custom cpus and graphics
Russ, can you make a video or a point of giving us a better sense of where the processors and screens sit relative to competitor devices? The model numbers for processors doesn’t tell us much tbh. Same with screens. You do mention the screen aspect ratio which is great but other things such as size comparisons, anti reflective performance, etc would be great.
Man, Saturn emulation on Android is REALLY a big problem. I respect the Yabasanshiro dev, but dude, just imagine how it would be if it had been open source until now. ALL the little hot fixes needed have have been PILING up man... My hope is the SSF emulator people working on their current Android pre alpha (I managed to make it work for super low end games, like Parodius etc.). But again, it's closed source I believe and the langage barrier is really compounding the issue (100% Japanese project). This device should be able to run it full speed no issue, as well as many other handhelds. Anyway. I've been waiting for this specific handheld for YEARS now, but I'm not going to lie, this is really disappointing to me in general. I LOVE the fact that it's a passion project and not from a soulless company... I'm still interested, but I find that the price is a bit out of my range for that type of low-ish handhelds. If things were better money-wise I would still be buying one 100% if only to support the guy. But right now... IDK. I'd be interested if he's planning to make a Ver 1.5 model next. One with stacked shoulder buttons, etc.
I got an RP2+, because I was sold on FINALLY playing Sega Saturn on a handheld. I can play most games I REALLY want to play on it, just not all. Marvel Super Heroes Vs Street Fighter won't play, Last Bronx is glitchy and Burning Rangers is kinda janky. Not sure if RP3+ and RG405/RG505 is better, because reviewers tend to jump straight to PSP, PS2, GC, Wii, 3DS and Switch.
@@TheObserver85 I KNOW dude. Exact same boat here. And not only do we have to deal with generally poor or at best uneven emulation, but most of those devices are not "Dpad centric" (which is why having the option to put the dpad on top made this particular handheld extremely interesting). And while most of those dpads are fine themselves, try to find a shield style one with a powerful enough device is impossible at the moment... Playing Saturn with a bad Dpad is just blasphemy in my opinion :P But anyway; if you're looking for better Saturn emulation with a similar profile as the RP2+, this device is kind of your best option right now. The screen of the RP3+ SUCKS for 4:3 content, imho. Going with the widescreen option destroyed that device for me. The new clamshell Retroid is also widescreen, BUT the dpad is well positioned so you might want to have a look at how it performs. To be honest, we're HIGHLY limited on Android in general, even with quite powerful devices like the Odin. It's STILL no enough to run Retroarch Beetle Saturn (just like the KTR1); so like all the others at that price point we're stuck with either the YabaSanshiro standalone, on Retroarch as a core (no save states for some fu**ing reason), or the even more outdated Yabause core but with the ability to save states. It's only 3 options, and it all depend on which game you want to emulate and how. Also, since there isn't a team behind any Yaba Sanshiro incarnation, it's updated twice a year usually for stuff nobody care about like the cloud saving option. This causes many compatibility issues when trying to use it with a fontend, as there are no device specific hotfixes. I'm always able to mange, but it can be a pain. ALL of that BS to come to ONE conclusion: Android is not what you want on a handheld right now if you want to the best portable Saturn emulation. WINDOWS is what you need, unfortunately. There you get so much additional options. A cheap one that is great (if REALLY short battery life isn't a problem for you) is the Aya Neo Air (with OLED screen). It's a low tier Windows handheld, but it's powerful enough to use virtually any Saturn emulator you'd want. Also, while the thumbstick is at the top, the position of the Dpad is still high enough to be quite ergonomic, and all the buttons are quite good. Otherwise AYN has an equivalent low end Windows handheld too, but I don't know which ones are readily available to purchase nor do I have experience with them. I do have a GPD Win 4, but it's 4 times the price lol... Last option is the HORRIBLE and rushed to market Anbernic Win600, STILL selling for an INSANE price for the piece of junk it is. NOBODY should support them honestly. But if you can somehow get one for like $200 MAX (I got mine for free and had already ram laying around to upgrade it too), the Dpad is great and perfectly placed. You also get a lot of screen real-estate for 4:3 content. And while performance isn't good (zero optimization), it's good enough for Beetle Saturn if you want accuracy, Kronos if you'd like to upscale a little bit, and SSF if for a mix of the two. Again, STAY AWAY unless you find one for at least half the price AND with the "best" configuration. I use mine exclusively for Saturn and it isn't bad. LOL; I just wrote a freaking novel :P But eh; It's so rare to see fellow Saturn fan in the portable handheld crowd so there you go. If you need help with anything Saturn emulation related let me know! Btw, do you know any device able to emulate Saturn that has a shield style Dpad? I have a cheap one that is vertical and has a Nomad button layout (forgot the name), but it's barely able to emulate Saturn (great for Genesis/MD though). Let me know if you'd like to know which one. Other than that there's new Evercade, which has an AWESOME shield Dpad, but I don't think it has been hacked yet (without or without a flash cart), nor that it will be powerful enough to brute force Saturn emulation without serious optimisation work that'll probably never be done (it's a weap cpu...).
@@Unholy_Louie As soon as I seen your post and Sega Saturn, I knew I had to jump in and reply. Us Saturn fans gotta stick together🤝 I even bought a PiBoy DMG because of its 6 face buttons. Was tempted to get a Powkiddy A20 for its 6 face buttons as well. I plan on getting a KTR1 for ol' skool gaming(Fighters, SHMUPs, Beat'em Ups etc.) and a Windows handheld for a little more modern emulation and Rpgs on from older consoles(Saturn's Shining Force 3 games and Panzer Dragoon Saga as an example). So the KTR1 would be for Arcade type Saturn games(also other consoles) and maybe an AYA NEO or Asus ROG Ally handheld for more home console type gaming. Hopefully the KTR1 will be up to task when it finally drops🤞 And no worries for the novel comment OP, if it's about the Saturn and some helpful tips, I'll read it and enjoy it🤜🤛
You CAN remap the HOME button. But on Android 12 only one app is able to do it in my experience. I don't have any device with me at the moment but if anyone is interested I can definitely come back here when I'm home to let you guys know which remap app it is. Let me know :)
If we're talking about comfort out of all of these I'd probably go with the KTR1 mostly because I _hate_ the offset controls. I'm a Playstation user mainly, so I prefer the option of analogs on the bottom on both sides. Plus like 85% of the playable retro games will prioritize the Dpad. But I'm confused by the button layout, if you can't remap that home button thought that's going to be a big issue. All of these systems were Android, so why are some of these using the Nintendo button layout while others use the Xinput style? A little annoying thing I noticed across all of these devices. Ultimately, it doesn't seem to do much significantly better than the RP3+. Which is sad because it's so close to being an upgrade with a lot of thought put into it.
Russ is the 3rd person I have seen wearing the same Kirby T-shirt I bought from Target. It is a good, easy to wear shirt with a nice design. The problem I have is not wanting to wear the same shirt as what everyone else is wearing, with the exception of when we do that on purpose to show we are in a group.
Handheld emulation is almost getting there, but I think imma hold out another year on replacing my RG350m. At least until it's streamlined and ergonomic enough if I'm paying close to $200 for one. Also enother a big complaint I have with these is the tiny 2% - 5% performance increase with each new version of these's handhelds that come out. Everytime I am about to pull the trigger on buying a new model, something new comes out with tiny improvements of the last release. Just wish these companies would stop trying to milk the emulation consumers and just release a decent handheld with significant performance increases that pushes to do at least 15% - 20% better than these half @$$ new revisions.
I feel like we’re so close to magic handheld that ticks all of the boxes of portability, power, great design layout and build quality. This feels like the closest one so far. Hopefully, the final, mass production run resolves some the button quality issues mentioned.
Great video! I’m on the fence about this device. Leaning more towards the rg405m. I’m honestly new into the retro emulation world. I am curious would the 8gb ram version tweak the stuttering in the ps2 game play? I know in the video you showed that this device really wasn’t proving itself on that platform. Looking for a nice overall pocketable device. Thank you
Great review as Always ! One thing bugs me tough, from what I understand this is supposed to be less powerful than the Odin lite but for most of the games I saw in the video (god of War 2 especially) they seem to run better on this than on the Odin lite video ? Is this juste because of emulators updates ? I m asking because I m wondering which one to buy between the two ! Thanks !
Now all that's left is a Vertical version of this that plays PS2 flawlessly and my search for handhelds will be over. That's all I want is to do PS2 but in a vertical form factor just for the novelty of it since most/all handhelds that can run beefy systems are always horizontal.
I feel like as soon as you’re going for any option that isn’t the absolute base model, you might as well buy an Odin lite for the same money since the dimensity 900 is still a more powerful SoC. I also think the best screen ratio for both 4:3 and 16:9 is still 16:9 instead of having black bars on both wth 3:2. RP3+ with 4.7” 16:9 is already getting a bit small for PS2. Glad to see it’s at the point of existing though, and I appreciate your reviews
8:56 That's supposed to be the placement of the Start button, it should have been programmed to _be_ the Start button. It's a handheld device, technically it is in the exact same market as the Switch and its earlier predecessor the DS, which both use that placement, but most of all, the Switch itself which is an active and popular handheld system at this time. It's a huge oversight to not consider button placement compared to other systems so as to avoid that confusion... but even above _all of that_ it's just a terrible button placement in general. I realize there is not a lot of room to work with, but the home button should probably be up on top or somewhere out of the way. That's not something you ever want to click by mistake. 9:50 That was likely an intentional design plan for the issue you mentioned prior, but it's just not enough sometimes.
I can't help but take issue with the whole "for the community" thing. Any time you're selling something, short of selling at a loss, you're not really doing it for anyone but yourself. That might be part of your inspiration for the idea, certainly, we all can see a problem with the market and sometimes we think we can offer the solution, but ultimately money is the end goal of a product. It's very rare for someone to sell a product and put in all this time and effort into putting them together for no personal gain. In fact, I'll go further and say that no one actually does that and it's all an angle. It's not a noble act, it's a financial one. Even if they aren't making a whole lot right now, they stand to make a living off of this at some point, that's why they're doing it. So while I do think it's cool, and it does stand to take less criticism as it's not a company, it is by no means a shelter for criticism as this is not charity-work, it is a business model and this design is kind of... bad. Not horrible, just needs some serious tweaking on the layout, it's very "done in my basement" outside of how clean the shell itself is composed. I mean, I don't want to sound harsh, but the fact of the matter is that when you opened it up, you didn't need to tell me one dude put this together, it was pretty clear... and while that brings comfort to you, I personally prefer the safety and security of a team of skilled creators designing and putting together a device. There isn't that much accountability with Chinese sellers, I know, but I can at least count on there being an expected standard they will follow with their devices, and short of getting maybe a cruddy screen or a bad battery (in which case depending on where you purchased it, you can usually get a refund or a replacement), all I really need to know is what reviewers of said handheld have to say about it to know if it's worth my money.
This may be the weirdest take away from this video but... This review inspired me to order a replacement screen for my Retroid Pocket 2+ (which started life as a OG Pocket 2) It's kind of funny, The KTR1 first showed up as a concept when the RP2 had just come out, and three years later, the KTR1 is finally coming out... and the RP2... granted with a completely different PCB... covers the same consoles- edge cases aside.
This device has pretty much everything I want; genuinely hope the full production model has more refined chassis and controls and some QOL tweaks ("hold to go home" to mitigate accidental home button presses, for example).. might be the one to make me finally open my wallet
Thanks for the video! Did you ever compare psp game screen size between the KT-R1 and the RG405M? I would think the KT-R1 would be a better experience.
