My son turned 2 a few days ago and he is sitting on my lap as I watch this right now. Little does he know my RP2+ is sitting in my pocket for when he finally decides to go down for a nap :) Thank you, and also thank you for your thorough and informative content.
I've honestly never considered your reviews anything less than honest. I think some people and sadly, companies just cannot handle constructive criticism, when in fact they should really value it.
Exactly, if people put out their products just for people can review them, then of course we are going to say a few things good and a few things not so good. They should know we are not like a grade school teacher and give them a gold star something they would put less effort too.
what happened to gpd man i used to root for them until they fell from grace with the gpd win 3 then the aya neo came out then the steam deck and now they blacklisted taki udon just sad.
Even hearing about being blacklisted just for stating the obvious things over a handheld, I still can’t believe they would do that and it is a bit cheap that they the owners of the 3rd party handheld like GPD and anbernic and many others would blacklist someone for giving an honest review. I hope next year companies would be mindful about this and listen without whining saying their products is good.
In China, gadget review need to be positive to make it sell, some content creator or press even get paid to say good things only, and saying bad staff will usually get blacklisted, the Chinese are exporting these type of assignment to the west, try to fool consumer outside China, just like Amazon's fake user feedback
Its also incredibly strange considering handhelds are already an extremely niche market (despite it growing fast) and positive reviews from critics like Taki are unquestionably the biggest marketing tool for companies right now. Blacklisting a critic for giving your product a bad review means that any GOOD products you might make will likely not be covered by them, losing you tons of advertising.
@@TehHAuxaRs 2022 is a strange year tbh, I wanted to remind this to other people not in the handheld marketing but also gaming like sega for example is not doing too well directing with games minus the merchandise. but persona 5 royal and perosna 4 gold got ports for xbox user's so I'm glad for them.
Being honest, transparent with the audience/noting any conflicts of interest, and trying to remain as neutral/unbiased as possible is the only real way to do anything resembling a good product review. It's sad that nowadays everyone is just expected to be free PR. Hang in there and thanks for sticking with it.
Thank you so much for your blatantly honest reviews. It's insane that you were ever blacklisted for *not* fondling the balls of a fucking hardware company. I watch these for you and your objective overview. These guys can get bent. Thanks again for the review, Taki.
If I didn't own an Odin I'd be tempted, but I think a new wave of emulation handhelds is just round the corner and by this time next year we will se competitively priced Windows handhelds that are doing the same job and more
I don't think you live in the cursed timeline. I'm glad that GPD was listening to your input and provided you with the root access patch for the XP Plus, because the performance you get out of it rooted is definitely night and day. Now, as for the attachments and size of the device, I honestly think this would be the absolute perfect device for me if they changed a few things, most notably that D-Pad, but I would prefer a variant of the device with symmetrically laid out analog sticks on the main gamepad attachment. Moving the ABXY buttons down on the main gamepad module to line up with the D-Pad better would be a far more ergonomic solution for my sized hands, because I find that asymmetrical layouts like that found on the Nintendo Switch or the Xbox just are not comfortable for me. That said, I have to admit I'm very, very intrigued by the attachments they provided in addition to the main gamepad attachment, and I'd honestly swap between all three of them depending on what I'd want to play or emulate at any given moment. I think the MOBA pad attachment makes it a damn good thing for something like a Game Boy/Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, or retro emulation system like the NES, SNES, or even Sega Genesis, as you could map those buttons to what you would need out of those. And the flat panel attachment makes it fit better in a pants pocket by far, honestly. I'd ship it, if it were me, with lower-profile analog stick caps for just such a purpose, because those changes would definitely make this my daily driver for an Android phone and AIO device.
@@TheDarkmore Super Mario Sunshine comes to my mind right now, early in the game you need an analog right trigger to play. Not sure if there's an effective workaround for this (other than binding an entire axis from the right analog stick to R2).
@@sovo1212 the simple workaround is binding slight R press to one right trigger and full R press to the other since the GameCube only has 3 shoulder buttons and the left analog isn’t used for anything in super Mario sunshine, it’s not the same as having an actual analog trigger but it works, I was able to beat the game when I emulated it on my computer and didn’t have a compatible controller with analog triggers
@@sovo1212 never knew that an analog trigger was mandatory on that game, reading ths i wonder how nintendo managed to resolve this in the super mario all stars version of mario sunshine
This seems more powerful than the Odin but the form factor and screen make this a tough sell for me. I'll just be patient and wait for my Steam Deck reservation to pop.
@@acwbit2368 Should? It 100% will lol. People need to stop comparing these to the Steam Deck. The Steam Deck is FAR more powerful, it literally has desktop level performance dude
I wish there was a big boy 4:3 screen handheld. I mainly play games for this aspect ratio. Something around 5 or so inches that I could go 2x,3x,4x resolution at the least. Do you know if there is anyone that can/eventually fit the bill without getting a folding phone which has its own deal breaking screen issues? I have always had an idea where a phone sits recessed in the inside of the controller (with rubber inserts for near perfect ratio) , telescopic, cooled, and battery backup/pd pass through charging. It would be thicker but tbh I would love a thicker handheld.
That is exactly what I was looking for too my friend. Now hear me out, look closely at Surface Duo 2. It is very close to what you described. It has great dual 4:3 AMOLED displays, 5.8" each, that are separate and fold all the way back, and do not have the screen durability issues of the Galaxy Folding phones. It sports a Snapdragon 888 and 8GB RAM. It fits a variety of telescopic controllers, USB-C ones included. You can fold it all the way back to play on one screen, or use both if you're playing DS/3DS games too. The price has come down a lot, and might be something you're interested in! They sell new for $999 new, cheaper used, but I scored mine for $250 with a small crack on the back and one of the screens. Usability is perfect though. 4:3 is important to me too, and I'm enjoying it very much for retro. Just be warned, the case options are very limited due to the nature of the design. I wish there was a single screen 4:3 phone on the market, but there isn't sadly.
The Anbernic RG552 screen is, unfortunately enough, exactly what you are looking for. It's it has a weird 5:3 ratio and it works pretty good for this mixed scenario.
Absolutely appreciate your honest reviews! That’s why I’m a proud owner of the Odin Pro. While that SOC here is definitely awesome everything else isn’t. I have no use for that attachment crap and that screen kills it in the first place for me. No analog triggers is another thing … Still I would love to know what phone is inside 😆 I would bet money on some phone being inside of that because nobody in their right mind would buy such a screen to build a console with it so I bet they bought the board and screen from some phone manufacturer…overstock?
As someone who follows a lot of tech stuff but only recently started following handheld devices like this, I'm curious about what happened to GPD or its marketing. I remember it was one of the first companies I heard about in the portable PC space.
Preordered it one week ago, mostly because of the D1200 SoC, intrigued of what it can do, almost cancelled it after looking few previews, will keep it now, i see the potential and more importantly i see GPD reviewing feedback and taking action, defitenetely support the more color options remark... Thanks Taki amazing video as always.
GPD is/was always good about making software modifications when I was an earlier reviewer of their products. That's one good thing I can say. This the first time they have done a hardware modification from something that I found.
@@TakiUdon I was a bit hesitant of not buying another gpd product after seeing this that they would go for the modular route. After buying the product we’re you nervous about loosing one of the pieces or miss placing it somewhere around your house?
I don't see why is there a hype for AYN Odin Lite with a D900 CPU, coupled with endless months of waiting. Whereas, the GPD XP+ has a D1200 which packs better performance, coupled with a reasonable delivery timeline. The only difference is 15% to 20% increase in pricing for the GPD XP+ which is easily justified by the performance gain.
Taki, we trust you. I know you do this from a passion for retro games. It's honorable that you go above and beyond to explain your position as a reviewer. Just wanted to let you know that we recognize that. Great work on this one.
Taki, don't forget that current price is only for Indiegogo. The retail price for this thing once the campaign is over is $549 for the 128gb and $659 for the 256gb model. Once this thing goes up for retail I'm not sure its gonna be worth it.
Yes, but I don't know if those prices are "real" ... They have had other products before that were on IGG with stated retail prices that never happened.
Deff not the most powerful android handheld. Also don't get why all these companies don't use analog triggers. And go for the clicky route. I personally hate clicky triggers they suck for racers and games that need the analog triggers to do certain things
I actually have the first one and really like the way it feels in the hand. It’s a very solid feeling hand helps and the controls feel great. I’m interested in upgrading to the plus version for the extra oomf. Great review. And thanks I’m a dad so happy Father’s Day to all the dads.😁
Pokemon Ultra S&M, MH4u 🔥👊🔥 Too Bad this Weren't Tested *NFS Underground *Pokemon Colosseum *Naruto *Super Smash Bros. Brawl If it Runned PS3 Emulator Switch Emulator Id Rip It Off their Hands at That Price if it Had 6 More Gb of Ram!
The absolute gall of companies that produce products which, let's be totally honest, are used massively by software pirates, to then turn around and blacklist a reviewer of their products for saying something they don't like? These companies are skating on a very thin layer of legitimate business above a sea of crime, which they might not be directly involved in themselves, but must be aware of, surely. They cannot afford this kind of disingenuous conduct, they need any goodwill they can get from the community.
You mention easily available widescreen hacks. Do you have a video on how to do this by any chance? I looked online but I couldn't find a straight answer. Excellent video as always :)
You know, it's rare theses days to have you tube reviewers that aren't massive shills. It seems easy to be corrupted with all the free stuff you can get if you're nice to thoses companies.
You don’t need to diss this garbage for us to see how trash it is - look at it - the most uncomfortable looking handheld I’ve EVER seen. Literally just a rectangle. Hideous. GPD isn’t even trying.
Retro Dodo also mentioned getting blacklisted. Seems Chinese companies are on a roll with blacklisting reviewers who make less-than-stellar comments about their products. Yikes.
@@TakiUdon Ah he told me in the comments (in his channel) he's also had a "complicated" time with Anbernic lately. He also put out a video about RG353P today and it's sad major reviewers are getting blacklisted for being honest about product reviews.
@@nojuanatall3281 This is why I personally avoid dealing with Chinese companies when it comes to product support either in general. One of the few exceptions is probably 8BitDo.
As a new subscriber with only a couple of your videos under my belt, it is IMMEDIATELY clear to me that you are passionate about this hobby and committed to ensuring your viewership is armed with the unbiased knowledge needed to make informed purchases. As a life-long retro gamer diving into the handheld emulator market for the first time, I was IMMEDIATELY overwhelmed by both the options, and the hiccups associated with translation, cloning, mods, and just a general lack of understanding about this space. Then I found your channel. It was like a sigh of relief. Here’s a guy who makes videos explaining each of these products entirely. No jump cuts. No shameless promotions. No bullshit interstitials. Just information relevant to my potential purchase. You are a rare and appreciated creator on a platform full of garbage. Thank you for doing what you do and helping me begin my journey into a new hobby.
Taki, how do you deal with all the harassment and negativity by the companies who are insulting you for negatively reviewing their products? Take care man.
It sucks man. That's all I can say. It's also strange that the company that hates me the most (GPD) ended up getting a significant software benefit from me reviewing this, but other companies that don't like me blame their software issues on me, or get bent out of shape if I don't ignore them. It makes no sense.
They made the right side modular but not the left side which would've made more sense... They could've given users the choice to flip the d pad and analog stick..
Bro, I absolutely love that you gave them a chance by getting root access and proving that there was more potential in the CPU. Well done my man, I absolutely applaud you for that 👏🧠📲🎮🕹️💻🖥️💯
I do like the modular aspect as it can give options for varied controller layouts. Whilst giving you the root patches to show the capabilities actually available, the fact that they were unable to come to the same conclusion with access to the same tools is very worrying and begs the question of how competent their team really is, or even if it is developed in house at all. There is clearly potential but this potential is not being explored hard enough and so a re-organisation at GPD, in one form or another seems to be something that management have to talk about in their internal meetings. The Odin Pro is the likely competitor and with the Odin having been out a while and having great reviews and response from purchasers, is still likely to be a clear choice right now in comparison to this. Even the Odin Lite might still be considered a better choice with its much cheaper price unless the Dimensity 1200 can be demonstrated to be that much superior in real world play. The lack of those analogue triggers will really put quite a few off. In an ever increasing crowded market for this exact type of device, there are going to be casualties quite soon and if GPD want to avoid being one of them, they seem to need an internal kick up their own rear ends to see the potential dangers and do something to avoid the possibilities. At this precise moment, I would not personally consider purchasing one. I will give the GPD head some credit though for sending this out to somebody who clearly has some historic conflict with the company, so maybe a step or two is already in the works to give greater consumer confidence in both the company and products.
If this had a 16:9 screen I would consider it. But If I want black bars I can just use my phone with the Snapdragon 8 gen 1 and a gamesir x2 attached to it.
I just can't get behind android handhelds. The OS feels clunky compared to linux OSs custom-made for emulation. And it's even more difficult to get behind when it is very clearly just a phone with a controller attached.
Just wondering now that the XP+ has started shipping (got mine today), if you had any plans for a set up guide for it. It's the first handheld emulation machine I've gotten that didn't come with a pre-loaded SD card or bought one that someone else made. I thought this might finally be the time to DIY it, I just don't want to screw it up. BTW, the vent holes the cut for the back fan look pretty good considering it was a late addition to the design.
wow companies cant handle truthful reviews like that? you tell the pros and cons legit and they all expect only glowing reviews cuz they give free units but when u tell the fails,so the solution would be to fix the Cons b4 ya release the handhelds first!
This form factor felt the same by attaching an android phone with gamesir x2. Unlike RP2+ or anbernic devices, the shape and sizes differ. I honestly dont see much reason to get this
Dude you're freakin' awesome, because I test alot of phones with MediaTek processors & their Dimensity chipsets are actually, quite amazing & extremely underrated, you've proven that even more so, that there's so many devices using these processors, that just aren't optimized, like Snapdragon-powered products.
That excuse for plastic beeing "space-grade" is so gringe. similar to "military-grade". I can say same thing about my cheap ass microwave: "it's military grade" because technicly it was invented by military. Just love what marketing tries to come up everytime to make it sound fancier and more appieling. At the end it's just plastic.
I know you probably have a video on the settings you use for the dolphin 🐬 emulator. Cuz wow! I am not getting anything close to what you're getting using my tab s8 ultra. You're videos are awesome by the way!
Sooooo, did they end up implementing those root patches you made? Alternatively how can we root it our selfs? Have not found any info on that and their name is terrible. All searchengines i tried confuse this with the way older XD Plus .
The absolutely amateurish blunder with the lack of BASIC R&D about this chipset performance's capability is incredible! The fact that they were about to sell a device with such an horrendous and abnormal level of performance for that chipset, couple with simple fact that GPD is probably the oldest company in this market, it all makes me feel that they do the give a crap about their products. But EVEN with that aside (very hard to do; I mean, do you realize that you just saved this product lol?), I will NEVER do business with companies who blacklist honest people. Period. And this video won't change that fact at all. Only time + good management will be able to repair that, if at all. I'm not sure who ever said that you were a hater or something, but the fact that you singlehandedly saved their new product should shut them off LOL... THIS IS UNPRECEDENTED PEOPLE haha! But then again, people who believed such a thing in the first place probably do not care about facts, so who knows. Anyway, please keep giving us your honest opinion. I do not live how cozy most tech reviewers are with companies, and it is something that will only get worst with time (without a strong ethic system like the one you implemented on this subject since day one). I swear, I feel that most other reviewers are more in the business of doing ads and hidden marketing than honest and independent reviews... Thank you for not being like that TAKI!
To play devil's advocate, MTK processors can have the problem that I showcased here. You only get the real power of the processor in certain applications (like benchmarks) because companies whitelist those apps. For everything else, they favor battery life and keep the performance cores lower than they could go. Everything else you said is spot on.
Screw with reviewers = I will become less likely to believe ANY future reviewer even if YOUR products actually ARE good... "I am so smart, S-M-R-T" - Whoever is responsible for the PR of these companies
Idk bud..I like GDP. I would create a RU-vid channel dedicated to reviewing their products,among some other products, if I could afford to buy them. But I would give them the advisement for the hardware. There's only a few devices I want the rest I would use for giveaways. That way GDP can reach more hands. I'd love to work with them on the next standard of handheld gaming
Great, now we also have portable gaming devices with the same awful aspect ratio as "modern" mobile phones. Why on earth would anyone buy this instead of a Poco X3 Pro with a decent telescopic gamepad? (and you also get a phone BTW). Still, it would be ludicrous to pay the same price or even more for a SMALLER screen with a better aspect ratio.
15:00 I'm just now realizing while staring at the stats, specs, and what it was doing before. Their software CPU governor is butchered. It looks kinda like it was treating the CPU's peak as a boost state, not it's base. Windows 11 keeps doing something similar with AMD CPUs.
I've only owned 2 GPD devices GPD Win 2 and Win Max Original Model Win 2 left stick started to mess up and gpd never replied to my requests for help to fix it With the gpd win max they posted some benchmarks on their RU-vid and even with as many tweeks as I could do and fresh windows I never got the performance they were showing so I stopped buying their products
It's just common sense, only it's not so common. I've literally been thinking the same exact thing about how slow most all GDP devices are clocked. So many devices are like this, because they think battery life really matters. If I ever need battery vs power i'll bring a freakin powerbank and overclock the piss out of whatever it is
I don't buy GPD products cuz they're full of bugs and they always expect you to fix the issues that they can't fix even if the device is defective they always expect you to figure out and fix it. That tells me that the company doesn't care. And wanted me to open up my GPD went through device and go in there and mess with some settings to reset something that's ridiculous companies full of crap have to purchasing the GPD one two and three I'm done with their company and I'll get my support anymore
I love your reviews Taki! give those 2 cents to make better products for the rest of us in the future. Product designers, Engineers & manufactures take note please.
i dont understand why people keep making these cheap emulation handhelds when there are phones that are cheaper that blow them away. anything from galaxy s10 or xiaomi mi 9 and up will run all emulators at full speed and for a fraction of the price. aethersx2 runs shadow of the colossus at full speed even at 2x resolution and its one of the harder ps2 games to emulate. the only emulator i have issues with is skyline, but thats because its still in early development and. you can get an s10 with cracked glass that still functions properly for $100 and thanks to samsung dex you only need a controller and a type-c to usb male cable and if worry about battery just use a wireless charger. i get what people are trying to do with the whole custom ui and built in controls and such, but for the prices they charge for some of these handhelds i could get 2 steam decks or 3 switch consoles. im not hating on the video im hating on the people that make crap devices when we pay good money for quality phones that already do this plus much more. do have to admit tho some handhelds are nice like the rg353, but they make these devices with low end hardware and half the emulators run poorly. do what they did with the aya neo, but at a cheaper price then id be more than happy to hand over $400 for an emulation handheld.
I actually prefer the guy reviewing the product to have a beef with the company. I only consider bad reviews when buying something, to many times do people give something amazing reviews but it's trash.
GPD is a very dishonest org. They never honoured my warranty for the GPD plus and were just non-responsive completely. I highly recommend to stay away.
you speak the truth but sometimes you go off course. calling names, comparing devices and trying to make this device look like a vita is not an honest review. i thought this was a review. then because you personally dont like the modularity, let us the consumer choose, hate it on a personal level and leave to decide. i dont was more battery in place of my modularity, dont decide for all of us. otherwise you rock
