GPD XD 2 Plus - a small review

Are you satisfied with the GPD XD+


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    3

MrLimatex

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Good morning guys,

with this post, I do my first step into the english board. Why now? I was just a reader, not a writer. Now I have something to say.

Yesterday, I've received my GPD XD+. I was really really excited, because I do love handhelds from the bottom of my heart. Some years ago, someone posted the Archos Gamepad into the german board, I thought the GPD may be something like this.

What I don't like:

- Emulators and ROMS are built into the device. This is absolute a no go. Reallly, I may appreciate the effort the vendor did for the customer to be able to play instantly, after the device was turned on, but I hate that these ROMS look like they where stolen from some kind of website a few minuted ago. I don't want to say that I am an angel regarding ROMS, but I don't want to earn money with stolen content. And that is something different to the GP2x or GPH handhelds in the past. ED never shipped them with build in games. Thats something I really loved. I know, he isn't the one that puts the games on the device, but the vendor .... thats a bitch move.

- The perfomance in some 3D games. Hell yeah. A six core cpu, a hd display. I thought nothing could be better. But haha. The performance was like hell. I tried out different emulators and ROMS, but I wasn't able to play (for example) PSone games like I did on the Pandora. It was absolutly impossible for me to play the games with the same immersion like in the past. I can't play a game that is stuttering around, that as some lags or sound issues .... no.

.... nope.

What I like:

- The performance in 2D games and some 3D games. Not everything was bad. I had some nice time playing my favourite 2D games like Castlevania, Metroid, Mario and so on.

- Well working Android itself. When I compare the performance with the Pandora, the GPD of course wins. I can watch youtube without any struggle, I can access my emails fast, I can also stream movies from my NAS and more. Like with my smartphone. It had no problems with the operating system, even if it is just android and no real linux desktop. For a console of this type, android really is enough. You have tons of apps and games. And the version 7 isn't that old. Only the translation was bad. I can see here and there text in english and sometimes in german.

- The build quality. From my perspective, the PGD XD+ is well build. The sticks are quite fine, the dpad is okay (when I compare to the GP2X WIZ, its WAY better, but the NDS is still the boss in the ring) and I really like the shoulder buttons. Even the screen is okay for a device in this price range. When the device lay on my table, it looked like my Nintendo 3DS.

Summary

It breaks my heart, but after the whole day yesterday, I will send the GPD back to ED. I am really not satisfied with the device, because I also want to play 3D games as I want. Maybe my conditions for this device where way to high, but in 2018 a device for more than 200€ should be able to do this.

I will buy a Pandora again, just for the time until the Pyra is on the market. The Pandora can't play N64 well, but the GPD also coudn't as I wish. So in general the Pandora still is the boss in the ring, when it comes to emulation of PSX and so on, without stuttering.And I can even play C64 and Amiga games, without a virtual keyboard.

Maybe someone can also say thing about the console, maybe I am really just a spoiled brat, regarding handhelds.
 
Intersting. When I tried the first XD I noticed a bad build quality but good 3D performance. I guess these aspects are reversed on the XD+.
 
Looks like the XD+ is built to a price then, and is no longer anything like top end. It's a bit of a shame ED will have to pay for GPD's failure, but that's the price of good business I guess.

FWIW, you can play most N64 games on modern 1GHz Pandoras. F-Zero X, Banjo Kazooi, Mario 64, OoT, and most other things I tried ran well. The only things I can remember not playing well were Mario Tennis (a late N64 game from Camelot) which plays but usually has something missing and something distorted, and DK64 (errant camera, but just about playable now).
 
Looking at other reviews it looks like the plus is a lot faster but not in the case of emulators so if that is the main use scenario then it isn't worth the upgrade. Android is a lot faster and it can run a lot more android games but on emulators there is only a few FPS gain, like under 5 better in most cases. So if you own the previous unit and you don't need faster Android or Internet for streaming it isn't worth the upgrade. If you don't own either it is worth the extra cost for the plus though.
 
Well, we received the XD with a clean Android because we requested them like that from GPD and I thought I'd get that for the XD Plus as well, but they probably forgot.
The Emulators are even horribly setup - the included RetroArch can't configure the buttons... Uninstalling it and reinstalling the normal one fixes that.

As for performance... It should be a a lot faster. PCSX should easily run fullspeed as should N64... Did they do something wrong there?

Sent from my XT1650-03 using Tapatalk
 
Really, maybe I judge the performance to hard. But for me, the N64 wasn't, for example, as well playable as PSX on the Rebirth Pandora. And thats what I require. I think the Pyra with an optimized emulator, will do a good job.

I pray to the god of retro gaming. Please, make the Pyra the next killer machine for stuff like that.

And yes, like you said ED, the pre-installed emulators are very bad. The performance ist not that good, I compared them with software from the Play Store. There was a huge difference.

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Not at all. I wrote my review after I played with the Play Store emulators.

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Okay, so Playstation emulation was absolutely horrible as shipped, and is better after downloading a fresh emu from the play store, but still stutters more than the Pandora does (assuming they shipped a PSX emu as supplied)? That's disappointing if so.
 
I don't have the Pandora next to me right now. On wednesday, I will compare bothon thursday :)

The general performance is better, if you use a proper emulator. So, I think I may can say, that PSX runs pretty well. I've tested some more today.

FPSE is a good emulator for PSX games. Spyro, FFIV and Digimon World do run well.

Digimon gave me the chills, like every several years I play the game. Absolutely pure childhood. I really love this game.

But N64 is not playable for me. I hate every form of lag.

So after today, not all 3D games run bad, but a lot of them. If you don't mind N64 or stuttering in N64 games, you can buy the console. If you own the Pandora, don't do it, save the money for the Pyra.

Maybe you can improve the performance more. But I wouldn't know how.

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