My Review Of The F200


Gary_Leeds

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Nov 30, 2007
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Having had an F100 for about a year I thought I would upgrade to the F200 mainly due to the larger memory card support and faster processor speed. I have had it for around a week now and thought I would post my comments on it so far.

Cosmetically it looks the same as the F100 except being white and the joystick being replaced by 4 directional keys. This has the problem of the push button being lost. This causes problems on programs that use it but you can emulate it by holding down all 4 direction keys.

The screen seems the same as the F100 but does become unwatchable in direct sunlight which could cause problems if you are in a car or on a train. The touch screen seems nothing more than gimmick at the moment. None of the in built games use it, which to me is a missed oppotunity. Also there is no place to store the stylus like the DS and pdas have so I find myself not even bothering to use it even for the menus. The covers for the ports seem a worse fit than the F100, especially the EXT port cover, it seems as if because the rubber is white and not black its softer than the F100 covers. The low battery light has gone as well. Boot time seems a lot longer than the F100 as well.

So far everything has been negative in this review, time to highlight the positives

The F200 seems to over clock to 280 on my console happy enough, which for some of the more powerful emulators makes a huge difference, frame skips are halved from the F100 settings and FPS seem to show most emulators run at full speed. Payback seems a lot smoother as well. The downside of the speed increase is the battery consumption is a lot more. I have been using 2500 mAh rechargable batteries and getting about an hour out of them, I have some 3800 mAh batteries on order so hopefully they will give a significant increase. As I said at the start one of the main reasons for getting the F200 was the increase in card capacity and processor speed and the support for up to 32gb SD cards is a huge bonus. You could fit most emulators with a complete set of games on a 16gb card (except Playstation of course). I will let you know if my estimates on this is true as I have a 16GB card on order :)

Over all, despite the flaws, I recommend the F200 but if you have an F100 already it may be worth waiting until more of the programs are updated with F200 features. A lot of emulators lock the max clock speed below the 280 I can get from the F200, also the battery monitor in most emulators seem to read empty on the F200 but that could just be my batteries.

Once people get to grips with using the touch screen in programs then the F200 will take off but for now if you are happy with the F100 then stick with it for now, unless you are a big emulator junkie like me, in which case buy it now
 
Gary_Leeds said:
As I said at the start one of the main reasons for getting the F200 was the increase in card capacity and processor speed and the support for up to 32gb SD cards is a huge bonus.
The processor speed hasn't increased, many F100s could clock to 280 or above too. SDHC support is firmware, not hardware, and there have been F100 firmwares supporting SDHC for a very long time. So the two main reasons you mention here for getting an F200 don't actually apply.
 
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Gary_Leeds said:
None of the in built games use it, which to me is a missed oppotunity.

Aren't the 'built in games' just a few gph have stolen from the archive? Remember, gph don't make the games, and the developers couldn't erm.. develop until the unit was released, hence no 'in built' games supporting the touchscreen. Though I do think there has been a few recent releases.
 
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woogal said:
Gary_Leeds said:
As I said at the start one of the main reasons for getting the F200 was the increase in card capacity and processor speed and the support for up to 32gb SD cards is a huge bonus.
The processor speed hasn't increased, many F100s could clock to 280 or above too. SDHC support is firmware, not hardware, and there have been F100 firmwares supporting SDHC for a very long time. So the two main reasons you mention here for getting an F200 don't actually apply.


Mine bombed out if I pushed it to 240 so I guess im just unlucky. And never knew about the SDHC firmware :(


mrsnature said:
Gary_Leeds said:
None of the in built games use it, which to me is a missed oppotunity.

Aren't the 'built in games' just a few gph have stolen from the archive? Remember, gph don't make the games, and the developers couldn't erm.. develop until the unit was released, hence no 'in built' games supporting the touchscreen. Though I do think there has been a few recent releases.


I think most of the games were just entries from the 2007 competition. You would have thought that as the touch screen was the big addition to the F200 though that GPH would have got a couple of dev units out to programmers, bunged them some cash and got some touch screen apps bundled in with the units. :(
 
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