What To Choose? Wiz Or Caanoo?


ColdRush

Still Fresh
Joined
Jan 1, 2011
Messages
79
Age
31
Location
Endwell, NY
I've been looking at both consoles and I'm debating on which I should choose.

The Wiz is $50 cheaper and a tried and true workhorse, but the Caanoo looks promising and is much more sleek and professional looking. I'm just wondering what the benefits of the Caanoo are besides the larger screen? Hardware is about the same as both use processors clocked at the same speeds, albeit the Caanoo runs a newer more efficient chipset.

What is the difference in battery life?
What can the Caanoo do that the Wiz can't?(Besides wifi, I don't plan to buy the dongle).

Can anyone vouch as to the loudness of button clicks?

What I'm looking at price wise is(without shipping):
Wiz+16gb SD - ~$130
Caanoo - ~$150

Edit:
I've also read that the ThinkGeek Wiz's all have snes/other emulator issues? Could they be selling a bad batch of chips from a defect line? And has anyone found a remedy to this problem?

Thanks.
 
ColdRush said:
I've been looking at both consoles and I'm debating on which I should choose.

The Wiz is $50 cheaper and a tried and true workhorse, but the Caanoo looks promising and is much more sleek and professional looking. I'm just wondering what the benefits of the Caanoo are besides the larger screen? Hardware is about the same as both use processors clocked at the same speeds, albeit the Caanoo runs a newer more efficient chipset.

What is the difference in battery life?
What can the Caanoo do that the Wiz can't?(Besides wifi, I don't plan to buy the dongle).

Can anyone vouch as to the loudness of button clicks?

What I'm looking at price wise is(without shipping):
Wiz+16gb SD - ~$130
Caanoo - ~$150

Edit:
I've also read that the ThinkGeek Wiz's all have snes/other emulator issues? Could they be selling a bad batch of chips from a defect line? And has anyone found a remedy to this problem?

Thanks.

Some things to take into consideration. First, the Caanoo doesn't have a d-pad and a lot of people prefer a d-pad to other types of controllers. The fact that it has an analog controller will have an effect on certain types of games. Most arcade games are designed for a digital controller, not an analog. Next, age of battery. The battery chemistry used in the wiz is affected by age as well as use. If there are no more batteries being made for it, expect most of the batteries to fail in < 3 years even if they are new old stock. The Wiz has a pretty sizable library of games and since they are already here, are guaranteed. The Caanoo may not be as widely supported as the Wiz was since it wasn't competing with the Pandora. Now that the Pandora is here, some of the devs may move away from gamepark machines to the Pandora and develop games that simply won't perform on the Caanoo given their resolution differences, and technical differences. Lastly, the Caanoo doesn't really offer much new over the wiz and is unlikely to emulate systems that the wiz can not or run games that the wiz can not. If you are willing to get a used one, you can probably pick up a wiz for well under $100. Anyway, that's my .02.

Chris
 
Last edited by a moderator:
ColdRush said:
I've been looking at both consoles and I'm debating on which I should choose.

The Wiz is $50 cheaper and a tried and true workhorse, but the Caanoo looks promising and is much more sleek and professional looking. I'm just wondering what the benefits of the Caanoo are besides the larger screen? Hardware is about the same as both use processors clocked at the same speeds, albeit the Caanoo runs a newer more efficient chipset.

What is the difference in battery life?
What can the Caanoo do that the Wiz can't?(Besides wifi, I don't plan to buy the dongle).

Can anyone vouch as to the loudness of button clicks?

What I'm looking at price wise is(without shipping):
Wiz+16gb SD - ~$130
Caanoo - ~$150

Edit:
I've also read that the ThinkGeek Wiz's all have snes/other emulator issues? Could they be selling a bad batch of chips from a defect line? And has anyone found a remedy to this problem?

Thanks.

Some things to take into consideration. First, the Caanoo doesn't have a d-pad and a lot of people prefer a d-pad to other types of controllers. The fact that it has an analog controller will have an effect on certain types of games. Most arcade games are designed for a digital controller, not an analog. Next, age of battery. The battery chemistry used in the wiz is affected by age as well as use. If there are no more batteries being made for it, expect most of the batteries to fail in < 3 years even if they are new old stock. The Wiz has a pretty sizable library of games and since they are already here, are guaranteed. The Caanoo may not be as widely supported as the Wiz was since it wasn't competing with the Pandora. Now that the Pandora is here, some of the devs may move away from gamepark machines to the Pandora and develop games that simply won't perform on the Caanoo given their resolution differences, and technical differences. Lastly, the Caanoo doesn't really offer much new over the wiz and is unlikely to emulate systems that the wiz can not or run games that the wiz can not. If you are willing to get a used one, you can probably pick up a wiz for well under $100. Anyway, that's my .02.

Chris
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thanks for the response.

I decided on the Caanoo because battery life is very important to me in the long term. This will hopefully be my nostalgia machine for the next few years and I want it to last.
 
Wiz is more pocketable, but I just found it too small.. Especially with the poor button layouts. The Caanoo is much more comfortable to hold imho..

Jeffphone
 
Back
Top