Wiz Price Drop

[promisedplanet]

Holy moly, if GPH wants to increase sales of the Wiz, they could try advertising the thing.

I show my Wiz (that's what she said) to people fairly frequently, and haven't meant *one* person who's even heard of it.

I know, advertising costs money.

 

[gibberish]

quite tempting for £90 but i'll wait until i can get one second hand for ~£60.

 

[DaveC]

Personally I think the Wiz needs to be $99 or $119 to really survive.

It can't be that cheap due to the additional cost of the extra things in it. I know you are in mad love with your Dingoo (you post about it all of the time) but it has less in it so obviously it can be sold for less. Half the RAM, No TS, No 3D, LCD instead of OLED, soldered in battery, less external storage capacity, made in China, of course it is cheaper. The Wiz at $10.00 more than a dingoo is not realistic.

The Wiz should probably be around $129-$135. You may think that is too expensive but they need to make something on it.

I was very interested in the Wiz before some of its issues came to light.

- screen tearing
- dead pixels & pixel plague
- touchscreen inaccuracy
- less dev support (compared to GP2X)
- lackluster performance improvements over GP2X

The last two were the real show stoppers for me, bummer!

The first one has been solved in some stuff already and has been minimized with most everything (Pollux set). The second is only a problem if you get a defective one. If you do exchange it. I am not sure much about the TS, seems Ok everywhere except the right 5 mm but not much uses it so I don't know for sure. There may be less dev support but if the things you wanted have already been ported then not a big problem (most of the high profile emus have). The performance over the GP2X is decent in some stuff. Amiga seems much better as well as MAME, Quake, SNES, Sega CD, GBA. While not double, the performance is definetly better than the Gp2X and the d-pad is much better than that lousy stick.

 

[coldfish]

-Screen tearing hasn't been fixed, just reduced. The examples Ive seen in videos look pretty bad, I think it would detract from the over all enjoyment too much for me.

-I can't find anywhere in AUS that sells the Wiz so I'd have to buy os, meaning if I got a pixel plagued one it's going to be a chore to get it replaced.

-The touchscreen isnt a big deal to me, but at the same time it being under used and inaccurate makes it a non-feature of the machine.

-Less dev support and the lack of much Wiz exclusive software makes it less attractive to GP2X owners, thinking of upgrading.

-Performance was the main draw card for me, I was hoping for something in the range of 2x GP2X performance +3D hardware, which would push most of the GP2X's almost-full-speed apps over into full-speed on Wiz. I doesnt look like that's the case and the 3D hardware of Wiz is underutilized so that remains a moot feature too.

Dammit!

 

[Jest]

-Screen tearing hasn't been fixed, just reduced. The examples Ive seen in videos look pretty bad, I think it would detract from the over all enjoyment too much for me.

-I can't find anywhere in AUS that sells the Wiz so I'd have to buy os, meaning if I got a pixel plagued one it's going to be a chore to get it replaced.

-The touchscreen isnt a big deal to me, but at the same time it being under used and inaccurate makes it a non-feature of the machine.

-Less dev support and the lack of much Wiz exclusive software makes it less attractive to GP2X owners, thinking of upgrading.

-Performance was the main draw card for me, I was hoping for something in the range of 2x GP2X performance +3D hardware, which would push most of the GP2X's almost-full-speed apps over into full-speed on Wiz. I doesnt look like that's the case and the 3D hardware of Wiz is underutilized so that remains a moot feature too.

Dammit!

The screen tearing pretty much is fixed, I can't remember the last time I've really noticed it in a game. On Sega, Snes, Mame, Scummvm, and GBA I don't see it at all. I'd also like to note that the screen looks amazing, I almost don't like to play emulators on my computer anymore cause they look so much better on the Wiz. XD

The touch screen accuracy is pretty good. I play ScummVM all the time and haven't had any trouble.

People keep saying there's a lot less Dev support, but I don't see much of anything that the other systems have that the Wiz doesn't already. At least that interests me. Everything was ported so quick by Pickle that it doesn't really need much dev support. It's a one man army. XD

Was defiantly worth the price for me.

 

[quartercast]

i fully agree!!!!

Any reason why you completely ignored Exophase's reply to your post? Come on, the JXD was really awful, the only thing it had going for it was the beautiful, beautiful screen. And that there were a lot of suckers like myself with money to burn (yes, I paid around 130 USD for mine), looking for a toy to play with while waiting for the Panda or Wiz.

Heck even this new on online is probably just a rebranded dingoo like the dingoo is a rebranded X760+
http://www.console-hacking.com/neoflash-announce-neo-slim-3000-new-homebrew-console--263095.html#

The dingoo is not a rebranded x760+. They do share similar hardware though.

@DaveC
130 USD seems reasonable for a Wiz. People are still paying 199 AUD over here for a NDSL to play My Pony DS etc.

 

[EvilDragon]

-Screen tearing hasn't been fixed, just reduced. The examples Ive seen in videos look pretty bad, I think it would detract from the over all enjoyment too much for me.

Screen tearing IS fixed for some apps. Official games don't suffer from it, and PicoDrive has also been completely fixed.

The rest use some timings that make the tearing ALMOST disappear, not completely, but a almost. Can also be fixed, though.

 

[geekster]

What is pixel plague?
My Wiz have these variations in pixel intensity that gives a grainy look. But it's only really noticable if there is a lot of similar colors close together. Is that it?
Thankfully it has no dead pixels.

 

[Orkie]

The JXD was not awful at all... People mistaking interest in hacking it for it actually having a lot of stuff doesn't make it bad.

 

[quartercast]

The JXD was not awful at all... People mistaking interest in hacking it for it actually having a lot of stuff doesn't make it bad.

Each to his own I guess. Thinking back on it, I don't have many good memories of it. The battery life sucked, the buttons were cheap feeling/gummy, no L/R controls, slow SFC,NG,GBA emulation, lack of a "scene"/support. I seem to remember my JXD shitting bricks a few times when trying to update the firmware.

The only thing I really liked about it was the screen size/quality, so I mostly used it for showing off my travel photos and watching drama episodes.

But anyways.. this thread is about the Wiz.

 

[aho]

What is pixel plague?
My Wiz have these variations in pixel intensity that gives a grainy look. But it's only really noticable if there is a lot of similar colors close together. Is that it?
Thankfully it has no dead pixels.

Nah, that's just the usual graininess of the current generation of OLEDs. It's perfectly normal.

Pixel plague refers to dead pixels... which spread randomly over the whole display (with a rectangle pattern on the right). This happens if the display isn't perfectly sealed (on the edges). Just like food it breaks down very quickly if there is some oxygen. So, if your Wiz is still fine and older than 2-3 weeks, it's very unlikely that it will get the plague.

 

[DaveC]

What is pixel plague?
My Wiz have these variations in pixel intensity that gives a grainy look. But it's only really noticable if there is a lot of similar colors close together. Is that it?
Thankfully it has no dead pixels.

Pixel plague refers to a defect that has showed up on some units. It is not like it is something that happens allot but like anything things can be shipped defective. What happens is in the beginning of this you will notice a few pixels are bad, totally black. Then over time with almost every use the bad pixels will spread like the plague to the rest of the screen. In a short time the screen will be filled with literally hundreds of bad pixels that can even form clumps of dead black areas . Most of the time there is a weird rectangle that shows made up of more bad pixels.

Usually if you Wiz works for the first week or so of use then you don't have a duff unit and won't get pixel plague.

I don't think it is air getting to the screen like was suggested, if that were the case the bad pixels would start from the edges and work their way in. Usually they pop up anywhere though. I think it is a defective transistor layer that has the TFTs burning out very soon. Or it may be a problem with the cable that attaches to the screen pulling away not being put on right. Just my guesses.

The grain you refer to is normal, this is due to the fact that the pixel driving TFTs all vary slightly in manufacture so light output is slightly different from one pixel to another. They have solved this in larger AMOLEDs by having two TFTs per pixel instead of one. They use some kind of other TFT component in there as well to level everything out and make more uniform.

 

[dgame]

The JXD was not awful at all... People mistaking interest in hacking it for it actually having a lot of stuff doesn't make it bad.

There was progress being made on opening the JXD to hoomebrew.
The main problems were the sanded chips and that they stopped making the JXD abruptly.
IMO, this took the wind out of the sail of the JXD 301 scene.
The screen on it is beautiful, the speaker is loud, and it still is one of my favorite media players.

 

[Orkie]

There was progress being made on opening the JXD to hoomebrew.

Yes, I was one of the people making it .

 

[axiomprime]

It's quite odd to compare Wiz and Dingoo with each other, both machines are for two completly different markets.

Our dictionaries mustn't have the same definition of "different".