I'm a young millennial, which means one of the pivotal gaming devices in my life
was the Nintendo DS, which released all the way back in 2004. And it was a
chunky, hideous monster that I lost immediately at my local movie rental
place. That's why I was excited to be checking out the Magic X040,
which promises prime Nintendo DS emulation due to its 4in vertical screen
and a new, you know, slick modern body. It's looking good. Seeing this screen
like this is really interesting, but it's nice because it doesn't have any splits. We'll see when we turn it on.
But what else do we have in the box here? I love a good rectangular box like
this, by the way. They're kind of cool. In here, we have a USBC to A cable
that's probably about 3 3 and 1/2 ft and an instruction manual.
It's in Chinese. Nice and simple. But
what we really want to see, don't worry, Reese will clean that up, is the device
itself. It is white and it is plasticky.
It kind of looks like the kind of plastic that will yellow over time. Even
the joystick itself kind of looks like it's already off white compared to the
rest of the device, which is a little odd. It kind of looks like a Game Boy Advance eight a Game Boy Advance. Like
it's just a little bit taller. It's like they just took it and dragged it out to
be a little bit longer. On the front, we have everything we'd expect. We have the 480 by 800 screen, a D-pad that feels a
little mushy. Not not too bad, but a little bit mushy. a joystick and then
our face buttons in the Nintendo orientation of A on the right and Y on
the left and our start, select, and home buttons. Everything feels totally fine.
On the top, we have our triggers, L1, R1, L2, R2. These also feel okay.
It's nice cuz you can push them kind of on every angle. Like I'm somebody who likes to push with the the meat of my
finger, and that's definitely possible. And then hitting these top with the tips
of my fingers. And then we have two USB ports, a uh OTG connector for connecting
like uh keyboards or whatever else. And
our charging port and a headphone jack. How nice. On the bottom, absolutely
nothing. And on the back, we have a vent and our device information and visible
screws. Nice. It's not super heavy or anything like that. I'm actually curious
what's inside. And since we have visible screw holes, let's try opening it up and
taking a look. four hex screws later, which are easy to take out with the uh
LT precision screwdriver. We can take a look at the inside.
We can see why it's so light. Not a whole lot going on. We have a massive 4
to300 mAh battery. Well, I don't know if it's massive, but you're not playing any
intense games, so they expect this to last 5 to 7 hours, which I think is
plenty. We have our joystick, which looks easy to replace. are front-facing
speakers. And on the left here, I forgot to mention, we have two SD card slots,
one for the system and one for extra
storage, so you can put like, you know, the OS and everything on one and then your games on another. And we have a
heat sink for our processor, which is something I've never heard of. It's an
AllWinner Cortex A53A133P
1.8G. I think that sounds pretty good. And then we have uh what I forgot to
mention on the other side where our volume buttons are. Nice. I like how
everything is so easy to access and is clearly labeled if you want to replace something. It looks like that shouldn't
be too hard to do. All right, fine. We've taken a look inside. So, let's
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in. And here we can see we are running a version of Android. This is Android 10
and it's running a Dawn Launcher, which is a custom OS by Magic, I believe. At
least if the intro is to be believed. And one thing to know is it took a while to turn on. I don't know again anything
about the CPU or, you know, if the 2 gigs of RAM is plenty for these old
games, but it it took a long time to turn on if you are an impatient gamer like me. I want to play Pokémon right
now. But it's a nice launcher. You can see here we can switch through all the
different games that it has. The only concerning thing is just how many games
come with the device. We just bought this. We didn't ask them to send it over
and it has what must be every Nintendo
DS game. Apparently there are over 1,700 and that
is, you know, very convenient. I've bought this and play games on it, but
very questionable uh legality there. Actually, it's not questionable. Uh it
it's illegal. Yeah. Don't Don't steal ROMs. Luckily, I own all 1700 of these
games in physical form. Uh they're just off camera, but we'll we'll play a
couple games, see how this goes. There's got to be a search button. This is crazy. Another annoying thing, at least
it's not clear. I Oh, well, there you go. I found the search button.
It would be nice if it said somewhere that there is a search button. Oh, yeah. It's got touchcreen, which is very
convenient for a uh legendarily touch-based device. Not the most
responsive, though. All right. Mario Kart DS. One of my favorite DS games.
One of the best DS games. Am I right? It's dead silent. Is it supposed to have
music? Okay. Yeah. No, this D-pad is not the most uh fun to use. I'm like trying
to to move around. I can't tell if it's just the keyboard in the game, but
there's some extra movements happening there which are not fantastic. I don't
know why the volume was off by default, but you know what? The screen looks
pretty good. The top buttons are bound to uh flip
screens and fast forward by default, which is really nice, especially for
games that are textbased and maybe don't have auto advance or, you know, don't
advance as fast as you want. Really nice to be able to go into fast forward mode that easily. And you know what, the
sound is totally serviceable. It's nice to have actual dual front-facing
speakers, but I think for now we're good without. Only problem is you really want
to push those buttons. It's really hard to comfortably hold your hands somewhere
that aren't resting on top. And then these buttons are a little sensitive, so
you end up pushing it a bit by accident. But overall, this is running really
well. Let's uh let's try something different. All right, up next, a real
test. This is going to use a touchcreen. We're going to play rhythm heaven. It'll be good to test speakers, good touch
screen, but it does surface the first problem, which is that there is no
stylus, nowhere to put a stylus. It does not come with one. And again, this is a
touch heavy device. That was a main point of the second screen is use it for
shooters, use it for uh something like brain age or this rhythm heaven, but it
does not come with anything. You're forced to use your finger.
There's a whole family in that car.
You know what? The screen feels really responsive. It is a little small. It's
15% smaller than uh modern DS's, but it
feels really good to use. Again, I just wish it came with a stylus and that I
had rhythm. Another underrated thing is that it is a laminated screen. So the
screen is right up against the edge. It doesn't feel like there's a gap in
between to really kind of take you out of the moment or just add a little bit of separation between you and the screen
itself. But I did bring a stylus to see
if it still feels good to use if you did carry one with you. Yeah, it feels fine.
It's just a pain to carry around another device, unless you're my mom and keep it
with you in your bag, I guess. Another interesting thing about the software is this little menu. So, if you hit the
back button or home button, it brings this up to simulate closing device,
making it so you don't touch the controls. The touchcreen doesn't work, turning it off and on the microphone and
everything like that. But it doesn't only play DS games. It does play Tate if you want to play other vertical old
style arcade games, as well as well a
lot of other different consoles, Game and Watch, Dreamcast, Game Boy, Game Boy
Advance. But you'll find that the screen isn't quite the right aspect ratio to
really make use of that, which is kind of a bummer cuz this is not the biggest
screen. And now it's even smaller. You got to get real close. What the hell is
Action Man? The FPS is taking up most of
the screen. Yeah, this is this is real small. As much as I love Action Man,
this is not the ideal way to play it. Oh man, this game is awesome, though. I've
never played it before, but I'll be going home and 100%ing this.
Does anyone ever choose Gus? >> Yeah, >> I got you guys. They do?
>> Yeah. Give me a hashtaggus together strong in the comments. All
right, we're trying out some Dreamcast. See how it runs right away because of
the aspect ratio of Dreamcast games. It's taking up more space, which is uh
great. I also like how it's centered. And you know what? It's running pretty
solid. It's not a solid 60. Uh it is dropping down to like 50, but that is
really not bad at all.
Okay, the audio audio ain't doing so
hot, but um just play on mute. Just play
on mute cuz really it does look like
it's running quite smooth. All right, here we are with some PSP again. Runs
totally fine. And this is without changing any resolution scaling. Like
you can probably get higher. Uh maybe uh
actually I don't know, maybe don't. But you could in theory. I do wish the
screen was a little bit brighter. I don't think it's bad. We are in studio light, so it's going to be a little bit,
you know, brighter than you'll face, but it could be a bit better. And I do have
to say it is uncomfortable. It is very flat, and like keeping my hands baldled
up like this, it's getting to be something I don't really want to use.
And that's the problem with this. It is only $75 for the 64 gig model, which is
pretty accessible. But you could just get a grip for your phone and use Delta
on iPhone or, you know, anything that this is using like Drastic on your
Android phone. Should you get this? I don't know. It's nice that it's cheap. I
guess that it's kind of nice it comes with all the ROMs, even though, you know, maybe the Italian government will
come knocking on your door. You could also just buy a Nintendo DS and homebrew
it if you really want the DS in this package. 2DS's aren't that much.
Nintendo DS's, the original ones, really aren't that much, and it doesn't take
that much work. Even coming from somebody who's not especially techy when
it comes to software related things, I've homebrewed a 2DS and it took like
15 20 minutes. So, that is definitely an option if you're looking to put on your
own ROMs into a device like that. There are also more powerful options you can
get like the Ino Flip, which apparently there's a new one coming out. So, let us
know if you want us to cover that. But, it runs Windows, so you can play any games and again any emulators. If you're
not someone who wants that and you want something that's quick, simple, and will
play DS games, maybe this is for you. But hey, let us know what you think down
in the comments below. And make sure to like, comment, subscribe, and