WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.920 Remember when handheld gaming devices basically stopped existing? 00:00:03.920 --> 00:00:09.040 You know, after the 3DS and Vita sort of went away and smartphones started taking over. 00:00:09.040 --> 00:00:14.520 Thank God that time is over and we have handheld gaming devices go lower. 00:00:14.520 --> 00:00:20.760 We have way more that we can handle and today we are unboxing the Ambernic RGDS. 00:00:20.760 --> 00:00:25.560 As the name implies, it's basically like a little DS. 00:00:25.560 --> 00:00:31.040 That's pretty cool. ShortCircuit done, we did it. In the box, you get your device. 00:00:31.040 --> 00:00:37.120 You get a stylus. This is a really ginormous stylus. 00:00:37.120 --> 00:00:42.440 It's a really big stylus. I don't see a place for this to fit. 00:00:42.440 --> 00:00:46.240 This goes back here. In the box we have our wrist strap. 00:00:46.240 --> 00:00:49.760 That's pretty nice, I had that back in the day. Maybe I'll try to put it on later. 00:00:49.760 --> 00:00:55.080 We have screen protectors. Did that come default in this box? 00:00:55.080 --> 00:00:58.880 Yes. That's kind of nice. Thank goodness I'm not taking this anywhere 00:00:58.880 --> 00:01:02.040 because I don't like putting screen protectors on, so bye. 00:01:02.040 --> 00:01:06.400 But that's actually really cool and it feels like tempered glass if that's pretty high quality. 00:01:06.400 --> 00:01:11.120 We have the version that comes with a 256 gig micro SD 00:01:11.120 --> 00:01:14.240 from very well-known brand Leaders Logic. 00:01:14.240 --> 00:01:17.480 Guess it's nice to have the convenience of it coming with your device, 00:01:17.480 --> 00:01:20.800 knowing that it'll be compatible. It does not come with any games by default 00:01:20.800 --> 00:01:23.860 just so they can sidestep any copyright issues. 00:01:23.860 --> 00:01:30.560 We also have a little quick start guide and then type A to C, 00:01:30.560 --> 00:01:35.560 three-foot cable that is about as cheap as they make them. 00:01:36.160 --> 00:01:42.000 That makes sense. This whole package, minus this, starts at 95 US dollars. 00:01:43.640 --> 00:01:49.480 You heard that right. Less than $100 gets you a pretty nice looking DS-like device 00:01:53.040 --> 00:01:56.620 with fairly modern hardware as well as some nice quality of life stuff 00:01:56.620 --> 00:02:00.060 that just makes this a better than DS experience. 00:02:00.060 --> 00:02:06.500 I can't believe these things are this cheap, especially with this pretty okay plastic finish. 00:02:06.700 --> 00:02:09.740 It looks a little bit cheap. It also is already scratched 00:02:09.740 --> 00:02:14.500 and I think people have been fairly careful with this, so I expect this not to be the most durable material. 00:02:14.500 --> 00:02:19.380 I like the more matte finish on the bottom. It actually feels more Nintendo console to me, 00:02:19.380 --> 00:02:22.980 like almost like the Game Boy Advance SP plastic. Neither is super bad. 00:02:22.980 --> 00:02:28.860 However, seeing as clamshell designs for handheld consoles is the peak design 00:02:28.860 --> 00:02:31.940 because it has a built-in little case and screen protector. 00:02:31.940 --> 00:02:35.740 It would be nice to have this be a little bit more not sticker-esque. 00:02:35.740 --> 00:02:39.980 On the top of the device, we have our micro SD slot. We actually already have a micro SD card, 00:02:39.980 --> 00:02:44.860 so we're gonna keep that one in the box. We have two USB ports, one presumably for charging 00:02:44.860 --> 00:02:48.620 and one for kind of more of the full-featured USB accessories, 00:02:48.620 --> 00:02:53.260 you know, display out or controllers. We also have four shoulder buttons, 00:02:53.260 --> 00:02:59.020 which is two more than the original DS had. And that's because even though this is clearly DS inspired, 00:02:59.020 --> 00:03:04.660 it's not locked to just DS games. You can play all kinds of stuff up to a certain point 00:03:04.660 --> 00:03:08.420 because of the technical limitations, which we will get to, but that would include PS1, 00:03:08.420 --> 00:03:12.500 which did have four shoulder buttons. On the bottom, we just have our screw holes. 00:03:12.500 --> 00:03:15.860 Looks like hex screws, which means that it's not impossible to fix, 00:03:15.860 --> 00:03:18.860 but it makes me wonder how hard the whole thing will be. 00:03:18.860 --> 00:03:22.860 We have our 3.5 millimeter jack on the front, which is pretty nice. 00:03:22.860 --> 00:03:26.940 Although I could see having it on the side, 00:03:26.940 --> 00:03:30.300 getting in the way of the way you wanna grip the device. 00:03:30.300 --> 00:03:33.460 Not the end of the world. It's far enough that it should be fine for most people, 00:03:33.460 --> 00:03:37.820 but I could see some people kind of wanting a more vertical stance and then being forced out of it. 00:03:37.820 --> 00:03:42.540 Side's got nothing, which brings us to the inside. We have our stereo speakers. 00:03:42.540 --> 00:03:46.260 We have two matching 480P IPS displays, 00:03:46.260 --> 00:03:51.140 which is exactly two and a half times the resolution of the original DS's screen. 00:03:51.140 --> 00:03:57.300 That's okay. Presumably we can run the games at 2.5x resolution, 00:03:57.300 --> 00:04:00.900 but it does worry me that it's not an even multiplier 00:04:00.900 --> 00:04:04.300 because the really well thought out retro handhelds 00:04:04.300 --> 00:04:08.740 usually have a screen resolution that is a multiple of four or five, 00:04:08.740 --> 00:04:13.280 exactly of the original display. So then you can do just like 4x, 00:04:13.280 --> 00:04:17.220 have it be super clean upscaling, either pixel perfect or you can do scaling 00:04:17.220 --> 00:04:21.260 that looks even better. Then we have our D-pad. 00:04:21.260 --> 00:04:25.540 Oh, no. That's so friggin' mid man. 00:04:25.540 --> 00:04:29.500 Oh, shit. The face buttons feel similarly clicky 00:04:29.500 --> 00:04:33.860 to the point where I almost wonder if it's like exactly the same kind of switches underneath. 00:04:33.860 --> 00:04:36.900 The joysticks are very small, 00:04:36.900 --> 00:04:43.180 PSV-sized and they're recessed so that the whole device can actually close neatly. 00:04:43.180 --> 00:04:48.380 However, that means that these are not gonna be the greatest feeling joysticks in the world. 00:04:48.380 --> 00:04:51.660 This is not too bad though. The recess is big enough that I think I could make it work. 00:04:51.660 --> 00:04:55.380 It's not the most comfortable gaming experience, but should be fine. 00:04:55.380 --> 00:05:00.820 We have four buttons that'll matter more once we're in software, which we're gonna do after I tell you about our sponsor. 00:05:00.820 --> 00:05:05.460 Let's turn this thing on. Wow, that is the most Android looking slash screen 00:05:05.460 --> 00:05:10.260 I've ever seen in my entire life. I wish they did a little bit more custom work. 00:05:10.260 --> 00:05:15.260 I just don't want Chrome to be the first thing that's on my slash screen when I'm opening a retro style device. 00:05:15.260 --> 00:05:20.660 However, it's really easy to get access to all the emulation stations in this bad boy. 00:05:20.660 --> 00:05:26.580 And it gives you an idea of the variety that you can talk to. You got your PC, you have your Neo Geo, 00:05:26.580 --> 00:05:31.580 you have your MSX, cool, that's cool, that's pre-installed, N64. 00:05:31.580 --> 00:05:35.340 And then probably most importantly, you're gonna have your Game Boy Advance. 00:05:35.340 --> 00:05:40.980 Then there's Drastic, which is your DS1, which is probably why you're buying this thing. 00:05:40.980 --> 00:05:44.620 It's important to note, no melon support, which means no DSI support, 00:05:44.620 --> 00:05:49.380 but how many of you out there are really like that DSI experience, I want that. 00:05:49.380 --> 00:05:52.900 I guess before we get into a natural game, I should figure out how to do like dual screen stuff. 00:05:52.900 --> 00:05:56.060 The screens actually function independently. It's not like it needs the software 00:05:56.060 --> 00:06:01.460 to assign what the second screen is doing. You can have your Android step down here, watch videos, 00:06:01.460 --> 00:06:06.180 open up guides, play your game on the top, or if it is a dual screen game, take control of both. 00:06:06.180 --> 00:06:10.420 Just like an Android device, if you pull from the top, you can access your quick settings, then your deeper settings there. 00:06:10.460 --> 00:06:18.140 If you turn RG Launcher on, you actually do get a much more retro style display. 00:06:18.700 --> 00:06:22.820 I like the cleanness of this, but I do think it would be nice 00:06:22.820 --> 00:06:27.660 to have a little bit more styling, not just kind of color and shadow. 00:06:27.660 --> 00:06:31.140 I wanna see how good the dual screen experience really is. 00:06:31.140 --> 00:06:35.380 Both screens are actually touch screen, as opposed to the original DS where it was just the bottom. 00:06:35.380 --> 00:06:38.900 Yeah, the screen is not ideal for video watching. 00:06:38.900 --> 00:06:43.420 It doesn't look very sharp. The motion blur is not very good 00:06:43.420 --> 00:06:48.300 and the color is pretty underwhelming. However, if I click to the bottom screen, 00:06:48.300 --> 00:06:52.260 I'm immediately in control of what I wanna do. Okay, we've discovered a little bit 00:06:52.260 --> 00:06:57.220 of a configuration problem that we had where you can get emulators working 00:06:57.220 --> 00:07:01.360 on the main operating system with ROMs, but they won't show up in this RG Launcher. 00:07:01.360 --> 00:07:05.580 So make sure when you set it up that you configure it right. Apparently it is possible to swap 00:07:05.580 --> 00:07:09.820 what the screens are doing, but what I'm finding is that the interface on this device 00:07:09.820 --> 00:07:14.820 is really not well optimized between different apps. 00:07:15.240 --> 00:07:18.580 The buttons do different things in different places, which can be fine, 00:07:18.580 --> 00:07:24.220 but I think there's gonna be quite a learning curve if you want to get the full use of this device. 00:07:24.220 --> 00:07:27.580 That probably means that there is a ton of control that you can get out of this. 00:07:27.580 --> 00:07:34.100 And if you're someone that likes sort of uncovering the mysteries of weirdly designed UIs, 00:07:34.100 --> 00:07:37.420 you're gonna love this thing. Let's try just doing a DS game, 00:07:37.420 --> 00:07:40.620 which is sort of its core functionality. We need to figure that out. 00:07:40.620 --> 00:07:45.340 Okay, that's a little troublesome. I assumed that opening the default emulator 00:07:45.340 --> 00:07:49.380 and opening the game, it would all be pre-configured. But no, we are on an adventure 00:07:49.380 --> 00:07:52.980 to figuring out how this friggin' works. 00:07:52.980 --> 00:07:57.780 Oh no. Okay, so the trick is open the app on the bottom device 00:07:57.780 --> 00:08:00.820 and then it'll work on both. That's one of my problems with my experience 00:08:00.820 --> 00:08:04.980 with retro Android devices is unless they're pre-configured, 00:08:04.980 --> 00:08:08.860 or you can install sort of a fan-made OS on it, 00:08:08.860 --> 00:08:15.540 like you can with like the Meuse or whatever. I've always had a little bit of struggle bus feeling with them 00:08:15.540 --> 00:08:19.300 where you gotta work a little bit too hard to make it work. This input latency is pretty bad. 00:08:19.300 --> 00:08:22.740 I can feel it already. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. 00:08:22.740 --> 00:08:26.380 If you're not big into emulation, input latency is a pretty common issue 00:08:26.380 --> 00:08:29.820 across all software emulation across all devices. 00:08:29.820 --> 00:08:33.340 It doesn't matter how powerful it is. There's just gonna be some level of input latency. 00:08:33.340 --> 00:08:37.260 The fact that I can feel it in the menu is a little troublesome. 00:08:37.260 --> 00:08:40.380 But let's play a game and see maybe it's not so bad. 00:08:40.380 --> 00:08:43.620 I haven't played Mario Kart DS in a billion years, so let's see how this goes. 00:08:43.620 --> 00:08:49.980 I forgot this. Both shoulder buttons don't do the same thing because there was many fewer buttons on the original DS. 00:08:49.980 --> 00:08:53.580 This looks pretty okay. The colors are popping a little bit more here 00:08:53.580 --> 00:09:00.020 than on our crappy YouTube videos. It's very soft looking and doesn't look scaled 00:09:00.020 --> 00:09:04.140 in an ideal manner. One advantage of software emulation 00:09:04.140 --> 00:09:08.980 is that if you have enough power, you can crank the resolution to theoretically whatever you want. 00:09:10.500 --> 00:09:14.380 And this feels very DS resolution, 00:09:14.380 --> 00:09:18.220 both in the foreground and the distance. But it plays pretty good 00:09:18.220 --> 00:09:22.020 and the input latency doesn't actually feel as bad out here. Maybe there's something wrong with that menu. 00:09:22.020 --> 00:09:27.100 That being said, totally playable and I could definitely beat all of the Mario Kart races 00:09:27.100 --> 00:09:30.220 on this. The touchscreen on this device is not very good. 00:09:30.220 --> 00:09:33.580 Both my finger and the pen suck. This pen makes it worse. 00:09:33.620 --> 00:09:36.940 This is clearly designed for finger use. I'm gonna leave that for now. 00:09:36.940 --> 00:09:41.500 I don't wanna be too hard on this device because it is a very good value. 00:09:41.500 --> 00:09:44.860 And a lot of these problems, in fact, probably all of them are solvable 00:09:44.860 --> 00:09:48.180 with enough tinkering and problem solving ability. 00:09:48.180 --> 00:09:51.340 But when I buy a standalone device 00:09:51.340 --> 00:09:56.700 to do very limited amount of things, I wanted to do it out of the box and well. 00:09:57.660 --> 00:10:00.940 And although you're seeing me struggle a little bit here, 00:10:00.940 --> 00:10:06.420 this isn't the first time someone has struggled with this. Figuring how to make the two screens friggin' work 00:10:06.420 --> 00:10:10.860 and I don't think he particularly likes this device. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters 00:10:10.860 --> 00:10:16.140 is that playing games pretty well. And so far, it's playing them well enough 00:10:16.140 --> 00:10:19.340 that I could have a pretty good time playing them. That makes sense. 00:10:19.340 --> 00:10:23.380 It has a pretty decently powered quad core cortex processor. 00:10:23.380 --> 00:10:26.960 Has three gigs of RAM, which obviously isn't enough if you're trying to run modern stuff, 00:10:26.960 --> 00:10:30.020 but for emulation, we're totally fine. 00:10:30.020 --> 00:10:35.620 Comes built in with 32 gigs of storage. It has Bluetooth 4.2 and Wi-Fi 5, 00:10:35.620 --> 00:10:40.020 which again are fine for this device. However, that extra lag from the Bluetooth 4.0 00:10:40.020 --> 00:10:43.460 means that I probably would not, this feels horrible. Oh no. 00:10:43.460 --> 00:10:48.860 It just feels a little slow. And this is a game that I've played 100,000 times. 00:10:48.860 --> 00:10:53.940 I'm very familiar with the way it's supposed to feel. Certainly not unplayable and I could definitely get used to it, 00:10:53.940 --> 00:10:56.960 but I am pretty sensitive to input latency 00:10:56.960 --> 00:11:00.540 in 2D platformers. And so if you're like me, 00:11:00.540 --> 00:11:05.100 this is probably not the ideal option. You're probably gonna want something like a analog pocket 00:11:05.100 --> 00:11:08.980 where it's pretty much zero lag. The last aspect we haven't really talked about 00:11:08.980 --> 00:11:12.260 is battery life. It's a 4,000 milliamp hour battery, 00:11:12.260 --> 00:11:16.420 which they claim is good for six hours of gaming. Obviously if you're playing less demanding stuff, 00:11:16.420 --> 00:11:20.140 it should be even less. If you close the device, 00:11:20.140 --> 00:11:25.220 it's supposed to go to sleep and pop back up. It obviously paused my game, which is great. 00:11:25.220 --> 00:11:28.540 Oh wait, does each screen get different scaling? 00:11:29.260 --> 00:11:32.380 So that really blurry text is a scaling issue, 00:11:32.380 --> 00:11:36.780 which I can adjust. However, when I did that, 00:11:36.780 --> 00:11:40.980 it only adjusted one of the screens filtering 00:11:40.980 --> 00:11:44.900 so that the bottom screen looks pretty okay. 00:11:44.900 --> 00:11:48.860 And this one is blurry mess city. 00:11:48.860 --> 00:11:52.260 It's not immediately apparent how to change the top one, 00:11:52.260 --> 00:11:58.460 even though I've been changing the bottom one. So I'm gonna close the app, see maybe that's how you do it. 00:11:58.460 --> 00:12:03.780 Okay, thankfully closing and resetting the app got the scaling to match on both screens 00:12:03.780 --> 00:12:09.980 so that this is significantly closer to what do I expect at a 2.5x resolution scale. 00:12:09.980 --> 00:12:12.100 Looks totally fine. 00:12:14.180 --> 00:12:17.220 Just enough input latency that it's a bit hard 00:12:17.220 --> 00:12:20.420 to play a rhythm game on this. Which is fine, there's not that many rhythm games 00:12:20.420 --> 00:12:25.220 I wanna play on the DS. Most of all I wanna play is RPGs and Zelda and stuff, 00:12:25.220 --> 00:12:28.960 and I can live with a little bit of input latency on that. Okay, I'm calling it rhythm heaven, 00:12:28.960 --> 00:12:33.920 not a super great experience on this. Let's play a game that might do better for us. 00:12:33.920 --> 00:12:37.960 Let's play Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks. Let's see, maybe some of the scaling 00:12:37.960 --> 00:12:42.440 will actually look good here. Ah, first impression, this is fine. 00:12:42.440 --> 00:12:45.960 You can totally play it. It looks sharper than I did on the original DS. 00:12:45.960 --> 00:12:49.920 It's responsive enough, you could play a game like this. If you're looking for a way to play DS games, 00:12:49.920 --> 00:12:52.920 this is gonna pass the bar mostly. 00:12:52.920 --> 00:12:57.800 I'm curious if I can fix some of the softness with one of those visual filters that I hated before, 00:12:57.800 --> 00:13:03.600 but maybe I'll come around and on. Catchy, where were we? That high resolution 3D rendering, that's kinda cool. 00:13:03.600 --> 00:13:08.600 It seems like the sharp 3D mode is slightly sharper. 00:13:10.400 --> 00:13:13.180 Let's just see if I can see it this time. 00:13:14.680 --> 00:13:15.520 This is off. 00:13:18.440 --> 00:13:21.120 What do I think of the Ambernic RG DS? 00:13:22.200 --> 00:13:26.560 Pretty unbeatable deal at this price. And if you're someone that needs the device 00:13:26.560 --> 00:13:30.640 to be under $100 for you to buy it, I actually think this is pretty cool. 00:13:30.640 --> 00:13:33.840 The screens are totally decent. The fact that it comes jam-packed with ways 00:13:33.840 --> 00:13:36.920 to play a bunch of games, super cool. 00:13:36.920 --> 00:13:41.380 I think that the UI needs a complete rework, which is really hard on any budget and or device 00:13:41.380 --> 00:13:45.320 where there isn't an entire team making this a really good experience. 00:13:45.320 --> 00:13:49.120 However, I do think that it's a pretty solid option 00:13:49.120 --> 00:13:54.700 for $95. The fact that you can get this kind of emulation for under $100, it's pretty freaking sweet. 00:13:54.700 --> 00:13:58.540 And yes, you want the SD cards if you want entire libraries of games, 00:13:58.540 --> 00:14:02.900 but you can get most of the games you wanna play at once on this thing built in. 00:14:02.900 --> 00:14:06.540 I think I'm gonna hold off a little bit more for something that's a little bit more polished 00:14:06.540 --> 00:14:10.220 and high-end. However, what I'm not gonna hold off on 00:14:10.220 --> 00:14:13.940 is telling you you should watch more ShortCircuit. If you like retro devices 00:14:13.940 --> 00:14:17.740 and you want something that's more accurate, we just unboxed the Super Station One, 00:14:17.740 --> 00:14:25.300 which is a PlayStation One form factor, Mr. FPGA style retro device, and it is awesome.