Archos Gamepad

[_Belial]

Hi all,

For those unaware, the archos gamepad seems like the holy-grail for retro gaming. A 7" tablet, with dual analogue as well as a d-pad, and traditional shoulder buttons



There are a couple of threads on here already where it's discussed, and it was eagerly anticipated by myself and I know maltloaf for sure. Well last week, I saw Amazon had them in stock so I got one ordered and eagerly awaited the day this king of retro would be in my hands.

Now I'd read some previous reviews, and tbh they were not favourable, most complained about terrible screen flickr and slow performance as well as bugs with the controller not working properly. Then I found a couple of youtube vids stating that a new firmware which was released just after Christmas fixed these issues. So the first thing I did when it arrived was to flash the new (although went for custom, rooted version) firmware. So really I've no experience at all with it on the old firmware.

The first thing that strikes you when you get it out of the box is how light it is, it's all plastic but doesn't feel that cheap to the touch. There's not much else in the box to write home about, not even a USB cable, just a charging cable (microUSB to a power socket), and a couple of small manuals which I didn't even open. One of the first things you do notice when you switch it on though isn't something favourable, the viewing angles, they are pretty terrible. Not really an issue if you're just holding it playing, but tilt it too much in any direction and the screen washes out. The screen itself seems decent enough, it's not going to compete against the high-end tablets, but it'll do for the purpose intended.

Tech Specs

Display	• 7’’: 1024x600 capacitive 5 points multitouch screen
Application Framework	• Android 4.1 Jelly Bean
Processor	• ARM CORTEX™ dual-core A9 @ 1.6GHz • GPU quad-core Mali 400 MP • 3D OpenGL (ES 2.0)
Capacity	• Flash Memory: 8GB* + microSD Slot (SDHC compatible up to 64GB)
RAM	• 1GB RAM
Video playback1	• H.264 HD (up to 1080p@30 fps) • MPEG-42 HD (up to 1080p@30 fps) • With the above codecs, the device can play video files with the following extensions: AVI, MP4, MOV, 3GP, MPG, PS, TS, MKV, FLV
Audio Playback1	• MP3 • WAV (PCM/ADPCM) • AAC3, AAC+ 5.13 • OGG Vorbis • FLAC
Photo viewer4	• JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF
Webcam	• Front camera
Interfaces	• USB 2.0: Mobile Transfer Protocol (MTP) • microSD (SDHC compatible) • mini HDMI output6(Mini HDMI / HDMI cable sold separately)
Wireless technologies	• Wi-Fi
Miscellaneous	• Built-in speaker • G-sensor • Built-in Microphone
Power source	• Internal: Lithium Polymer battery • External: Power adapter/charger

The other thing you'll notice straight away is that the dpad, although clearly made of sturdy stuff, just feels like it's a touch too big, or rather the buttons too far away from each other. It's not like on other controllers, ps3, 360, vita etc where you just leave your thumb central and tend to roll to a direction, in this you have to press each button, this soon gets annoying. The Analogue joysticks do work well though, although one of mine was, and still is pretty stiff so doesn't quite travel quite as well as the other.

The biggest gripe about the controllers though is just how uncomfortable it is to hold tbh I hate to say it, but the area around the screen where the pads are needs to be bigger, even at the expense of shrinking the screen perhaps, atm I find the only way to reach all the buttons without too much fiddling is to keep my thumbs vertical, which makes it very odd to hold.

Sound quality seems acceptable, i've not tried the HDMI out from it, but can't see any reason why that would not work.

The really neat feature of the gamepad though is the joystick mapping option. From any game on android, or emul, you're able to call up the archos mapping driver, and drag and drop buttons onto the game's on-screen controlls. The software then maps individual gamepad buttons or joysticks to on-screen controls, this works really well. I tried it with a number of emuls as well as dead trigger and had no issues at all with any lag, a big thumbs up.

In terms for performance, I've not really tried that many android emuls tbh on other devices so I was pleasantly surprised with how well stuff ran on this, i tried SNES, NES, Genesis, MAME, C64, Spectrum, N64 and PSX and everything ran really well, i was super impressed with how well PSX and N64 played, and I've been playing more of mario64 and driver than anything else.

So the verdict? tbh, It's a let-down, as great as the device is technically, I just don't feel it's comfortable enough for you to really get into the games for a decent period of time. The mapping of buttons is excellent, i'd love to see that added to stuff like the xperia play etc. The battery life is shocking, I ran it down after about 2 hours of emulation use. So would I recommend it? No, I'm more than likely going to send mine back and just load up my xperia play with emulators or even see what's new in PSP world and flash my psp go instead, both of those are much more comfortable to hold and have much better battery life than this.

It's close, but it's not the holy grail we've been waiting for.

[cyprus]

I'll bump this because people need to be made more aware of Belial's excellent console reviews and to show their appreciation for his efforts.

[muttleymacclad]

Great review Belial.

I've not tried the WiiU, and i may be completely barking up the wrong tree but could that pad be used for emulators on a homebrew channel?

mml?

[_Belial]

I've not really kept up with WiiU hacking, so not sure, but I thought it was only the Wii VC they'd hacked, so not sure if that even transmits over to the gamepad or not tbh, but yes, could certainly be an option in the future.

After writing this review, I flashed my PSP to 6.60 then installed LEM custom firmware on it, threw a megadrive and snes emulator on there so far and they work perfectly, the PSP is so much nicer to hold than the gamepad, the screen's a bit small for sure, but the comfort and controls are much better. Going to try MAME and the N64 emulators on it later on, will report back.

[tombott]

Thanks for the review _Belial. I was thinking about getting this, but will now avoid.

[_Belial]

OK i've now tried MAME & N64 on the PSP, and seems the little device isn't quite powerful enough for those. Mario64 runs really well with audio off, but once you throw audio on it really slows down. Even simpler games like bubble bobble on MAME stutter (well on the version of MAME I installed anyway).

Next step, try them all on the xperia play tonight.

[maltloaf]

I was considering one of these and still am. The only thing from the review putting me off is the overall size. I think it's way too big. It utterly dwarfs my gp2x wiz which is the other end of the scale being the rough size of the old gb micro. Something between the two may well do it.

I love the idea of it being android because this makes it a zillion times more flexible and it's a rival to other 7" tabs, especially when buying for a kid. Shame about the screen viewing angle, but I think they worked hard to get to the £130 price point, electing to make the CPU and gpu strong. Something had to give I think.

There are of course other android based handhelds such as the x360 the yinlips and the jxd handhelds but afaik none of them have made a device with real analogue controllers yet. They have always been mapped to the dpad which has been a let down.

I'm going to revisit this whole question of retro emulation in the next few days as I was waiting for someone I trust to get hold of it. Belial hasn't let me down, but I think even with the bad points, this is the closest anyone has come to ticking all of the boxes. Android, real analogues, great CPU, great gpu, ok price.

I'm thinking this is my most likely candidate, although I must admit to being intrigued by the YouTube videos emerging from one qbertaddict1 about the GCW Zero and can't wait for Belial to get his (lol).

http://www.youtube.com/user/qbertaddict1

Thanks for the review mate, certainly food for thought.

Cheers,

Malty

[_Belial]

Yes, I've got my eye on the GCW Zero as well. Tbh i'm getting more and more excited about the Oyua at the moment, I backed that on kickstarter, and being a tegra3 based machine it should perform brilliantly for emulation, granted it's not handheld, but for something small, cheap and powerful for a retro fix on my TV I think it'll take a while to beat the Oyua.

I'll report back on my findings with the xperia play later, PSP is great for snes, nes & megadrive, but amiga, mame + n64 are a no-no.

[maltloaf]

Xperia play has been on my maybe list for a while I just think it's potentially low on horsepower being a bit dated now.

Ouya doesn't really interest me as I'd much rather something portable.

I've also looked at tablet plus controller, such as the icontrolpad, but they lack the extensive button to screen mapping software that the gamepad has built in.

Still unsure lol.

[_Belial]

OK, i've backed GCW Zero, hope it arrives in March

[maltloaf]

OK, i've backed GCW Zero, hope it arrives in March

I think they shipped a batch of early ones a little while back and I'm sure I read the newer batch were starting to dribble out also.

Malty

[_Belial]

OK, i've fired up the xperia with some roms, must say, impressed. Considering it's only a lowly single core 1Ghz cpu it handles everything really well, played snes, megadrive, psx and n64 on it. The n64 is definitely a bit slower than the archos was, and not figured out how to get n64oid to use the analogue controls on the xperia yet, but the other emulators all worked with no configuration at all. Definitely a contender.

[maltloaf]

Is is only n64oid you're using ? I don't have any android at the moment but I'm sure there was a different (better) one. N64oid got a bit left behind iirc as yongzh or whatever he was called got ignored by the community because he effectively pinched, repackaged and released someone else's work and wouldn't release the source. I'm sure on my galaxy s3 that n64oid was a bit choppy but the "other" one was better.

[_Belial]

You're right. Just tried mupgen64 and that supports the xperia play analogue touchpad, it's a little fiddly but does work, had to tweak some settings to get all the buttons working as expected, but seems to run ok atm, got mario playing fine on it It's a shame there's no JB rom for xperia play as with project butter I bet you'd get a nice performance boost.

Anyway, xperia play currently leads my emulation handheld challenge, better performance than the PSP, and better to hold + carry than the archos gamepad.

let's see how the GCW Zero does

[maltloaf]

What are older mame roms like on the Xperia play ? Starforce in particular as that's mostly what I play, but any 80's shooters. I seem to remember there are two versions of mame4all too.

Got me thinking about the Xperia again and they are 159 ATM on amazon.

[_Belial]

Ill give it a go tonight, need to run my romset through clrmame to make them compatible first.

[_Belial]

You'll be happy to know that starforce runs perfectly mate on mame4droid, no slowdown, controls work a treat, full speed and audio.

[_Belial]

Update for you malty, just converted all my roms to 0.37b (currently doing the 0.319 for reloaded as well), and everything works a treat, of course spent far too much time playing bubble bobble and side arms, but everything works fine, controller works a treat, streetfighter 2 slowed down in parts, but can't recall if the arcade did that as well, but was certainly playable.

Thumbs up for the xperia

[emu]

do you guys own a nexus 7?

i am going to try and get hold of wiimote and all the emulators

[_Belial]

I used to, don't anymore, just iPad mini now ftw