OK, this review is probably a little too late in coming, but having just purchased a GP2X Wiz handheld and knowing how many of you out there are wondering just how good this fabled machine really is at emulating your favourite retro consoles, I felt I had to let you know my findings.

The Purchase

I purchased my GP2X Wiz from PlayAsia, as I have always been impressed by their service and prices. My Wiz and the official leather case cost me £121 including P+P and was sent from Hong Kong. Many UK suppliers are still selling this at £150 for just the handheld unit alone.

Opening the box

PlayAsia (Hong Kong) lived up to my expectations as usual and delivered within 5 working days. First impressions were that Gamepark have upped the quality of the packaging on their latest offering. Inside the box was the GP2X Wiz unit itself in a plastic bag, a mini-cd, a proprietary lead for connecting to PC USB and a ‘Quick Start’ guide. I was expecting to be supplied with a screen protector for the touch screen and maybe a spare stylus but was to be disappointed.

The Hardware

Initial thoughts on the Wiz: light and flimsy, cheap feeling. Looks great though. I can’t say I was impressed at all by the feel of the machine, the D-Pad and buttons rattle when the unit is moved around and it feels to light to be a ‘quality’ handheld. I’m not sure how much punishment this would take when pounding the buttons playing Track and Field in Mame4All.

To the left of the screen is the D-Pad. D-Pad is an improvement on previous models but still doesn’t feel as good as a DS or PSP. There doesn’t seem to be any pivot point and it feels too spongy. Below the D-Pad is the ‘Menu’ button. To the right of the screen you have four buttons. The buttons (A, B, Y and X) are spaced to mimic the D-Pad and give the unit a nice aesthetic symmetry but I question the logic in having the buttons so close together. Time will tell if this makes certain games unplayable or not. Below the buttons is the ‘Select’ button.

The top of the unit contains the shoulder buttons (bumpers), which feel ‘rattly’ and not really properly positioned in relation to the D-Pad and buttons to make games that require them all to be comfortable to play. In the centre top of the unit is the all important SD card slot.

Either side of the screen are the speaker holes (speakers look tiny) and at the bottom of the unit there are 2 volume buttons, a proprietary connector slot (why not just a standard mini USB?) and the headphone socket.

Using the GP2X Wiz

Turning the unit on requires sliding a self-returning switch on the side of the unit, it is recessed so cannot be turned on or off accidentally. The switch can also be set to a ‘hold’ position which locks out all the other buttons on the unit.

The Wiz uses a cut down version of the Linux operating system and therefore takes some time to start up unlike other handhelds with cartridge software (about 25 seconds).

Once booted you are faced with an icon driven menu but what strikes you most is the quality and brightness of the screen. The Wiz utilises an OLED screen and the benefits are immediately apparent. You can view this screen from almost any angle and the image is as bright and as sharp as you could ever wish for.

Annoyingly, the volume resets itself every time you reboot the machine, a small niggle you might think, but after the 20th time of having to adjust it gets very trying. With that said, the sound itself is surprisingly loud and clear for such tiny speakers.

GamePark consoles have massive Open Source development community and emulation of other games machines is where that development seems to be concentrated.

All of our favourite emulators have been ported to or written for the Wiz, ZX Spectrum, C64, MegaDrive (Genesis), SNES, Neo Geo and its here that I will start.

I had already browsed the web for developer sites and forums and for the purposes of testing picked up a few emulators (which will be the main reason gamers purchase this machine after all!), although homebrew titles and flash games will no doubt be a massive part of this little machines future.

Note: As we all know its illegal to use ROMs if you don’t own the original chips/software itself (or something like that, I’m not getting into it here) so just to let the fun police know I didn’t use any ROMs I didn’t own myself during testing.

I tested various emulators including PicoDrive (Megadrive/Genesis), GP2Xpectrum (ZX Spectrum) and Mame4All (Arcade) and all worked perfectly, just copy the emulators and ROMs onto your SD card and away you go. The only problem was the inexplicable ‘screen tearing’ which occurs in certain fast-moving games. This manifests itself as a diagonal split across the screen making the display look like 2 displays running next to each other both with slightly different refresh rates. Hopefully a software fix will appear for this shortly.

Unfortunately some emulators, notably the NeoGeo and SNES struggle to keep framerate anything like the originals on certain games, again hopefully this will be fixed via software rewrites in the near future.

The built in games are fun, if not a little basic, the highlight of these was Animatch, which got me hooked quickly and I just couldn’t stop playing it. A clone of Zoo Keeper for sure, but such a brilliant use of the touch-screen and a background tune combining perfectly…  possibly the most hummable (is that a word?) tune I have ever heard in my many years of videogaming…

There are also several ‘brain training’ type games which are simple but good fun and quite addictive in their own way.

Video playback via the built in media player was a bit disappointing, with my movie files noticable ‘stuttering’ and hopefully this will be something that can be remedied by utilising a third-party player, there is certainly plenty of development going on so we can be hopeful.

Music playback was fine but I doubt that many will use this as an alternative to their diminutive iPod anyway.

RGC Verdict

A slight improvement on what went before (GP32) but not good enough really… we are still struggling to emulate 32-bit consoles which I thought we would have had licked with the GP2X Wiz.

With the much anticipated (and delayed) Pandora on the cards and the Dingoo A-320, which boasts similar performance for half the price for sale right now, and no great improvement over the GP32 (except for the lovely screen) it’s hard to recommend this machine to anyone with any conviction.

Time will tell if enhancements, fixes and the amazingly talented Open Source community will come to its rescue and make this machine the machine it could have been.

[starreviewmulti id=0 tpl=20]