Powkiddy RGB30 Review - Square Screen: Perfect or Pointless?

the market for portable handheld emulation devices such as the amazing Mio Mini Plus is a very busy one at the moment so if anything's going to tempt me to buy something new it got to offer something a little different like maybe perhaps a giant beautiful Square screen [Music] foreign [Music] I'm Joe bleeps and this is the Pow Kitty RGB 30. it's my latest impulse Buy in a long line of impulse buys of portable handheld emulation devices now I usually buy these things load them up full of games play with them for a few days maybe a week and then ultimately they end up Gathering dust when the next Shiny Toy comes along that all changed with the Mio Mini Plus I got this a few months ago and it's actually been my most played console this year I think I was playing it all summer so I really thought I wasn't likely to be tempted by anything else anytime soon and then I saw this thing if the pow Kitty RGB 30. I've never had anything made by pal Kitty before but I have been following their various releases they all seem to fit into that same bracket alongside the ambernik and the Mio mini and all of those other kind of devices now the reason this really appealed to me is that it's got this big Square screen and when I did a little bit of reading about it it turns out that the screen itself is actually really really good what's more it's a budget console buying this cost me less than 80 pounds posted including a carry case so that was direct from the manufacturer and I'm pretty happy with how quickly it arrived as well now it might seem strange to have a square screen and it is because it's extremely unusual but when you think back to the sort of consoles that you might want to emulate on a handheld device like this things like the Game Boy The Game Gear the Neo Geo pocket the Game Boy Color all had not necessarily a square display but certainly one that was closer to a square display than a widescreen display so I had to try one I ordered one and now I've been pleasantly surprised so I put together a little video not necessarily to show you how to set it all up there are much better guides out there and I'll link them in the description however I just wanted to show you that this exists and it's awesome so I got very very excited about the fact that this had a big Square screen I had dreams of perfect emulation of neo-gel Pocket color of Game Boy of Game Boy Color of Game Gear that was what I was hoping for but did it live up to the hype let's take a look so what I've got in this case is something quite exciting this is the power Kitty RGB 30. by the way I bought the official case when I got the console and it's pretty good it's a good snug fit um so snug it's quite difficult to get back out again but it um fits like the USB charging cable I've put a cleaning cloth in there to keep the lens clean because it is a bit of a fingerprint magnet um but as far as cases go it's good it fits everything I need inside it there's no branding or anything like that on the outside or on the Zips or anything like that but um it's a hard shell it's soft inside it it's no frills really but it does the job well I'm glad I got it now on to the main point of having this video which is the actual console itself so this is the power Kitty RGB 30. um I didn't really need this the Mio Mini Plus is actually my favorite thing I bought all year but if we look at these two side by side and let's not forget the screen on this thing is pretty huge you know compared to an original game boy now you know we're in my shed when I haven't even planned but I've got a Game Boy Within Reach if you look at the size of that screen compared to the original Game Boy screen like this thing is huge but put it next to this and uh well you can see it's a Colossus what's more and what's the real selling factor for me is that the display on this it's actually Square which is really unusual but when you look at the aspect ratio of a lot of vintage consoles like the Game Boy for instance it wasn't quite square but it wasn't far from it so when it comes to emulating particular consoles or styles of game this is pretty good so this console has two SD card slots one for the operating system and one for the games and when you buy it you can buy it with an additional SD card now a lot of advice warns not to get that because the games are strange choices and they're in a bit of a funny order the quality of the cards isn't very good and so on but if I'm honest with you I wish I had done that just because since I got it it has been a little bit of a hassle to get sorted out like I would rather have got it switched on and enjoyed playing it like I did when I got the Mayo mini however with this my first couple of hours were spent trying to find and then format and then load up an SD card with various ROMs I'm still having trouble getting the menus quite right but the thing is I know that that appeals to a lot of people and most times I enjoy doing that as well but um yeah so far that hasn't been the most fun I think mainly because it's quite a niche console quite a new release there's not many guides there's not really any pre-curated lists of um you know games and consoles but anyway let's just do a quick load up of Alleyway for instance okay we'll start a new like new game and you will see just why this appeals because that screen is just like as I say this is big but let's let's just make a quick comparison so uh we'll come out of here with the Mio mini and we will go to um Game Boy and I'll load up Alleyway just so we can see those two side by side so if we go to game do love this machine um I think I've got Alleyway on here I haven't okay well let's load up a different game then to exit the games on here you simply press select and start at the same time and then again to quit now I know I've got Atomic Punk on both and that's an old favorite because I got that as a kid when I was on holiday in Germany and could never quite work out why that was called Atomic Punk and it was essentially just Bomberman but still um there are loads of options in terms of the display um you'll see that obviously this loaded up the game much quicker than the um keep forget what it's called the RGB 30 but if you look at the the difference in size on those two screens it's night and day and it is a nice bright bold contrast I've spent quite a while I kind of quite like them slightly muted tone it doesn't really feel like a backlit screen on this one whereas this is a bit brighter however there are loads of options like even but before you load it up you can set up options or when you've got it up and running you can click these two at the same time and there's lots of menus that you can come into there but yeah that screen is really really something special and the aspect ratio of it in particular is what makes it exciting but I am getting ahead of myself let's just turn down the volume uh which is weirdly the plus is on this side and the minus is that side so to turn it up you you press that one and to turn it down that way which feels a bit back to front to me but still um on top you've got a mini HDMI input so you can play it and hook it up to TV and play it on there um there is a power button and R button not entirely sure what that is uh the volume controls and then R1 R2 L1 L2 they feel like when I first got it out of the box I felt like a little bit of a shake to it and I thought it was like the face buttons but it's it's these and there's a little bit of of Wiggle when it comes to those buttons now this this is quite a cheap machine like I bought it direct from Power Kitty I bought it along with the um carry case I got it delivered and it came to less than 80 pounds for for like the whole lot so you know this is a really low cost item um although the console is good enough like there are little touches that remind you you're not playing without a premium console like that's like movement in there but although it looks very plain it's very comfortable to hold there's a slight grip on these side bits here and here which having bought the white one it looks really really nice like don't get me wrong I love this in white you can get in navy blue you can get it in black as well the black looked a bit similar to my umbernic that I've got so I'll go with the white it's got the kind of Stormtrooper aesthetic so where I got that new evercade console that gets really filthy really quickly but with the smooth smooth surface on most of this it stayed quite clean I've been playing it quite a bit and um it looks still like it did when it was new on the bottom we've got two USB inputs uh one for on the go for like actual having a USB drive connected and one for powering it and then there's the headphone socket and then the two SD card socket as I'd mentioned before what we've also got and what's quite novel for one of these things normally like the old Game Boy you've got one speaker on the front there's forward facing stereo speakers and they're pretty decent actually when you're playing games it's really noticeable having those games in Stereo like if you know from from playing on the headphones the Game Boy was always really good when it came to playing in Stereo Sound uh it sounded fantastic through headphones so all of these games running through those speakers they sound pretty good so really just like turn it up for an instance here I don't know if we'll hear it much obviously mono microphone and it's here so it's not going to pick up any um not gonna pick any stereo effect but the sound from those speakers I think it's all right I'm it's certainly good enough for me um but for now so you can hear me speaking I will turn it down um so as a console it feels quite Pleasant not quite as pocketable as the Mio mini and that's why I got a case I regret not getting a case for this I tend to keep it in a sock the clean socket anyway so yeah the main reason for getting this was because purely it emulates a lot of my favorite old school games which are the old handheld type games it is brilliant for Game Boy it is great for Game Gear it's great for Game Boy Color um it's good for vertical scrolling Shooters so when I first did my video about this thing I got a really good reaction to the fact that there is a shoot option on built-in on like the standard setup on the Mio Mini Plus um which a lot of people might have missed if they upgraded straight to the onion OS but this is a really cool way of playing your games it is set up so that you can control it this way the d-pad will works that way but you do have to to rotate it okay and then if you look at let's see what game are we on here so that was on fire shark so if I load up fire shark there so I'll come out here press against quit go on to name and see if we got fire shark in there I'm pretty sure I have so you can scroll through the menus a bit more quickly with um the L and R buttons and then d-pad to find exactly what you want so if I go on fire shark there and load this one up you'll get to see that with this one like you rotate the screen you get the full size of that on there but with this without having to actually um rotate the screen you've got about the same size display without any rotation so this was really exciting this looked great and was easy to see the games but with this one you don't have to have any rotation it's a really nice fit yes you've yeah you've got borders at the side but I mean if you look at that and you think about playing that's a really really good setup if you're a fan of these scrolling shooter games this is a really really good option now the one thing I think is a bit of a waste of time maybe is I would have preferred it to really embrace the old school and not have the analog sticks a little bit but people I've spoken to it's like you've got the opportunity to play things like um you know Mario Kart 64 and so on you can play Dreamcast games on there as well and a lot of those used on Old CRT TV before widescreen TVs were in in general use so they can look pretty good on there too let's have a little look at one of those so if we have a quick look at Mario Kart there for instance it's not bad is it like that that screen although you have got the borders top and bottom it's a pretty good fit and the fact that it's Square means it's so versatile depending on the games and consoles you're playing you can generally fit whatever you want on there even the widescreen games look pretty good because the screen's massive it is actually quite wide look at the width of that compared to the width of the Mio knee we're about the same so it's light taking the Mio Mini Plus screen and then add in a bit more to the top and the bottom and you can emulate lots of systems there were two more systems that I was really excited about playing so I'm going to just go to those first first of all Neo Geo Pocket color like that had a near Square screen and it looks absolutely brilliant on here one thing that's weird is that it seems to be geared up so that a button is B and B button is a for all of the emulators I keep having to manually change that setting but if you look at the size of that display Like It just fits perfectly and you can play lots of different uh games on there and they look really nice the screen not only is a a good size but it's super clean Chris play this is on 50 brightness and it is plenty to be able to see what you're looking at I wouldn't be tempted to turn it on much more than that firstly because I don't need it but secondly it does seem to chew through the batteries a little bit quick and that might be something I'll look into dressing later on and try and find it at maybe a possibly a bigger battery if it ends up being an issue but let's just have a quick go on magical drop which is just going on a quick match here we go so you can see how that looks so the thing about the Neo Geo Pocket color is I love that console um but the games now very very expensive to track down they were pretty expensive at the time there was no backlight yes you can backlight the screen but I mean with this as an alternative I love it it's it's really great I just wish that instead of the analog stick we had a little clicky stick just like the classic console that'd be great anyway let's have a look at Sega Game Gear so the aspect ratio of The Game Gear again very very similar to the game but it takes up almost all of this screen and um you know if you're like me yeah eyesight is going a bigger screen like this um to enjoy games you used to like when you were younger and were able to see on a much smaller dimmer screen you know it's uh definitely a plus so you can see these games in all the glory as well like the pixel detail and everything else looks great um not an expert on this one I like the d-pad the d-pad and the buttons feel pretty good you know um not so keen on those and they're a bit further down you have to kind of hold it further down there but it is playable and I like that at least it's prioritized the d-pad like the natural feel is that you use in the d-pad there's like enough of a response from the buttons when you press in them um but they they kind of like they rattle a little bit in there compared to the Mio Mini that's much more solid um but you know one of the reasons why I'm doing this video and I'm not going into loads of detail about setting up and everything else because there are much much better videos out there I just wanted to show you that this thing exists and it's got this amazing screen but what I'm also doing is I'm thinking about possible mods like I'm thinking of taking it apart and seeing if there's a way of me getting these buttons to feel a little bit more premium if there's anything I can do about that and if you've got any other ideas of things you'd like me to try or look for when I'm I'm opening it up then let me know in the comments and we'll see how we go I think the console that possibly looks the best on here is the Game Boy Color it's just you know it's like it's made for it the aspect ratio is very very close the colors look great it's nice and Crisp And if you don't like the particular palette or brightness or anything else there are tons of settings in the menu I'll show you in a minute um but it I mean look at that I don't even need to argue the case for it do I it's just looks great and it takes up so much of the console is screen um now I know they could have made it in the sort of same sort of format as the Game Boy like with the controls below but you know what I'm actually enjoying the the comfort of playing with the Hands by the side um it doesn't have that kind of strain on the wrists after a while because you're constantly supporting that extra weight it feels just like your hands just sit in the right place it doesn't even look like a very ergonomic design does it you know it's completely flat and smooth on the back there's these little bits of grip on the sides here and the front's pretty flat as well but when it comes to actually holding it it's much much more comfortable and ergonomic than it initially appears to be so I would say that's been the biggest surprise for me I was excited about the screen but I didn't think it was going to be quite so comfortable to hold and to use and even like the headphone jack being right in the middle like it's like that's been thought through in terms of how you're going to be able to use it it's you might cover the speakers a little bit if you're using the analog sticks but generally like your hands don't even sit in front of that a lot of the time like and and the Mio mini is a big pain for that because the little tiny speaker is there and when you're playing you just your thumbs constantly in the way of it so with this the design is better than I thought it was going to be and the buttons and d-pad are good as I say shoulder buttons a little bit rightly but it's great now I'm going to come out of this game to the menu when you're on this screen if you press select it brings up the quick access menu and there's lots of different things that you can do in there for shutting down restarting and so on and if you press start it brings up the main menu and there's lots and lots of things that you can do in there first thing I did was got it online because yes it's got built-in Wi-Fi and you can um update it as well so the first thing I did and it's great because I didn't even have to open a computer I switched it on I got it online I updated it to the latest firmware it runs on gel OS j-e-l-o-s and that is supported officially um so the latest version of that is great I've had no real problems with it at all so far I've yet to get to learn it you can have scrapers for your box art and there's all sorts of settings and so on that you can go through that I'm not going to go through in this video but just let you know it's quite easy to access those menus when you need them right are there any other games and things I wanted to show you I mean even this little front end interface is quite nice isn't it the NES does look good um let's just have a quick go on let's pick a random game scroll and we're looking at Adventure Island okay now I change the aspect ratio as per the recommendations in Retro Game cause video um because a lot of NES games didn't really have much going on on the sides there so it expands it very very slightly and it looks good doesn't it you know it takes up a lot of the screen very similar to the look of the Game Gear in terms of the amount of game that's on the screen and again the color and the crispness of of the display like the the pixels look Pixel Perfect I know it's scaled slightly maybe I don't know I'm not an expert on the details with all these things but all I can tell you is it looks really good um I'll come back to this game at a later date it's now got the advantages of things like the Mayo mini where you can dip in and out of different games and it remembers what you last played and it automatically saves dates I've got to learn a little bit more about all of that now the last thing I want to show you is what I'm really really excited about and the main reason why it is worth getting one of these even if you already own one or many things like this and that is when we come to Pico eight okay now Pico a is like an indie platform and largely computer-based which you can have on Linux you can have it on Mac you can have it on Windows and it is a sort of online based Indie Community you can design publish your own games and it's got this little interface called splore there are loads and loads of Little Indie games that are just perfect for me and they all display on a square screen so as a console like even if you had this just as a machine for Pico 8 it would be a great machine okay you can go through and scroll through all sorts of different games okay that'll let you know what are the latest games that you can go and you can just open up and play whichever ones you want you do I have paid for this so you kind of pay for access to Pico eight so I did that online and that was like 15 and it is worth every penny there's lots and lots of different games to choose from you can look at work in progress you can find all sorts of different things you can have a lucky draw and just find any other random game you can search for games and I've already been having a great time with lots of different stuff this one here matchy-matchy is my current favorite okay so with that one reminds me a little bit of Zookeeper on the DS um but if we just load up the puzzle I'm up to at the moment it's a simple case of you have to match up different animal faces by go in in a blank space that is between two matching uh so we've got the frog and the Frog there it's all pressed and it'll bring those together now I get access to those two frogs so I can bring those together now it's easy for me to get to the two chickens and so on and you work your way through um so if I do those two then it'll take three foxes and I've got six overall so I'll have to be strategic with that so instead I'll do the Frog there I'll do the Frog there I'll take those two foxes then I can get those two foxes then I can get those and so on this is just my kind of game it's just perfectly addictive and within Pico eight there are so many many awesome games it's a wonderful platform and to have that built in to a little handheld like this it's just the icing on the cake for something that is really just so much better than it has any right to be um it's a budget console as I say cost me less than 80 pounds to get the whole thing delivered with the case and I am really happy with it I I was expecting it to feel a little bit cheap but because it is cheap it's kind of you can forgive it those but the thing that you're looking at most of the time while you're playing is the screen and the screen is the system seller isn't it so so I would say if you are even slightly interested in indie games and do you like the look of Pico 8 and you're better at playing them than I am then even for just that this console is fantastic but the fact that you can play all these retro games the fact that it's so well suited to a particular corner of the market in terms of Game Boy Game Boy Advance game Gear Neo Geo pocket and it's on a handheld it's just a perfect home for it isn't it I'd say I'm really happy with this I didn't want to do a big long tutorial I just wanted to show you and just show you that it's a cool little thing that you can get if you haven't heard of it before I apologize to your bank balance um I am going to do some follow-up videos if I explored a little bit more found out something interesting you can do with it found out any mods that maybe aren't covered in other videos but if there is more you want to know let me know and I'll cover them in a future video and that is it for now I'm off to go and play a few more of these awesome little games I'm not an expert on these things there are much better videos out there that will give you some excellent guides on how to set these things up in fact I needed to look at those myself because I'm no expert in that sense but in terms of playing on it I have been really really enjoying it Pico 8 is something that's been a real surprise to me I love those kind of Little Indie Games I enjoyed playing those on the evercade when they do the Indie Heroes Collections and to have something like that that's almost like a a Netflix scrollable system of it's seemingly infinite games that you can choose choose from that all have a certain charm and all have that kind of pick up and play appeal that has made it an even better console than I expected so in terms of you know it's fairly low cost if you've got the budget to justify it I'd say go for it now although I'm not really an expert on the software side of things we're setting this kind of console up and there are better people out there to guide you on that I am quite into doing my Hardware mods and I'm quite looking forward to taking this thing apart having a look inside and seeing what sort of opportunities I've got to further improve what is already a pretty awesome console now if you're into modern or you're looking at getting into Hardware modding you should definitely check out Zed labs they sell all sorts of stuff to help you with that Hobby and if you use my link in the description you'll be supporting my Channel at no extra cost to you also if you use the code Joe bleeps you get a bit of money off your order which is nice and that's it for now I'm off to go and spend a bit of time playing on my new console and this is Joe bloops signing off from the shed if you want to keep watching me there's some more videos popping up here otherwise I'll see you in the next one bye [Music] foreign

Channel: Joe Bleeps

Views: 15,718

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Id: Aejn0iveDtQ

Length: 26min 22sec (1582 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 24 2023