(laid-back electronic music) - Everybody kind of freaked
out about this thing when it was announced not too
long ago, but I knew better. I've been around the block a few times. I've got a couple of
these portable emulators, and they always promise the moon and fail in basically every other aspect. Or at least that's what I thought. I mean, there was a lot
to be skeptical about. Every time a company comes
out with a device like this, they boast higher and higher performance at cheaper and cheaper prices and everything you could ever
want packed into one device, and then that one device
falls flat on its face. How many times can a company
call their gaming handheld "The Ultimate Gaming Handheld"? I mean, I pre-ordered it, but I made this face the whole time. This is just my face. But AYN is a new company. They've never made anything before, so of course I was skeptical. And like I said before, these gaming handhelds always
just have something wrong with them. But imagine my surprise
when I turned this thing on and it just worked. Well, kind of, I still
had to put apps on here, but at least I didn't
feel like I was wrestling with the thing the whole time. This is the AYN Odin. You might have heard of it
as a game streaming device because that's what the
marketing pitched it as, but it's not really that at all. Maybe you heard of it as a
portable GameCube powerhouse and everything else, which is what the internet
rightfully pegged it as. (bright gentle music) This video is sponsored by Roman. (lively music) Hold it! Stop, stop. So in the last Roman ad that I did, I made what I like to
call "The Penis Level," and they took it down within minutes of the video going live, which could be one of two things. Either a lot of you guys reported it, which shame on you, or Nintendo watched my video, which honestly, either
one of those is a win. Anyway, you know the deal. 52% of men can't do what they wanna do when they wanna do it. Sex. And for some reason, we're
still afraid to talk about it, like they're afraid to keep my level up because there's a big penis in it. Japan literally has a penis festival. I don't understand what the big deal is. What's wrong with my penis? Roman is a digital health clinic for men with US licensed medical professionals. First, Roman will set you
up with a medical evaluation from a real doctor or nurse practitioner. Then, Roman could provide you effective, FDA-approved treatments for ED. So I tried to make another level that takes out all the euphemisms. (lively music) (triumphant music) I didn't want him to
come inside. (snickering) - [Producer] Oh my god. - Start your online visit,
and if you get prescribed, you can get a whole $15 off
your first month of treatment. Just head on over to
getroman.com/wulffden. I'm gonna read a couple of
things from the last video. Don't settle for these
Cheep Cheep ED solutions, getroman.com/wulffden. Are you tired of being blue shelled right as you're about to finish? Getroman.com/wulffden. Are you tired of looking like a Goomba? I'm offended by that one. (chuckles) Let me set your expectations right now. This thing is essentially just a super powerful Android
phone with no cellular antenna and controllers slapped on the sides. When you turn this thing
on for the first time, it's basically just a blank slate. There's no games or apps on it at all, aside from the regular Google system apps. So that's kind of a good
thing and kind of a bad thing at the same time. I'd imagine that most
people who look at this and want to get something
like this would hope that it just works right right out of the box. Unfortunately, it's not that easy. Fortunately, they do make
it pretty easy to set it up for yourself. (soft music) It's like an Android phone without all the carriers nonsense. It's not like other emulators. You don't have to find
a forum post somewhere and navigate to a GitHub link. All you need to do is download some apps off the Google Play Store. This is usually something
that would bother me, but the Android skin that they
put on here makes up for it. It's super clean and easy to navigate. It's kind of the star of the show here, but let's back up a little bit. The AYN Odin is almost the
same size as a Switch Lite, just slightly larger. I was happy to find out it
fits in most Switch Lite cases, it just might be a little snug. It also has a slightly larger
screen than the Switch Lite, and that screen is also 1080p. It's also a little thicker of a device thanks to these bumps on the
back, but they feel awesome, almost like grips. It's a great feeling device in the hands, and it looks nice, too. I do wish I ended up with
one of the prettier colors that it comes in. I ended up with the boring black, but it still looks pretty nice. It's a nice design, and it has these nice
little accent lights. It has all the normal
buttons you could need, even two extra of buttons in the back that I couldn't really find a use for in any of the games I tried, but it's cool that they're there. The buttons feel solid and
responsive and a little clicky. The thumbsticks feel like
tinier Joy-Con thumbsticks. The overall build quality is super solid and super comfortable. It feels like a premium device, I guess kind of exactly
like a Switch Lite. At the top, hidden away,
you've got an HDMI out and an SD card slot, which is useful. You don't have to get
the more expensive model with more storage if you don't want. You also don't need the dock
for HDMI out if you don't want, and the bottom has a
headphone jack and USB-C. When you take it out of the box, it has a setup process very
similar to an Android phone. Let's not take for granted that this thing has a touch screen. A shocking amount of
these portable emulators that run Android don't have touch screens, and they're a bitch to
navigate because of it. Once you're in, you see
the usual Google apps and where your games
and other apps could be. This whole UI can be navigated very easily using the controller buttons,
and it's very intuitive. It can also be navigated
with the touch screen, but the controller buttons
is probably more comfortable. This is probably the
best UI I've ever used in a portable emulator,
modded or otherwise. There's also a couple
of easy to find toggles on the leftmost panel of the home screen. There's a toggle that'll turn
off the thumbstick lights and a toggle that'll
turn off the sidelights, which I guess is useful if you're trying to save like
a little bit of battery life, but the hero here is
the Performance toggle. It's set to Normal mode by default. Normal mode is gonna have
the GPU set to 710 MHz, but it'll start to throttle the thermals at 48 degrees Celsius. Then, Performance mode is
gonna have the same GPU speed, but it'll start to throttle the thermals at 75 degrees Celsius, and it's always gonna
have the fan running, but the fan's gonna be a little quiet. You can barely hear it. But then there's a High Performance mode which ramps the GPU speed up to 787 MHz and will start the throttle the thermals at 75 degrees Celsius, but this also runs the fans
super high, and it is very loud. (fan whirring) This mode is probably good for if you're playing a
high-demanding GameCube game or a graphically intensive
native Android game. Honestly, this thing is
pretty powerful enough to just leave it in Normal
mode for most of your gaming, especially if you're playing retro stuff and want to save battery life. If you're playing GameCube,
I recommend Performance mode. It's a good, happy medium. I noticed a little bit of
a difference in performance between Normal and Performance
mode for GameCube games, but not much of a difference between Performance and
High Performance mode. So High Performance mode is
probably not worth the fan noise and battery usage. But I didn't really do
extensive testing on this. This is just kind of my
anecdotal experience. Personally, I've been leaving this on regular old Performance
mode, and it has been a beast. But before we play any games,
we gotta put the ROMs on here. I'm not gonna tell you where to get ROMs. I'm not gonna ask any questions
where you get your ROMs. Just keep that to ourselves. I'm not gonna rat you out. The first thing I did
was download Dropbox, 'cause all my ROMs are on Dropbox, but instead of actually using Dropbox, I just ended up connecting
this directly to my computer with the USB-C cable and using
Android File Transfer for Mac and just dumping all of my ROMs that way. That file transfer took about 25 minutes. I got the Pro model of the AYN Odin, which has 128 gigabytes
of internal storage, which is way more than enough storage to fit all of the ROMs that
I have in my collection. After that, I went to the
Google Play Store on the device and I downloaded RetroArch,
the Dolphin GameCube Emulator, and "Genshin Impact." If you put all of your ROMs
in the Downloads folder, it's gonna be much easier for all of these different emulation apps to be able to find your ROMs. I made the mistake of
making my own ROMs folder, so I had to redirect
all these different apps to find all of my ROMs. After that, Dolphin just needed me to toggle off the onscreen controls and configure the buttons. After that, games just worked, and they worked really well. "Mario Sunshine" ran in Performance mode with almost no issues at all. "Smash Brothers: Melee"
chugged a little bit, so maybe keep that in
High Performance mode if you're gonna play that. I was shocked to see that this
console has analog triggers, so F.L.U.D.D. in "Mario Sunshine" responds to pressure-sensitive input. This thing is full of surprises. I used RetroArch for all of the other less
power-hungry retro games, so like Game Boy, Game Boy
Advance, Super Nintendo, even PlayStation 1, and it
ran all of that just great. It even passed the "Yoshi's Island" test. (coins chiming) What I don't love about RetroArch is that configuring controller
buttons is kind of a pain in the ass, but it's also kind of the Odin's fault. RetroArch usually does a pretty good job of just getting the controller
configurations to work right out of the gate without
you having to do much. But the Odin, by default, is
set to "Odin-style controls," whatever that means. I think that's their way of mimicking the Nintendo-style
controller labels. As you can see, the
face buttons are labeled and in the positions that they are on a Nintendo-style controller. If you were to play like an
Xbox game, maybe on Game Pass, the labels won't exactly match up. But in that case, all of the buttons will
be in the wrong spot, which is what happens when you
play a game in an emulator. So switching to the
Xbox-style controller layout on the system level makes
everything way easier and makes all of the
emulators way more compatible. I get what they were trying to do, but you should probably,
the first thing you do is just switch this thing to
the Xbox-style controls. It'll make your life a lot easier. The only problem you'd ever run into is like if you wanna play "Halo," it says "Press A to Start,"
and you have to press B, but that's in the position that
it would've been otherwise. Just don't look at your controller. Who looks at the controller anyway? But even so, switching to the
Xbox-style controller mode only kind of fixed the
controls in N64 emulation on RetroArch, so I ended up downloading
the Mupen standalone app on Android, which is fine. That app is actually a lot better. It's way nicer looking, it's cleaner, and the emulation is great, and the controls configured perfectly. There was no controller setup needed if you're in Xbox-mode. My big test for N64 is
always "Perfect Dark." It's a good test for
graphics and controls. This thing absolutely crushed it. I haven't seen a device
run this game this smoothly since the actual N64, and that didn't even
run the game that great. So I also downloaded Citra,
which is a 3DS emulator, and when I first tried it,
it ran like absolute ass, but for whatever reason, when I tried it again to shoot
B-roll, it worked awesome. "Samus Returns" ran great. "Mario 2," not so much. If you're gonna use this to play a turn-based game like "Pokemon," you might be just fine, honestly. Regular DS via RetroArch
is similarly choppy. Your mileage may vary. (distorted electronic music) But I was shocked to learn that you can get PS2
emulation running on here, and it runs awesome. There was a very little bit of slowdown. It wasn't really noticeable while playing, but I was playing "Burnout 3," and that soundtrack is very recognizable, and it was very obvious
when the tempo slowed down and ramped up during certain songs. (energetic music) (distorted music) And you can tell it's
because too much is going on onscreen. Otherwise, I was shocked
by how easy it was to get PS2 stuff running on here. Oh my god. I am playing PlayStation 2. Dolphin can also get Wii
games running on here, but I didn't really try any, because all of the good Wii
games require motion controls, and motion controls weren't
gonna be good on here, especially without a Wiimote. And in terms of emulation, they're gonna be the same
as GameCube games anyway. I spent a lot of time
talking about emulation with this thing, which is probably why a lot of you people are watching this video, and why a lot of you
would even be interested in a device like this, but they kind of marketed this thing as a game streaming device,
probably for legal reasons. So I tried Game Pass. It took me around one minute from pressing the Download
button in the Google Play Store to firing up "Halo." It had my save file and everything. That was impressive. So this was another case where when I first tried it in testing,
it ran like absolute ass, but then, when shooting the B-roll, for whatever reason, it came to life. Everything looked awesome. I didn't even feel any input lag. It felt like I was playing on a friggin' Xbox.
- [Producer] Wow. - "Genshin Impact" runs awesome on here, as it should, it's a native Android app. But I was really disappointed to find out that there's no controller
support for "Genshin" on Android. The (chime) guys? I want my weeb game on here. But I did learn that the
Odin has a way to map buttons to specific areas of the screen, and it remembers these mappings per app. I also got the dock, which
I think was around 50 bucks. At least, that's what it cost me. It's got this weird
little glass in the front, which I wish wasn't there so that it'd be easier to
navigate some of these menus. It's very big. It kind of has an insane amount of ports. It's got two N64 controller
ports in the front, two GameCube ports on the side, two USB ports on the front, three USB ports in the
back, an ethernet port, and two HDMI ports for some reason, and a micro-HDMI on the top. I don't know why. And you can imagine how shocked I was to learn that this can also
dock a Nintendo Switch. - [Producer] No way. Get the, outta here. I told you it would work! - Anyway, as you can
see, it works just fine. Unfortunately, it is a little bit harder to pair controllers than I would like. Dolphin had a hard time with
the actual controller ports on here. There is an option in Dolphin to use the GameCube Controller Adapter for the WiiU or the Nintendo Switch. Unfortunately, only one
of the ports seem to work. The easiest thing to do is probably just to hook a controller
up through Bluetooth and let the Android OS handle things. So using an Xbox
controller works the best, but it has noticeably
more input lag in Dolphin than just the regular GameCube
controller through this. But again, you're only gonna
be able to use one like this, unless there's something
that I couldn't figure out. (upbeat music) - [Captain Falcon] Falcon
- [Bob] Oh! - [Captain Falcon] Punch! - [Producer] That would have
been insanely good. (laughs) (upbeat music) - Well, you know, you don't only have to play GameCube games on here, you can open up RetroArch, you can play PlayStation
2 games like this. You can do whatever you want, which is what makes
this thing more awesome. The only thing I'm not
too jazzed about, though, is there's no thermals all in this dock, and I'm running this guy
at High Performance mode for GameCube, because
it is a little laggy, especially going through the dock. It's rendering the video
twice, so it's understandable, but this poor fan is working overtime, and the air has nowhere to go
here, so that's unfortunate. Also, this thing's a monstrosity. All right, let's get down to it. I recently made a video basically (chime) on every portable emulator, how there's like no good ones, and the ones that are like kind of good always have something wrong with them that ruins the experience for me. This guy, this guy completely exceeded
all of my expectations. I don't wanna give them too much credit because it is just a blank
slate when you get it, but they do a lot to make that
setup very simple and easy. I'd rather them give you the tools to make everything good
and then step away, rather than give you (orchestra hit) tools and then get in the way like a lot of these other
portable emulators end up doing. After I put on all of the necessary apps, this is the best portable
emulator that I've ever used. I don't want to take points off for having to install those apps, because they did make it really easy. It kind of ended up feeling like when I set up an old Android
phone to be an emulator. The difference is that
this is more powerful, the form factor is nicer, the UI is set up specifically for gaming, and it's a dedicated handheld. I was playing games on my iPhone
the other day on the train, and it died on me, and it sucks being without a phone in the middle of the city. There are three different tiers
you can get of the AYN Odin. I got the Pro model, which
ended up costing me like $260. I think I got like early
bird pricing or something, but it seems to be for
sale for $290 right now. That one comes with the Snapdragon SD845. The Lite comes with a
significantly (chime) CPU and GPU. It looks like it's $200 for the Lite, $240 for the Base, and $290 for the Pro. The Base and the Pro should
perform relatively similarly, I just don't know exactly how that GameCube performance is gonna be. Maybe wait for some
other reviews to come out on the Base model before
you try to save yourself that 50 bucks. The Lite does sound like a great value, $200 for a powerful,
portable emulator is awesome, but it is significantly worse. I don't know how well
that's gonna perform at all. I would spend the extra money if you want to play those
GameCube and PS2 games, for sure. I'm not even sure if I
would recommend the Lite if you want to play N64 games, but if you wanna play things
like original PlayStation, NES, Super NES, Sega Genesis, you'd probably be okay with the Lite. So the pricing kind of puts
this thing in a weird spot. Yeah, it's currently my
favorite portable emulator, who knows if it'll be dethroned tomorrow. At the end of the month,
the Steam Deck comes out. That's speculated to be a
powerhouse for portable emulation, but that is baseline $400, which is significantly
more than this thing. It's also gonna be (beep) massive. The Switch Lite is only $200, and I think that's a great value. You're not gonna get any
ROMs on there, though. So this thing kind of sits
comfortably in the middle, and I think the value
you get reflects that. But then you have stuff
more in the price range of the stuff I usually
cover, like for example, the Retroid Pocket 2 is
only a hundred dollars. You're not gonna get
GameCube games on there, but you can definitely play
all of the super retro stuff. I think the ease of use and
the way that everything runs on here makes it super
worth the extra money. I'd much rather have
this thing in my pocket than a whole-ass Steam Deck, or even a kitted out Android phone. Even a Switch Lite would
be a pain in the ass because of the way that Nintendo handles their account system on multiple Switches. Plus, this can be docked. I could easily see this being my go-to for portable emulation,
maybe even docked emulation, maybe even just Android gaming in general if there's an Android game I want to play. I'm a little worried for people who are new to retro emulation and want to get into it with this device, but it is super easy to set up. That's kind of why I keep
touching back on the fact that it doesn't come with any apps, because you do need to at
least know a little bit about emulation before you
start picking this thing up and playing it. So just to recap, the things I did to this
thing when I turned it on, you just have to follow
the on-screen instructions, connect to your wifi, get
your ROMs on here somehow, however you want to do that, download RetroArch, Dolphin,
Mupen, and AetherS2X, and point them all to your ROMs folder, putting them in your Downloads
folder is the easiest, and then switch the device
to the Xbox controller mode. And then you could just toggle
the performance as necessary if you wanna play like
GameCube and higher, put it in Performance or
High Performance mode, and maybe tweak some controller
options per emulator. Did that sound like a lot? It really wasn't a lot, I promise. It's not exactly plug-and-play,
but it almost is. It's certainly customizable, and it's certainly way easier to have a wonderful experience
running games beautifully on here at peak performance than it is on any other
emulation device that I've tried. It's definitely a huge
win for not only AYN, but for the emulation
community as a whole. Hopefully, we can only go up from here. So what do you guys
think about the AYN Odin, this little beautiful bad boy? I almost dropped it off my desk. Is this something that
you'd be interested in? Which version of this would you get? I think a lot of the reviews you're gonna
see are gonna be the Pro, because even for the Indiegogo campaign, that was the best value. And what are some games you'd
like to see run on this thing? Leave it in the comments below, @ me on Twitter and any and all of this other social media garbage. Hey, thanks to Roman for sponsoring this video and letting me just do
whatever I want. (chuckles) Of course, we got new
videos here all the time, also streams on twitch.tv/wulffden. I was over there playing
with this with chat, so that's a good way to
interact with me and talk. We can talk through things like
the setup of this together. But of course, the most
important things that you can do to help support this channel
is just Subscribe here, make sure that that button
down there is gray and not red, and you can turn on notifications if you want every single
one of these videos, because YouTube's not
always gonna show you those on your homepage. And you could share this
video with a friend, a friend who is in the market
for something like this, or maybe has one that's not
as good and wants to upgrade. Thanks, you guys, very much. Have yourself a very good week.
