The ULTIMATE emulation handheld is HERE (Ayn Odin 2 Review)

when a entered the handheld gaming space with the Odin in 2022 they pulled off releasing not only a fairly powerful Android but they did it at a reasonable price and they coupled it with great hardware and a fantastic gaming experience while in has had their fair share of shipping issues when it came to meeting such high demand of the Odin overall the device was a success once they actually did catch up with that demand but after Odin's success we saw the subsequent mess of A's next endeavor the handheld gaming PC Loki review still coming soon so when they announced the Odin 2 the general reception was basically this sounds amazing but I'll believe it when I see it and I think that's a fair take Ein promised quite a lot again with the Odin 2 mainly the aggressive shipping times promising backers that they will receive their Odin twos by the end of 2023 well as an Indiegogo backer in the 3500 range they've certainly delivered on their estimated delivery timeline I got mine on November 16th way ahead of schedule we're going to take an in-depth look at Odin 2's Hardware software and gaming performance to see if this is really the most powerful gaming Android we've ever seen so get subscribed and let's get started this video is sponsored by tomt Tom talk brand new steam deck armor case is tailor made to fit the steam deck it's not the standard case you might expect because it's better it's made from German Bayer polycarbonate material and has passed the military standard drop test the armor case has a silicon strip on the inside to make sure that your steam deck is nice and safe when it's locked inside of the case the best feature about this case for me is that it has a charging pass through so that you can charge your steam deck while it's still inside the case so get yourself armor that George Clooney's Batman would be proud of with these big old thingies here so your analog sticks are nice and secure in the case so what are you waiting for Tom Talk's Black Friday deals are still live for a little bit longer head to the link in the description and pick up the steam deck Armor Case before the sale ends and thanks to Tom talk for sponsoring this video the unboxing is pretty solid I like that it's not wrapped in tons of plastic just a tab to pull the box out of the case right at the top we've got a nice quick start guide It's got an overview of the device and its controls on the left with a detailed look at its specs on the right putting the Odin aside for a sec underneath the Odin is a USBC to USBC cable it is a nice touch that ion branded it this time around it definitely adds to the premium feel of the product removing the Odin from the plastic WP I've got the transparent purple Max version here the immediate comparison to make is against the original Odin the Odin 2 is definitely thicker but that's in part of the larger grips on the back even though I didn't review the Loki yet you can't not look at the evolution of's Hardware design without it the Odin 2 looks more like the Loki than it does the first generation Odin actually starting with the analog sticks they're the first upgrade from Odin that is immediately noticeable the first generation Odin's analog sticks were a bit too sunken in so you wouldn't get a great range of motion that issue is completely resolved here they've completely overhauled the analog sticks here to my surprise the Odin 2 actually has the same analog sticks as the retroid pocket 2s I just reviewed the retroid pocket 2s and even then I said that they're the best feeling analog sticks I've ever experienced so I'm really excited to see them pop up here too I wasn't expecting that on a device this size though I do wish the analog sticks were a bit larger the Odin two is already not pocketable so might as well give it super large analog sticks just like the Loki I get that some people might prefer rubber membrane but I'm actually a fan of the clicky Vita style d-pad and I think it really works very well here with the Odin 2 we've got our start and select buttons at the top and our home and back buttons on the bottom the abxy buttons feel really great they press down fast and are nice and quiet on some devices if you press hard enough the buttons could sink into the device that's not an issue here at all my only nitpick is that I'm just not a huge fan of this gamer font and I wish the button layout matched an Xbox controller I'm really happy to see that Odin 2 moved away from the super famicom color scheme for their buttons it makes the device look way cleaner especially with the transparent purple at the top of the device we've got great feeling L1 and R1 buttons they are pretty clicky and easy to press anywhere even from the sides we've also got amazing feeling analog triggers they've got a huge range of motion so I'm actually expecting a lot of really precise and comfortable gaming with these the top is also where we've got our power button that doubles as a fingerprint reader a charging indicator the volume rocker exhaust vent HDMI out and a Micro SD card slot on the bottom of the Odin 2 is where we've got our headphone jack and our USBC Port the back of the device is really Sleek it's got a nice large vent to help keep the device cool and text that says iron on the back as well as two programmable back buttons from the back we can also see how pronounced the grips are on the Odin 2 it really makes this device a huge upgrade ergonomically compared to the first generation Odin style-wise we have RGB lights on the analog sticks and on the side of the controller the first generation Odin had lights but they were not RGB just a static color they can get pretty bright but it's also great to see that there is settings in the software to dim them spec-wise the Odin 2 comes in in three variations there's the Bass Pro and Max models the biggest difference between these three models are the RAM and internal storage but they all have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor an 8,000 milliamp battery a 6-in 1080p 60 HZ IPS touchscreen 65w fast charging Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth 5.3 and runs Android 13 the base model has 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of internal storage with an introductory price of $299 and will retail for $339 the pro model has 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of internal storage with an introductory price of 369 and will retail for $439 and the max model which is the one that I've got here has 16 GB of RAM 512 GB of internal storage with an introductory price of $4.59 and will retail for $4.99 before we even take a look at gameplay performance I think the max pricing is a a bit High considering we're getting into the steam deck level pricing where the pro model I think has a good amount of RAM and is available for under $400 right now you can also get quite a large selection of color choices for the Odin 2 it's available in transparent blue transparent purple black cold gray or white I think the transparent purple is definitely fun but I'm a little bit envious of the white color too especially after seeing it on my Loki it's just very Sleek looking the first time we turned the Odin on we we've got a setup wizard for language selection network connection time zone and choosing a default launcher you can choose between the Odin launcher or the default Android one we'll go with the Odin launcher so we can take a look at its functionality and see if there's improvements since the first Odin we also have a choice of which navigational bar style we want to go with gesture or three button I definitely personally prefer the gesture one Odin's launcher is more of a hes screen replacement than a games launcher it's pretty much the same software we saw with the first generation Odin I like that you do have your device specific options here though that includes quick access to Performance modes and the GB lighting as well as access to more in-depth Odin specific settings in the Odin settings is where you'll find one of the most important settings before you dive into getting all of your emulator set up by default the Odin 2 buttons map to Retro controls which is the Nintendo switch controller layout it's much easier to set this to Xbox layout instead for games especially if you're planning to play Android games with the Odin 2 we've got a new feature here a fingerprint sensor this is the first gaming Android that I've seen that introduces a fingerprint reader which is pretty cool it's definitely nice to have this considering you're possibly storing some personal information on the Odin setup is super easy and just requires that you rest your finger on the power button repeatedly I've never done this setup process on an Android phone before but it felt nearly identical to the experience on an iPhone once my fingerprint was set up the sensor worked actually with no hassles I was really pleasantly surprised to find that I don't even need to press the power button you can just rest your finger on the power button with the screen off and it will auto unlock and the unlock speed is insanely fast the remaining device setup is just getting emulators installed controls mapped adding game folders into each app and tweaking any settings like upscaling emulation resolution because I have the Odin 2 max here I actually feel like I've got more than enough storage where I don't even need to install a Micro SD card right now I just plugged the device right into my computer and started copying ROMs over to the device's internal storage one downside transferring this way is that the file transfer speed seemed insanely slow but hey I don't need to buy an extra SD card so I'll do the rest off camera to save us some time when it comes to gaming we've got the best of the best specs here classic systems are no sweat for the Odin 2 when we get to PS1 and N64 we can start upscaling and applying some tweaks and patches for even more enhancements for PlayStation 1 I've upscaled to 16x which is 8176 by 3584 resolution and applied widescreen hacks I'm definitely playing a version of metal gear solo that's even better than the one that we've got in konami's official collection [Music] for N64 here's some Ocarina of Time upscaled and with some HD texture packs and I think it looks fantastic even harder to run N64 games are no issue here while Mario Tennis and Pokemon Snap do require a little bit of tweaking once you get those settings right it runs 100% full speed getting into PS2 even though Aether sx2 is development stall using nether sx2 patches we can get the best version of the PS2 emulation app possible at this point burnout is usually a harder game to emulate but it played with no problems even upscaled Tony Hawk Pro Skater is another one that usually struggles for me but I had no issues when upscaling even with widecreen PlayStation Portable looks fantastic on Odin 2 performs great and is really an overall excellent experience especially when we upscale we can push the PSP upscaling pretty high too even though it's more than the resolution of the Odin we can go up to 10x with no lag or frame dips even in God of War chains of Olympus getting into GameCube we're going to see just how far we can push the Odin 2 by jumping into difficult to emulate games with changing no settings at all except for upscaling and widescreen hacks FZ GX runs full speed and man it is so much fun to play I'm using the latest nightly build of dolphin and no tweaks just 1080p upscaling can we push emulation even further Star Wars Rogue Squadron 2 is also running pretty well it's not perfect though there are some stutters but this is the best I've ever seen the gameer run on Android and once those stutters come down I really do think the game is 100% playable even 3DS emulation upscaled is really great looking and Performing I did have to change the audio options though otherwise I would get some weird stuttering Nintendo switch emulation is a really exciting thing to see running so well on Android breath of the wild actually runs that alone is impressive Yuzu is very much still under heavy development so I would imagine that a lot of the Slowdown or issues we see now can be optimized over time tunic is an example of a game that runs at full speed but does have some graphical glitches but we still can get a lot of AAA games up and running pretty well Super Mario Wonder actually seems to run at full speed while there are some graphical glitches here and there I think that's more of an emulator enhancement that we'll see over time I mean I can even run Super Mario RPG on the Odin 2 there's missing audio for some reason and it eventually crashes but the fact that a brand new game runs is pretty awesome my main issue with Yuzu actually is just that I like to set my Odin controller to Xbox mode so that messes up Yu's controller mapping the app doesn't support controller remapping yet so it's a little hard to get used to that control scheme but besides that this is by far the best Android emulation I've ever [Music] experienced PlayStation VA emulation is still in early development on Android so you're going to find more misses than hits when it comes to V emulation performance but I expect that to change over time as the emulator evolves I did find that any game I tried that is listed as playable did work on the Odin 2 so that's a great sign I would also guess that over time with updates to the vaita 3K emulator we'll see performance improvements that will benefit Odin [Music] 2 so that might wrap up emulation but we're not done we've got the world of Android gaming to take advantage of on the Odin 2 a game like genin impact is really demanding and we can tweak the settings to take full advantage of Odin 2 I've got the game set to high settings and I'm able to get a full 60 FPS there are occasional small dips but I think it's very stable overall genjin for some reason is a game that actually doesn't have controller support so we need to take advantage of Odin's controller mapping software it's actually one of the most intuitive easy to set up screen mapping experiences I found it to be pretty much the same as the first generation Odin but it's worth restating how great of an experience this is in January when we saw the release of razer's edge their screen mapping just simply isn't as intuitive another fairly demanding game on Android is Call of Duty mobile it runs great at high graphic settings also it seems like the Odin 2's controller actually is recognized as a real Xbox controller so we have full controller support on Call of Duty mobile without any screen mapping at all even for m CRA we can crank the settings pretty high and we get great performance spec-wise we're going to have no problems when it comes to game streaming but it's more just about how it feels in general with the Odin 2 having Wi-Fi 7 we've got the best of the best when it comes to speed and latency as long as router supports it Xbox game pass in the cloud works like a charm I almost felt like I wasn't even playing remotely steamlink also works pretty well I just totally forgot how to play Neon white let's really quickly do some Odin one vers Odin 2 comparisons I wanted to really quickly just demonstrate the performance jump we're getting from the first generation Odin to the second one while the Odin 2 emulation sees a huge performance jump especially in higher end systems like GameCube I have to say that Odin one performance has come a really long way through emulation optimizations F0 GX on Odin one is pretty close to full speed at Native resolution when you're on a track but there are just too many frame dips and audio stutters when you boost or crash into a wall besides emulation we can see that Minecraft has lots of stutter and lags on Odin one but Odin 2 it's perfect it's not to say that the Odin one is bad for what it does it still does it great but the performance gain on Odin 2 is truly significant the last thing to touch on before we wrap up is I as a company looking at Odin 2's crowdfunding campaign and the experience of backing and receiving Odin 2 alone it's been very positive they estimated a December shipping date and far exceeded that timeline I'm sure their shipping isn't complete compl considering they have over 5,000 backers but this is a great sign stepping a little further back I can't not briefly mention that my experience receiving my three Loki devices was kind of a disaster my backer number was skipped I ended up opting for a different color just to get the device shipped at all and somehow still had to pay them a remainder of a balance for my devices even though I paid in full I just wanted the devices to eventually review so I didn't go through trying to figure out what balance I was even covering beyond that they also kept changing the SKS and variations of Loki even canceling some of them that apparently didn't meet high enough demand all of these changes and updates but no communication from a at all I ended up having to track down a team members and message them on Discord just to get my back devices these are all signs of a business that is just logistically not set up to being able to handle getting products to customers but actually back to Odin 2 I'm seeing the exact opposite experience this time around and I'm optimistic that a has grown from the Loki Fiasco it doesn't change my bad Loki experience but I'd like to think that I got my Odin to ahead of schedule because they are a growing and evolving business so that brings us to wrapping up seeing I'm grow as a company being a backer of their products I do feel a sense of Pride they are making great products and I'm proud to be a supporter of their work their Logistics have left much to be desired in the past but that's clearly improving too the Odin 2 device itself is a beast of the handheld it's got seriously impress specs aggressive pricing and Hardware that makes a top tier for performance as well as great ergonomics they've taken the best of Odin and Loki to create this next Generation handheld the performance gains alone is what everybody has been clamoring for while I won't be testing literally every single game in the GameCube and PS2 Library the fact that it can emulate each of those systems hardest to run games with upscale says a lot Odin 2 delivers on all of that and will certainly be my benchmark for handhelds I look at moving forward as far as which of their three variations to get I actually think if I could go back and pick my model again I would have just saved a little bit of money and gone with the pro at least as an early backer right now the price difference between the pro and the max is $90 when Odin 2 jumps to full retail price the difference is actually only 60 sure you get more storage but the difference between 12 GB and 16 GB I think is negligible and because of the micro SD card slot availability the internal storage is not that big of a deal are there some downsides to Odin sure as usual setting up an Android device for gaming and emulation isn't necessarily fun for somebody who wants to just jump right into gaming luckily since the Odin 2 is so powerful you don't really need to tweak any settings you can just install an emulator map the controller and get gaming but you do still need to know which emulators to download where to get them from and stuff like that I also don't love their included Odin launcher since it's more app focused than gaming focused what it comes down to is that in is rivaling massive companies like Razer the Odin 2 I think outdoes the Razer Edge in nearly every single way a great key mapper for games without controller support a good level of customization a top tier chipet incredible analog sticks and analog triggers and a massive battery to get the most out of an on thee-o gaming experience are just some of the features that make Odin 2 Stand Out Above the Rest I think Odin 2 offers something special and it's one me over for sure but let me know down in the comments have you gotten your Odin too yet what do you think of it are you still waiting for yours to ship are you passing on the Odin what device do you have instead make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss future videos and thanks for watching

Channel: Scattered Brain

Views: 17,912

Keywords: ayn odin 2, handheld gaming, emulation device, gaming experience, odin pro, android gaming, tomtoc sponsorship, steam deck armor case, black friday deals, ayn odin pro review, retroid pocket 2s review, ayn odin 2 review, ayn odin 2 max, ayn odin 2 pro, ayn odin 2023, ayn odin comparison, ayn odin vs ps portal, switch emulation, gamecube emulation on android, best gamecube emulator, best switch emulator, ps2 emulation, best ps2 android, ultimate emulation handheld

Id: QuA84KK2LBM

Length: 22min 45sec (1365 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 01 2023