PowKiddy X2 Review ($80 on AliExpress)
Another big handheld, but better than those that came before.
It’s clearly intended to mimic the Switch, with not just the same size (and 7” screen) and same button/stick layout, but the same color scheme and fake joycon sides. It’s a little skinnier and lighter, but generally the same form-factor. It’s not quite as awkward as the X40 Pro (and lacks the softer plastic around the edges), but is still a little clunky. The B button wasn’t perfectly responsive, but it didn’t seem to have the issues of mystery inputs. The X40 Pro has L2/R2 triggers that this doesn’t, but to be fair, it doesn’t actually do anything with them. The start and select buttons are on the left and the reset button is on the right under the ABYX buttons, which is problematic for my muscle memory. (The power button is on the top; it won’t be hit accidentally but navigating to save-states isn’t exactly easy either.)
The SNES emulation is very good, and it saves SRAM data. Playstation emulation is a little choppy, but seems playable. There’s a dedicated “reset” button that pops you back to the general select screen, but you can also tap the Power button to pull up the RetroArch menu to save states and reassign buttons. (You don’t seem to be able to change the screen size, though, so plenty of systems still get stretched. That’s irritating.)
The UI for selecting games is the biggest improvement by far. The controls are displayed on screen (and in English, no less!). There’s a full game list, but also lists by system, a recents menu, a favorites menu, a search function, and a file select. There are “cheats” folders available (though they’re empty) so I may try testing dropping cht files into them to see what happens.
It appears set up to do HDMI output, and when I tested it (you need a mini-HDMI cable) it displayed very nicely and played well on my portable monitor. It has two micro-USB and one USB-C ports on the bottom, which makes me suspect that I could plug in multiple additional controllers if I had the right adaptors.
(As a side note, I tried plugging the X40 Pro into the monitor at the same time, and it looked beautiful, but suddenly wouldn’t recognize controller inputs for arcade games. I had to reboot it and futz a bunch to remind it what inputs were supposed to be. Interestingly, the X40 Pro came with a mini-HDMI cable, headphones, a charger cable and an inexplicable component cable. The X2 only came with a USB-C charger cable.)
The best thing about this, though, is that game names in the display, which are just magical. They were clearly machine-translated, and are virtually all nonsensical. Examples from the GBA list include: Demon city – white night (Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance), Gem Square (Columns Crown), Super box Warrior 2 (Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo) and Ancient confused wolf XS (Crash Bandicoot XS). I’m thinking I’ll make a Talking Time thread of just the amusing game names.
Overall: After all was said and done, this cost about twice what the X40 Pro did. And for that cost, it fixes most of the problems the X40 Pro had, with the same size screen and basically the same set of features. I’m now torn whether to take the X40 apart and fiddle with it, or just give it away.