parent
3fcbe4ebbf
commit
08ccd40888
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,175 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
title: "Anbernic Win600 First Impressions"
|
||||
date: 2022-07-14
|
||||
series: reviews
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Right now PC gaming is largely a monopoly centered around Microsoft Windows.
|
||||
Many PC games only support Windows and a large fraction of them use technical
|
||||
means to prevent gamers on other platforms from playing those games. In 2021,
|
||||
Valve introduced the [Steam Deck](https://www.steamdeck.com/en/) as an
|
||||
alternative to that monopoly. There's always been a small, underground market
|
||||
for handheld gaming PCs that let you play PC games on the go, but it's always
|
||||
been a very niche market dominated by a few big players that charge a lot of
|
||||
money relative to the game experience they deliver. The Steam Deck radically
|
||||
changed this equation and it's still on backorder to this day. This has made
|
||||
other manufacturers take notice and one of them was Anbernic.
|
||||
|
||||
[Anbernic](https://anbernic.com/) is a company that specializes in making retro
|
||||
emulation handheld gaming consoles. Recently they released their
|
||||
[Win600](https://anbernic.com/products/new-anbernic-win600) handheld. It has a
|
||||
Radeon Silver 3020e or a Radeon Silver 3050e and today I am going to give you my
|
||||
first impressions of it. I have the 3050e version.
|
||||
|
||||
<xeblog-conv name="Mara" mood="happy">A review of the Steam Deck is coming up
|
||||
soon!</xeblog-conv>
|
||||
|
||||
One of the real standout features of this device is that Anbernic has been
|
||||
working with Valve to allow people to run SteamOS on it! This makes us all one
|
||||
step closer to having a viable competitor to Windows for gaming. SteamOS is
|
||||
fantastic and has revolutionized gaming on Linux. It's good to see it coming to
|
||||
more devices.
|
||||
|
||||
## Out of the box
|
||||
|
||||
I ordered my Win600 about 3 hours after sales opened. It arrived in a week and
|
||||
came in one of those china-spec packages made out of insulation. If you've ever
|
||||
ordered things from AliExpress you know what I'm talking about. It's just a
|
||||
solid mass of insulation.
|
||||
|
||||
[](https://cdn.xeiaso.net/file/christine-static/img/FXozAEjUsAQEg9d.jpeg)
|
||||
|
||||
The unboxing experience was pretty great. The console came with:
|
||||
|
||||
* The console
|
||||
* A box containing the charger and cable
|
||||
* A slip of paper telling you how to set up windows without a wifi connection
|
||||
* A screen protector and cleaning cloth (my screen protector was broken in the
|
||||
box, so much for all that insulation lol)
|
||||
* A user manual that points out obvious things about your device
|
||||
|
||||
One of the weirder things about this device is the mouse/gamepad slider on the
|
||||
side. It changes the USB devices on the system and makes the gamepad either act
|
||||
like an xinput joypad or a mouse and keyboard. The mouse and keyboard controls
|
||||
are strange. Here are the controls I have discovered so far:
|
||||
|
||||
* R1 is right click
|
||||
* L1 is left click
|
||||
* A is enter
|
||||
* The right stick very slowly skitters the mouse around the screen
|
||||
* The left stick is a super aggressive scroll wheel
|
||||
|
||||
Figuring out these controls on the fly without any help from the manual meant
|
||||
that I had taken long enough in the setup screen that [Cortana started to pipe
|
||||
up](https://youtu.be/yn6bSm9HXFg) and guided me through the setup process. This
|
||||
was not fun. I had to connect an external keyboard to finish setup.
|
||||
|
||||
<xeblog-conv name="Cadey" mood="coffee">This is probably not Anbernic's fault.
|
||||
Windows is NOT made for smaller devices like this and oh god it
|
||||
shows.</xeblog-conv>
|
||||
|
||||
## Windows 10 "fun"
|
||||
|
||||
There is also a keyboard button on the side. When you are using windows this
|
||||
button summons a soft keyboard. Not the nice to use modern soft keyboard though,
|
||||
the legacy terrible soft keyboard that Microsoft has had for forever and never
|
||||
really updated. Using it is grating, like rubbing sandpaper all over your hands.
|
||||
This made entering in my Wi-Fi password an adventure. It took my husband and I
|
||||
15 minutes to get the device to connect to Wi-Fi. 15 minutes to connect to
|
||||
Wi-Fi.
|
||||
|
||||
Once it was connected to Wi-Fi, I tried to update the system to the latest
|
||||
version of windows. The settings update crashed. Windows Update's service also
|
||||
crashed. Windows Update also randomly got stuck trying to start the installation
|
||||
process for updates. Once updates worked and finished installing, I rebooted.
|
||||
|
||||
I tried to clean up the taskbar by disabling all of the random icons that
|
||||
product managers at Microsoft want you to see. The Cortana button was stuck on
|
||||
and I was unable to disable it. Trying to hide the Windows meet icon crashed
|
||||
explorer.exe. I don't know what part of this is Windows going out of its way to
|
||||
mess with me (I'm cursed) and what part of it is Windows really not being
|
||||
optimized for this hardware in any sense of the way.
|
||||
|
||||
Windows is really painful on this device. It's obvious that Windows was not made
|
||||
with this device in mind. There are buttons to hack around this (but not as far
|
||||
as the task manager button I've seen on other handhelds), but overall trying to
|
||||
use Windows with a game console is like trying to saw a log with a pencil
|
||||
sharpener. It's just the wrong tool for the job. Sure you _can_ do it, but _can_
|
||||
and _should_ are different words in English.
|
||||
|
||||
Another weird thing about Windows on this device is that the screen only reports
|
||||
a single display mode: 1280x720. It has no support for lower resolutions to run
|
||||
older games that only work on those lower resolutions. In most cases this will
|
||||
be not an issue, but if you want to lower the resolution of a game to squeeze
|
||||
more performance out then you may have issues.
|
||||
|
||||
## Steam
|
||||
|
||||
In a moment of weakness, I decided to start up Steam. Steam defaulted to Big
|
||||
Picture mode and its first-time-user-experience made me set up Wi-Fi again.
|
||||
There was no way to bypass it. I got out my moonlander again and typed in my
|
||||
Wi-Fi password again, and then I downloaded Sonic Adventure 2 as a test for how
|
||||
games feel on it. Sonic Adventure 2 is a very lightweight game (you can play it
|
||||
for like 6.5 hours on a full charge of the Steam Deck) and I've played it to
|
||||
_death_ over the years. I know how the game _should_ feel.
|
||||
|
||||
[](https://cdn.xeiaso.net/file/christine-static/img/FXpIjhwUIAUEujg.jpeg)
|
||||
|
||||
City Escape ran at a perfect 60 FPS at the device's native resolution. The main
|
||||
thing I noticed though was the position of the analog sticks. Based on the
|
||||
design of the device, I'm pretty sure they were going for something with a
|
||||
PlayStation DualShock 4 layout with the action buttons on the top and the sticks
|
||||
on the bottom. The sticks are too far down on the device. Playing Sonic
|
||||
Adventure 2 was kind of painful.
|
||||
|
||||
## SteamOS
|
||||
|
||||
So I installed SteamOS on the device. Besides a weird issue with 5 GHZ Wi-Fi not
|
||||
working and updates requiring me to reboot the device IMMEDIATELY after
|
||||
connecting to Wi-Fi, it works great. I can install games and they run. The DPI
|
||||
for SteamOS is quite wrong though. All the UI elements are painfully small. For
|
||||
comparison, I put my Steam Deck on the same screen as I had on the Win600. The
|
||||
Steam Deck is on top and the Win600 is on the bottom.
|
||||
|
||||
[](https://f001.backblazeb2.com/file/christine-static/img/FXqSz_tVsAAU0wf.jpeg)
|
||||
|
||||
Yeah. It leaves things to be desired.
|
||||
|
||||
When I had SteamOS set up, I did find something that makes the Win600 slightly
|
||||
better than the Steam Deck. When you are adding games to Steam with Emulation
|
||||
Station you need to close the Steam client to edit the leveldb files that Steam
|
||||
uses to track what games you can launch. On the Steam Deck, the Steam client
|
||||
also enables the built-in controllers to act as a keyboard and mouse. This means
|
||||
that you need to poke around and pray with the touchscreen to get EmuDeck games
|
||||
up and running. The mouse/controller switch on the Win600 makes this slightly
|
||||
more convenient because the controllers can always poorly act as a mouse and
|
||||
keyboard.
|
||||
|
||||
When you are in KDE on the Win600, you don't get a soft keyboard at all. This is
|
||||
mildly inconvenient, but can be fixed with the moonlander yet again. Here's a
|
||||
screenshot of what my KDE desktop on the Win600 looks like:
|
||||
|
||||
[](https://f001.backblazeb2.com/file/christine-static/img/Screenshot_20220714_144655.png)
|
||||
|
||||
Overall, SteamOS is a lot more ergonomic in my opinion and will let you play
|
||||
games to your heart's content.
|
||||
|
||||
The D-pad feels really good. I love how it responds. When I did a little bit of
|
||||
Sonic Mania I never felt like I was inaccurate. There were some weird audio
|
||||
hitches on Sonic Mania though where the music would cut out randomly. Not sure
|
||||
what's going on with that. I could play through entire Pokemon games with that
|
||||
D-pad.
|
||||
|
||||
## Conclusions for now
|
||||
|
||||
Overall I'm getting the feeling that this device is _okay_. It's not great, it's
|
||||
not terrible, but it's okay. I need to get some more experience with it, but so
|
||||
far it seems that this device really does have a weight class and oh god if you
|
||||
play a game outside its weight class your UX goes to shit instantly. The battery
|
||||
life leaves _a lot_ to be desired so far. However it does work. It's hard to not
|
||||
compare this to the Steam Deck, but it's so much less in comparison to the Steam
|
||||
Deck.
|
||||
|
||||
I don't know how I feel about this device. I'm not sure it's worth the money. I
|
||||
need to get more experience with it. I'll have a better sense of all this when I
|
||||
write my full review. Stay tuned for that!
|
||||
Loading…
Reference in New Issue