| Family Pocket GP-40S Price: $25.99 Find it on: Amazon
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Rating: 4/10
Pros: Cons: |
If I could summarize the Family Pocket GP-40S (at least the version I received) into two words, it would be this: Wasted potential.
On paper, there is a lot to like about the GP-40S. For $25, it has a bright 4″ screen and a nice form factor reminiscent of the Nintendo Wii U. It’s not necessarily pocketable, but it is portable and the build quality for a device in this price range was surprisingly decent. On top of that, the OS features save/load states, a rewind function, and there is a Micro-SD card slot for game expansion. All of that sounds pretty good, right?
Unfortunately for the GP-40S, the minuses take away any of the benefits of the device. Starting with the physical parts of the device, Family Pocket skimped on the buttons. The directional pad is squishy and has difficulty registering multi-directions. There are two slider controls up on the upper left and right hand corners, and they are both cheaply made and difficult to reach in normal gameplay. I know they were trying to replicate the Wii U controller, but this was a miss in my opinion. My device included 200 built in games, but these were all custom home brews. There was one recognizable title in the group (Galaxian) and otherwise, the preloaded games were awful to play. This unit is also limited only to NES games. I’ve seen other versions of this device (namely the GP-40M – the ‘M’ here stands for ‘multi-consoles’) that can play up to the 16-bit generation that would be worth exploring, but this was not the unit I was given to review.
No worries, I thought to myself. With the TF-card slot by the battery, I could add plenty of the NES games I grew up playing and loving. I was wrong. First off, it was difficult sliding the back cover off to reach the battery. Do it too many times, and it feels like the plastic would eventually crack, leaving you without a back to the unit. There was some know-how required in terms of the file structure to load my NES games properly, and the unit did eventually recognize it with correct configuration. But unfortunately, when I loaded the game (in this case, it was the original Mario), the game played at about 75% speed. I varied the formatting of the Micro-SD card (exFAT, FAT, FAT32, etc) and none of it changed the speed. I tried other games, and they either didn’t work (in the case of Rad Racer 2), or played at the same 75% speed (in the case of Punchout!). Had this feature worked at 100% speed, my rating for this console would’ve been a lot higher.
As a result, the only thing you’re left with for $25 is 200 8-bit games that are flat out boring and you’re never going to play. As a result, the gameplay experience was similar to the PD-250 Panda Handheld I reviewed a couple of years ago, which I panned. I’m giving this an extra star comparatively because of the larger screen and the save/load features, but that still doesn’t make this a worthwhile unit.