At the current moment, in the Homebrew console world, there are two dominant consoles.  The GP32 and GP2X have had their day, and the consoles that are pretty much their closest replacements are the Dingoo A320 and the GP2X Wiz. Of course there ARE others, but the Dingoo and the Wiz are the most important, and most widely used. This is not to say that there are a lot of people using them.

When the Wiz was released to the public in May 2009, very few people adopted it. An even smaller percentage of these people were existing GP2X F-100 or 200 owners. The main reason for this, which is regularly cited by members of the GP32x forums was the impending arrival of the Pandora, a console which would be more powerful than the Wiz. Many potential users of the Wiz were therefore happy just to wait for the Pandora instead. Unfortunately, a year later, the Pandora still is not released, and potential buyers of the Wiz have been left wanting. The aim of this review is to determine whether or not the Wiz is still worth the purchase, with the Pandora hovering just out of sight.

I loaded my SD card up with goodies and took a 6 hour train journey from London to Southampton and back again, I had to test the Wiz in it’s native environment, so where better than a long, boring trip on public transport? This review is based on the time the Wiz and I spent together, and the adventures we shared (cinematic adaptation in theatres near you, 2011). Oh, and if you were wondering, the battery lasted the whole journey.

I first of all have to thank Mr. Tony Han of Game Park Holdings (GPH for the rest of the review) for his help with this review, it could not have happened without him. I think it’s incredible that a company such as GPH has people working for them such as Mr. Han who are willing to be pestered with questions from people such as myself. He also posts semi-regularly on the GP32x forums, with short snippets of news, or competitions that GPH are running. You definitely cannot fault the company for their customer service. If you’ve heard of GPH before, it’s certainly for the Wiz’s predecessor, the GP2X F-100. Before that, members of GPH were responsible for the Game Park GP32, everyone’s favourite open source games console, which really started it all.

What’s in the box?

The Wiz has to be one of the most well packaged games consoles I’ve had the pleasure to open. On the outside, the box is printed with a slick treasure chest design. There’s minimal text on the box, but the text that is there is printed in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Chinese and (I think) Japanese.

Inside is a flap with an image of the console and a list of icons that describe what this bad boy can do. On the reverse of the flap is a collage of images of games playable on the Wiz; I was pleasantly surprised to see a picture of the title screen I did for one of the in-built games, Boomshine, by oX’s very own Peter_R. Under the flap is the console itself, cocooned in a cardboard shell, in a little bag with some silica gel to prevent moisture (interestingly, the first time I’ve ever seen silica gel packaged with a game console). Underneath this you’ll find the USB cable, an instruction manual and a mini CD (Unfortunately the slot loading CD drive I have means I couldn’t test the CD, but I assume it contains PDF instructions and maybe a file loading program.)

There is a stylus bundled with the console, but you’ll find it nestled snugly inside the console itself.

The Hardware

The Wiz itself is a pretty sexy piece of kit. In looks, it’s got the GP2X F-100/200 beat hands down in my opinion. The console is roughly half the size of the F series, with a shiny (albeit smudge-prone) grey-with-sparkly-bits finish. Where the F-100 was Rosie O’Donnell, the Wiz is Kylie (forgive me dear reader for that analogy).

I was very surprised when I held the Wiz for the first time, regarding the size. In my mind, thanks to images on the Internet, I had imagined the Wiz to be roughly Game Boy Micro-sized, and I was pleasantly surprised to find it to be a bit larger, in my opinion for the better, I used to get crazy hand cramps thanks to the GBM.

The D-Pad is markedly improved over the F-100’s bizarre choice of analog stick, and is a solid improvement over the F-200’s pad. It’s a tad mushy, but one of the better non-Nintendo d-pads I’ve used.

The buttons may be my least favourite aspect here. Now it’s not a deal breaker, but they are close together, and quite small. However, they are useable, and I do have very chunky thumbs, so the average Joe should have very little problem hitting them correctly.  There’s a Menu and a Select button either side of the screen, which is rather reminiscent of the GP32’s layout. Again, these are a bit mushy, but one will not be using these very much at all during normal gameplay.   There’s also a nice pair of clicky shoulder buttons on the top of the unit, which are actually very well placed.

The speaker holes are very interesting. Shaped like a capital Y and slightly raised, they look like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It’s not a bad thing, – it’s just different. As for how they sound, I’m fairly impressed. By default they are incredibly loud and they’re a lot clearer than your average cell phone (mobile phone for fellow Brits) speakers.

As for the screen, if I’m completely honest, I was wowed when I turned the unit on for the first time. I had heard that OLED screens were nicer overall than their LCD counterparts, but I wasn’t expecting the brightness and clarity I got when I turned on the Wiz. The viewing angle also is incredible. There is, however a slight graininess, which is only really viewable on static screens, but it is there. This is apparently a characteristic of OLED screens at the moment. I can’t say it bothered me though, and I still found it a vast improvement over the F-100 and 200’s screen.

Gaming

With the improvements over the GP2X F-100, you would expect the gaming experience to be logically a lot better. And you’d be right. Since one of the major uses of the Wiz is emulation, the proper D-pad is a perfect choice, unlike the odd stick on the F-100. The spec of the system is overall a lot more suited to emulation as well, which means the Wiz can now emulate systems such as the NES, SNES, Genesis/Megadrive, GB, GBC, Speccy, C64, most MAME and GBA pretty much perfectly with sound. There’s also work being done to port PSX to the console, but it’s running quite slowly at the moment. Progress is constantly being made though.

The other main use of the Wiz is homebrew gaming, playing games made by members of the community who code them in their spare time. One of the best examples of these are the games made by Ruckage, which are beautiful and engaging, almost a reason to buy a Wiz in their own right.

Media Playback

The Wiz isn’t just a games console you know! Within the official firmware is a video player, music player, ebook reader, photo viewer, comic reader and a flash player! The video player plays several well known formats, and predictably, video’s look crisp and colourful on the Wiz’s beautiful screen. I wouldn’t recommend replacing your TV for it, but for the occasional movie on the train or plane, it works perfectly.

The music player also plays the most popular formats, such as MP3 or WMA. For anything more advanced, such as FLAC, you’ll want to download GMU, which works very well, as well as being compatible with the audiophile’s open-source favourite, OGGs. Music from the speaker sounds clear and quite crisp at low volumes, but as you raise the volume, you will notice some distortion. It’s comparable with the speaker on the iPhone. Music through good headphones sounds very good, and I’d say the Wiz could hold it’s own as your regular music player if you so wished.

The photo viewer will probably be my least used feature on the Wiz. Like I said, static images appear a touch grainy on the OLED screen, and here is where it really shows. But I don’t think many people would be buying the Wiz to view photos on it’s 320×240 px screen.

Conclusion

I’ve had a while now to get used to the Wiz, and I am very impressed! As a GP2X F-100 owner, I expected something similar, but really, it’s in another league. GPH have done an amazing job of noting where the F-100 and 200 had flaws and have performed a great task of correcting them for their latest handheld.

Conversely, if you’re new to open source games consoles such as the Wiz, you will be in for a treat. It’s a great introduction to the world of homebrew and emulators, and a nice first taste of Linux without having to worry about command lines and all that jazz. The most important thing here is that the Wiz is a completely different beast to the Pandora, they won’t be competing against each other. The Wiz is a very powerful emulation and homebrew gaming and media machine that you can put in your pocket, and the Pandora is a pocket computer with gaming controls you can put in your bag. Equally cool, but very different.

I’m amazed that the Wiz hasn’t been adopted by more people. Get one, and then show your friends; they’ll want one too. Let’s start a Wiz revolution!