There are a million and one obscure, Far East, Android-powered imports available. Some of them are good, but the majority are really quite shockingly bad.
The GPD G5A, from GamePad Digital, a part of the Lekaicn Corporation, is a gaming handheld that boasts an ARM Cortex A9 1.5GHz processor with a Mali 400 GPU and 1GB of system memory. It comes with 8GB of storage, running either Android 2.3 or Android 4.4.2, depending on the model you end up with.
There's wi-fi available, along with a g-sensor, mini-HDMI, a 0.3MP rear camera, micro-SD card slot with support for up to 32GB cards and a mini USB port for charging and connecting to external peripherals.
The design is unique, to say the least. The device itself is shaped a bit like a mix between a Mega Drive, PlayStation and GameCube controllers, all rolled into one, with a 5‘, 800 x 480 screen sitting in the middle.
Either side of the screen are the two analogue sticks, with a D-Pad on the left and four buttons arranged on the right. Along the bottom of the screen you'll find a set of buttons for Select, Start, power and a volume rocker, with a tinny set of speakers located on the hand grip sections. There are also a set of trigger and shoulder buttons along the top, which are surprisingly quite good and very responsive, considering the quality of the rest of the controls.
This is an exceedingly cheap and nasty device, it has to be said. The D-Pad rarely worked, one of the sticks didn't work at all, and the buttons had so much travel in them they were nearly pushed through to the back of the unit. It was also poorly constructed and frequently required squeezing together as the top section often popped away from the base.
The battery life was virtually non-existent too. After leaving it to charge for over four hours, in which time it wouldn't even boot up until it had a 90% charge, playing a few retro games and an Android game drained the battery down to 3% in less than an hour. It also got extremely hot to the touch as well, which we thought was a little worrying.
In terms of performance, the GPD G5A didn't fare too well either. The Master System and Mega Drive titles ran well, but modern games, even Angry Birds, barely worked at all. Swiping the screen was like watching The Hobbit load on a Spectrum, and despite the box stating the device's abilities to run Dreamcast, Nintendo 64 and PS1 games, there was really no way on earth this device could manage it.
There's little to recommend this device, even as a paperweight. Despite the half-decent specifications, there's something drastically wrong with the GPD G5A. And to add insult to injury, this device will set you back somewhere in the region of £300, which is an absolutely ridiculous amount for something of this shoddy quality.
In short, avoid. For this price, could pick up a pair of KXD S7800b units and still have change left over.