The ultimate handheld retro gaming tablet?
The handheld gaming, console market has exploded in recent times with the slew of Chinese-developed units invading our pockets. In the past these open and unlocked gaming handhelds didn’t exactly set the world on fire, but they did fill a gap (certainly in terms of price), underneath the rival Sony Vita and Nintendo DS, as well as allowing unrestricted access to homebrew development.
Now, though, things are a little different. Instead of the likes of the Dingoo OS and underpowered devices, we can enjoy some incredible Android based gaming on a very capable hardware base. The JXD S7800b is a flagship example of this modern handheld gaming boom. This 7" IPS LCD, five-point capacitive Android 4.2.2-based handheld features an impressive quad-core 1.6GHz Cortex A9 CPU and a Mali400 GPU. There’s also 2GB of DDR3 memory, and it comes in both 8GB and 16GB flash storage versions.
It’s essentially a tablet, albeit a very elaborate one, and – as with virtually every other tablet available – it has Wi-Fi, threeaxis accelerometer, front and rear cameras (0.3 and 2 Mega Pixels respectively), microSD card slot (with a maximum of 32GB), and a pair of stereo speakers. However, what makes this model different from a standard tablet is the fact that it’s laden with buttons and joysticks.
There are two analogue sticks, a single D-pad, Start, Select, Home, control configuration and back buttons are located towards the bottom of the unit with a further four button arrangement conveniently placed at the right-hand thumb level. Two shoulder buttons on either side of the rounded edges of the unit increase the count to fourteen, and there’s also a power and volume rocker on the left side of the unit.
With this number of control buttons you’re spoiled for choice when it comes to getting the most out of gaming, but it also leads to another issue: most Android-based games aren’t designed for stick and button play. The JXD thankfully has an ace up its metaphorical sleeve, though, in the form of its configuration button. When this is pressed, usually in-game, a mask of the controls used by the game you're playing appears on screen, allowing you drag and drop the relevant physical controls to the choices in the game. So up, down, left, right, fire and so on on-screen can be paired with the sticks and buttons on the S7800b's case.
The design and aesthetics of the S7800b are really very good, considering it’s a massproduced Chinese import. Usually these things reek of cheap and nasty plastic, but the S7800b is a well-built device that’s solid and comfortable in the hand. Of course there are a few elements that could probably do with a bit of re-modelling, but on the whole it’s a good setup.
Where modern Android games are met with a certain lack of enthusiasm in some quarters, the JXD S7800b increases its appeal through being one of the best retro handheld consoles of modern times. As a part of the package you’ll find already installed number of emulators, which will allow you play Sega Mega Drive, SNES, NES, PlayStation 1, CPS1/2 arcade coin-ops, and even N64 game ROMs. Through other Google Play Store installations it's also able to accurately emulate a DreamCast, ZX Spectrum, C64 and even DOS games.
Most of the emulators packaged with the JXD work with the controls out of the box, but those have been downloaded and installed by the user will require a bit of work to get up and running. Most of the time it’s a fairly easy task of setting up the button configurations then saving the profile, but there are times when the emulator and the physical controls fail to match. Thankfully though this doesn’t happen often, and then it’s usually when dealing with the CPS1/2 arcadestyle emulation.
The quality of the games being emulated are really quite exceptional. The Sega Master System and Mega Drive games were near perfect, and looked amazing on the 1280 x 800 screen; as were the other lesser powered console and computer games emulated. We did at first imagine there’d be some difficulty in delivering an accurate emulation for the more powerful consoles, such as the PlayStation 1 and N64, but we were happily mistaken in this respect as each worked extremely well with at least 80% of the games we had at hand.
The hardware of the JXD S7800b is arguably more than capable of emulating the consoles and computers of the past, any of the problems encountered are purely the fault of the software and how it’s designed to emulate the original machine. And there’s also the possibility of a faulty game ROM as well to take into account. Overall though, the retro emulation experience was superb.
This does however bring us on to the grey area of legality when using game ROMs from older machines. We won’t go in to the finer details here, but suffice to say it is a minefield we’d rather not stray into, and we’ll leave the ethics of using ROMs to you.
In terms of battery life, the JXD S7800b isn’t too bad. After charging it for a few hours we managed to get in a decent six or seven hours’ worth of gaming and normal tablet duties before it got the point where the device had to shut down. Running it through the built-in HDMI port to the TV though, and watching video did take quite a toll out of the battery though, and reduced the life to just over an hour and half, which wasn’t great. Saying that though, it’s not that often you’ll engage in HDMI to TV dual screen gaming, and even then you’ll likely have it plugged in while doing so.
The JXD S7800b is an extraordinary gaming tablet. It's unique, and a pleasure to use. The £130 investment is worth every penny for the retro console emulation side of things alone, but when added to the fact that this device is more than capable of playing modern Android games as well as being a tablet, its features outweigh the cost. In short, highly recommended and excellent fun. David Hayward
An amazing tablet with features galore and loads to offer the modern and retro gamer alike.