https://bittboy.com/

The Bitboy is a tiny handheld from https://bittboy.com. And boy, is it ever small! Its dimensions are a measley 6.8x9.9x1.3cm making it truly pocket sized. Even the weird half pockets that womens pants have can fit this thing! Don't bee fooled, though. It's a powerful little machine, and with four face buttons it's suited to most retro titles. Just pop your favorite titles onto an SD card! (up to 32GB in size) I don't advise putting anything on here that requires more than 4 buttons, though. The TA and TB buttons can function as your shoulder buttons on a Gameboy Advanced, but there's no shoulder buttons to act as the L and R buttons on a SNES controller, for example. But don't worry! They got you covered! With the slightly larger, and more powerful PocketGo for SNES emulation! And the New PocketGo for Playstation 1 emulation!

Don't let my bad photos fool you, the 2.4" IPS Display is nice and clear, with a bright backlight and vivid colours. It is very pleasing on the eye and 2.4" is plenty of screen real estate to play your favorite 8 and 16-bit adventures. BUT THERE IS ONE MAJOR FLAW The last line of the screen, the entire row does not display at the bottom of the screen, but at the top of the screen. Which can have some odd effects, like the bottom border of your text box appearing along the top. Or words cut off by a pixel as they tickle the bottom of the screen.

You'd think that would be a minor flaw, but it's not it's glaringly obvious when playing slower JRPG's (which you will be doing a lot as they hurt the hands the least to use.) and its visually unappealing and makes the unit feel half assed. Doubly so, when you find out the only remedy for this is to use user created firmware updates.

That is one of the good things about the Bitboy. It has a community and they have updated the firmware. They are also more than willing to help their fellow RetroHeads in applying the firmware (or other mods) to their own Bitboys. Some community members have physically added volume control wheels and shoulder buttons to the back of the bitboy, increasing the usability of the unit for themselves!

Another major flaw of the Bitboy is the units overall size. It is SMALL! Smol, tiny, dinky. Micro. And it hurts your hands to hold and use in short order because of it. It's like using a narrower joycon. My hands cramp up after only a half hour of gameply, which is something I haven't experienced from a console since the Nintendo DS

The guts of the Bittboy are nothing special. With modern circuitry layouts and surface mount components, circuit boards have become boring to look at. But, we do find out that the chip on board is an Allwinner Tech F1C100s. Which is an ARM926EJ-S @ 533MHz and 32MB of Embedded DDR memory.

More than enough power to run all your favorite retro titles. Literally, there's not enough buttons on the faceplate to make true use of the power of this chip. It can easily emulate the SNES/Genesis generation of video games. In fact, my favorite system to play on the Bittboy is the Sega Genesis!

In closing, this unit is wonderfully powerful, has a great community and is still being updated and improved by the company making it, but it is woefully undersized. Once I get paid I'm going to order the PocketGo to replace this hand-crampingly small Bitboy as my airplane entertainment.

Find my artwork for sale exclusively on NFTShowroom.com
Find my photographs of Nunavut scenery and Wildlife on Lensy.io
Follow me on twitter here: Hive Related Account / Photography and Art Account
I am also on Instagram: But only Photography and Art
More art on DeviantArt at: Ice-O-Lated
Hive Divider provided by @thepeakstudio