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Added by garyopa on 8.10.2012 |
A handheld GBA replacement clone, that makes Nintendo original GBA very outdated!
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What follows is our comprehensive review of the 'K1 GBA SP', which uses a 'System-On-Chip' design. And if you read the whole review you will find a special treat for our many loyal Maxconsole readers.
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Total Likes : 26 |
Total dislikes : 12 |
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Introduction
I am a fan of rather odd gaming hardware. Third party, unlicensed hardware bits in particular. It's always been something that has captured my curiosity. It was a rather odd day when i received a omnious email requesting this review. Ironically enough, just a short time earlier, I received a rather unusual GBA clone with some rather diminutive specs and questionable quality. The first experience soured me to the point where my skepticism was at an all time high over these kinds of products. Little did I know that there was actually a piece of clone hardware that not only had very high compatability but also had tons of features that would put Nintendo's original gameboy advance hardware to shame. Enter the K1 GBA SP.
The idea behind the K1 GBA SP is more of a proof of concept SOC design for ODM's to roll out their own version of the portable system. Because of the very nature of how ODM's manage, change and promote their products, this review will strictly focus on the device exclusively available from http://www.k1gba.com while still refering to the original gameboy advance hardware and other clones from time to time.
Product Information:- Dedicated Hardwire circuits to fully support all graphic & sound modes
- Re-design memory interface to support both cartridge and SD/TF card
- Adjustable CPU clock to add MP3 playback capability
- Support small size TFT LCD with adjustable( 5 level) backlight
- Support TV Out(VGA resolution). Plug and play GBA games on your TV(PAL/NTSC composite)( Hot swap between LCD & tv)
- Built-in scaling engine to support LCD to TV in different resolution
- Built in interrupt controller to enable cartridge hot plug and cheat function
- Do DRAM required if no SD/TF
- 100% compatible with original cartridges. 100% frame rate achieved(60 FPS)
- 100% compatible with GBA Roms you owned and all the public domain games or homebrew games
- Support GBA link. Both single game pack mode and multi game pack are supported. You can even link with your original GBA
- Zip your ROM files to save SD/TF space (GBA Only)
- MP3 playback support
- GBA cheat support
- In-game menu for on the fly cheats, game guides and returning to the main menu
- Text reader
- JPG viewer
Technical Specifications:- Dual Core system - ARM7+ARM9 compatible
- CPU - 16.67 MHz (up to 150 MHz)
- DRAM - 50 MHz
- Frame Rate - 60 fps
- Graphics - Dedicated GPU hardware circuits
- Sound - Dedicated SPU hardware circuits
- LCD - Sharp 3"
- Battery - 3.7v 700mAh Li-ion rechargeable
- Power Consumption - 80mAh on boot-up, < 80mAh while gaming
Package Contents
The packaging of the unit comes in a standard, Gameboy Advance branded box which looks exactly like the original GBA SP box by Nintendo. It even includes Nintendo's 'Seal Of Quality. In the box is the K1 GBA SP, a gba-like cartridge which they collectively call the 'K-Card', region specific AC Adapter (not pictured) and an AV cable which curiously plugs directly into the link cable port.
 
The unit itself is nearly indistinguishable from the original GBA SP. That is until you begin looking for a few details. Notice the lack of 'Nintendo' logo at the top of the K1 GBA SP and lack of nintendo sticker on the bottom of the unit. The Looks and feel of the console is nearly identical to the original. The first clone console i received (which will remain nameless) was made with cheap, thin plastics. When playing the hand-held you would regularly hear small popping noises as parts of the plastic shift around. The Quality of the K1 GBA SP has no such issues. The unit is lite and yet feels very sturdy in your hand even when put into hard use. I put this to the test in a few rounds of Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper and Double Dragon Advance. There's nothing quite like button mashing games to prove just how sturdy this product is. There were some reports that the first batch of K1 GBA SP units had.
 
One area where the K1 GBA SP differs from the original GBA SP is the use of a different LCD screen. The K1 GBA uses a higher resolution screen and is approximately 3 millimeters higher than the original GBA. Because of the higher resolution screen, some things on the K1GBA do look a bit different. With that being said, the K1 GBA SP has a unique feature to help counter act this effect. the use of hardware scaling. For the most part i found the differences in screen quality to be negligible. The scaling does a solid job at keeping things looking relatively well and I think this would only adversely affect the most die hard of die hard GBA fans.
The K-Card is unique to the K1 GBA. While visually it looks exactly like a standard GBA cartridge, It accepts microSD cards of up to 32gb in size. Unlike wieldy flash kits, there is no setup, no drivers to install and no learning how to use proprietary software. You simply load your roms onto any fat formatted MicroSD card, insert the MicroSD card into the K-Card, load the K-Card into the K1 GBA SP and you are ready to play. I can't emphasize enough just how easy it was for me to get this going. I used a spare 8gb memory card which i had in an old phone. I simply made a new directory in that card using my pc, Added a quick handful of games and had a working and booted K1 GBA Sp in less than 5 minutes.
Upon booting up the unit with the K-Card you will be presented with a K-Team splash image followed by a directory list of your Micro-SD card. The unit gives users the ability to add their own splash screens and background images for the device. While i didn't picture the feature, it is quite nice and is the closest thing the unit has to theming.
 
Navigating the menu is dead easy. up and down move the cursor. A confirms a selection while B sends you back one step. You move between the List, Option and Help tabs at the top by using the L and R buttons. Doesn't get any easier than that. As mentioned earlier, the unit also has a slew of options and features in the options menu. You have the ability to change the language(English, Spanish, French, German, simplified and traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean ), filter unwanted file-types from the main menu, enable/disable the GBA splash screen, enable/disable tv-out, enable/disable mp3, text and jpg support. This is where the product truly excels over other clones and even more so over the original GBA. The sheer amount of options blows any other GBA compatible device out of the water.There is also a 'Help' tab which shows you some of the most common hotkey combinations to allow you to switch autofire on, save your current game state, enter the in-game menu and more.
 
Playing original cartridges.
Unfortunately i didn't have many GBA cartridges to test. Mario Advance 2, Mortal Kombat Advance and Castlevania Aria Of Sorrow all worked just fine on the K1 GBA SP.
Playing ROM Images:
Zipped roms are supported for GBA games only. This does help significantly if you have many roms in your MicroSD Card. The K1 GBA team also have a supplimentary package of screenshots and cheats available for installing on your MicroSD card which will allow you to visually view your game in the menu and cheat on certain games using their pre-defined codes. These two features are just part of the option overdose you get with the K1 GBA SP. It's really the icing on the cake with this device.
I tested a variety of roms without any issues whatsoever. I was also able to view screenshot previews of the games and cheat on games as mentioned above. I did encounter some issues with rather large games that were unable to send me back to the firmware menu. After some research i found out that some roms nearing the 32mb limit prevented the device from showing the in-game menu system.
Some games, including fan favorite pokemon titles that rely on the GBA's real time clock will come in at a disadvantage. The K1 GBA Sp hardware does not have a real time clock hardware. While this doesn't completely destroy the gameplay of these titles, It does hurt some of the RTC features of these games but does not render them completely unplayable. Still, it's something to keep aware of.
 
 
The K1 GBA SP also has a text reader, mp3 player and jpg image viewer. All of these features worked as advertised however i did not spend much time on them. I just didn't feel these features would be a significant attraction for fans.
Console Emulation
This is probably the second most important feature in the K1 GBA SP model. While not completely reinventing the wheel here, the K1 uses modified versions of common emulators already available for the GBA. With that said, there have always been a few limitations with emulation on the original GBA. The screen resolution of the GBA being the biggest factor.
I first began my tests using standard gameboy roms. All of roms with the exception of a few unlicensed chinese games worked flawlessly. The K1's gameboy emulation also has some interesting features including the ability to swap the original gameboys pallet, change border backgrounds, rapid fire and more. The unit even has a green pea pallet to help you get back into the classic gameboy nostalgia while on the go. I had quite a bit of fun with the gameboy emulation. Gameboy color emulation worked equally well. There were one or two games that didn't run at full speed. I was able to get them running at full speed by adjusting some of the speed tweaks available in the emulators options menu.
Unfortunately there was one console emulator on the K1 which did not go so smoothly. The advertised Turbo Grafx 16/PC Engines support was abysmal. I tried a number of games and every one i tested was too slow to be deemed playable. None of the options in the options menu helped speed things up. There are a number of tweaks you could do to the original emulator for the GBA but because this version is embedded, none of that can be applied. I took no pictures of the TG16 emulation. It simply didn't work well at all.
NES emulation ran considerably well albeit a one caveat, the display resolution. As mentioned earlier, the native resolution of many old console games still trumps the resolution of the native gameboy advance screen. This makes emulation a bit tricky. However, the nes display on the GBA looks quite good. The previous GBA clone we tested also had nes support. That unit had horrific nes emulation plagued with timing issues and sound so bad that you had wished you had a dog barking in your ear instead of listening to the awful sound of that past GBA clone. I could not find any major NES emulation flaws with the K1 with the exception of the resolution quirks.
Sega Master Sytem (SMS) games also suffer from resolution issues. Again, this is a limitation of the original GBA. However, only a handful of games i tested looked bad enough to deem them completely unplayable. The embedded emulator also gives you the option of forcing the original SMS resolution aspect ratio thus leaving a few pixels off of the screen. the Sega Master Sytem's little cousin, the game gear is also supported. The game gear is nothing more than a Sega Master Sytem with a smaller resolution and support for more colors. The game gear's smaller native resolution fits right in to the GBA form factor and game gear games look perfectly fine on the K1.
 
I am an emulation fanatic and spent most of my time playing gameboy, gameboy color and gamegear games. The K1 makes for a great emulation portable if you are a fan of classic nes and classic portables. I have fond memories of the Turbografx 16 as a kid and it was a bit sad to see that the TG 16 support was so poor.
TV Out
Another excellent feature of the K1 GBA SP is the ability to output the video and audio to RCA for TV out capabilities. All of the photos in this review were taken by photographing the TV screen. There are also a few options for tv out such as changing the resolution between 480x320 and 640x480.
Verdict
Overall I would recommend this product. The K1 has tons and tons of features and dead easy setup that would even rival a powerful iphone or android device packed with a gba, nes and gameboy emulators. With that being said however, this product is clearly targeted at portable fans and possibly only GBA die-hards. The biggest hurdle the K1 GBA SP faces is the fact that the GBA was replaced with the DS years ago as Nintendo's flagship product and while i am aware that there are still many GBA fans out there; The GBA isn't getting any younger by any stretch of the imagination. The price point is still quite affordable and helps appeal to the budget conscious portable gamers.
Contest
Since our in-depth hardware review is over, we here at MaxConsole have no more actual need for this unit, so we are offering it up FREE (including shipping costs) to one of our many loyal MaxConsole Forum readers.
To enter this giveaway contest all you have to do is reply to this topic with at least something related to the subject, and after one week we will at random pick one of the replies to this review to be the lucky winner of this 'K1 GBA SP' unit!
Maxconsole:
The biggest gaming forums, for all consoles fans.
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