GP2X Caanoo Game System - Black

This is not a machine for the plug and play generation, I gave this three stars not because it was not good at what it did, but more to discourage people who would buy this as a way to re live the nostalgic gaming years and emulate the snes,GBA, Megadrive,NEO GEO etc. This is fully capable of doing this if you understand how to set up emulators from scratch and are in cahoots with the "Homebrew community" who can write programs to get this running. The rewards are great once you can do this and the extras this comes with are then worth it. I have yet to get my NEO GEO emulation fully running on this which is a combination of lack of time and getting my head round bits of the BIOS needed. Also I have been busy setting up another one of theese strange beast(LetcoolN350).The Caanoo is great as it does Music, Film and e-books among other things but you need to go to a website get a membership and then down load all the applications (Google Caanoo and you will find the site with forums to help out). So once again if you are a newbie to this type of thing get a Dingoo or if you have no knowledge of this type of thing whatsoever by a Blaze or stich to your PSP and DS. Not being awkward just trying to save you from grief. If you know your Linux etc and have an understanding of how emulators work as well as the patience of a Saint, the rewards are there to be reaped as this bit of kit will deliver.

I was worried about buying this at first as it sounded terribly complicated. I've never used Linux before, and any review you'll have read will no doubt include the words "homebrew programming community", which makes you feel like you need a degree in computing and technology just to turn it on. However, while it's not as plug-and-play as the iPod, it certainly isn't that difficult if you know your way around folders.The emulators themselves are specifically designed for the Caanoo, so the only place to download them is off the official website. Pretty much every system is covered, even the Playstation (although I haven't downloaded this myself, the general concensus seems to be that it's not to be taken seriously and the framerate makes it impossible to play). For the majority of them, you simply download them onto your computer and unzip them to your Caanoo's "GAME" folder via USB. Only the SNES for me was different (I will explain below).The roms themselves can be downloaded from any website, but remember: you must own a copy of the game in order to download the rom, legally speaking. You simply unzip these into the emulator's "ROM" folder, and load them up. Be advised that some sites use something called 7-zip to unzip roms, but this is free software anyway and acts exactly the same as WinZip. The only advice I'd give you is when unzipping to the "ROM" folder, make a folder within "ROM" to place your game in. Some of the older games (eg. Super Mario Bros) come bundled with about a hundred 'hacked' copies of the game. While this can be kind of cool (especially the Sonic Mario Bros), if you don't put them in their own folder then you'll have to wade through hundreds of Mario games to reach Punch-Out, or whatever is at the end of your list.Every emulator I've downloaded so far has worked perfectly, except for two issues: When running Knuckles Chaotix on the PicoDrive (combined Megadrive/32X/Sega CD emulator) the framerate was unworkable until I went into the 32X options and changed PWM Sound to "off". It worked perfectly after that.Also, a lot of the SNES emulators are pretty poor, EXCEPT for the Pocketsnes 7.2.0. Unlike the other emulators, which require unzipping to the "GAME" folder, this one has to be placed on it's own, outside of any folders, and accessed through the "Explorer" option on the Caanoo. Other than that it seems to work perfectly, although games with the SFX chip (Stunt Race FX / Starfox) are unplayable, sadly.The handheld itself is surprisingly well built. Having struggled with the PSP's slippery analogue stick, I was expecting this to be difficult to control. However, the stick works fine. In fact, it's just as good as a D-Pad. It comes bundled with a built-in Lithium battery (chargeable via the provided USB cable), two styluses, a wrist-strap and a 4GB SD memory card pre-installed with about a dozen games. The pre-installed games are okay, fair to middling in terms of quality, but let's face it; they're not the reason you bought the system. They're nice additions, though, and ones that you can explore at your leisure since they don't take up a lot of space.So, to summarise: If you're interested in a retro handheld, you understand what unzipping means and you're capable of making folders and sub-folders on your computer, then the Caanoo is the system for you.

very good this will be my second one

So far I am very happy with the Caanoo, it is great for emulation, small and compact and the joystick is great.I have also owned the previous GP32 and say that the joystick is better on this Unit.Emulation is also top notch I haven't tried all the emulators yet but was particularly intertesed in Commodore Amiga Emulation as the GP32 I owned previously could not do this. Amiga Emulation is great on the Caanoo and games work on this little wonder that don't even work on an emulator through Windows.This is a great console for me, I picked up a second hand one for £80 which was just the right price point not too expensive, I cannot justify a Pandora!The only downside for me is the screen could do with being a little bit bigger but other that its all good.