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Review on ๐Ÿ“ฑ Ultimate Self-Powered Handheld Protection for iPhone XR by Sean Huff

Revainrating 3 out of 5

For the price, it's acceptable with minimal quibbles.

I like the variety of games and they look like real NES ports. There is no save function, so the device will restart every time you turn it off. You can choose Chinese or English. There are 36 games and they are a mix of good and bad NES games. Original Mario Brothers, Super Mario Brothers, Tetris, Contra, Donkey Kong and more. Buttons: You have a power button that you need to hold for about 5 seconds to turn the device on or off. There is a reset button that takes you back to the game selection menu. They have a start button instead of the select button, which you can use to start the game in the select menu or pause games while playing. You also have a volume button that gives you four levels: off, low, medium and high. There's no headphone jack, so all sound comes out of the tiny speaker. D-Pad, A and B: The D-Pad and buttons have a sticky rubber surface. The D-Pad is spongy and makes finer work in Super Mario, like hiding under a block in levels 1-2, very difficult. The A and B buttons have been swapped, so the traditional layout doesn't apply. You can't remap buttons through the game menu, meaning you're stuck with this layout. The A and B keys have a pretty decent response. General Performance: The system has a flex issue and this shows up on the screen when I use the D-Pad or the A and B buttons. This worries me as I'm concerned about the overall lifespan. The case fits the iPhone 6S and iPhone 8 snugly. There are additional phone options for many other phones. Without a phone in a case, the flex is pretty poor. With a phone in a case, Flex is still there. This, along with the flipped buttons, is my biggest complaint about it. With a decent screen protector I believe this case will protect the phone from reasonable wear and tear. But there are no too thick corners like most other phone cases. Not sure if this would be a good choice to protect your phone from heavier falls. The back screen can also be damaged if dropped. Finally, there's battery life. This is not really a permanent gaming solution, but a functional innovation for occasional gaming use. I got about 3 hours of use on a full charge. After about 3 hours, the screen will start to dim until it turns off. If I'm pigeonholed, I could play an odd casual game of Tetris or Super Mario for a week or so. It uses the old Micro-USB style, which means you have to keep it handy to charge. It comes with a cord, but it's about 6 inches long, which is pretty much useless. It would be nice to use a charging cable compatible with the phone it's intended for, but at $20 that's a minor issue. Much better handheld consoles are available in the $20-$30 price range. A lot of people don't have real NES roms anymore. It won't beat a real GBA with a 120 ROM gamepack. Many of these games are available for the Nintendo Switch with an online subscription of $20 per year, and new games are released regularly. Therefore, it is not impossible to find these games. The latest Nintendo Game and Watch games also feature some of these and can be hacked to play other games, but this requires some hardware and console hacking. There are many other handheld consoles out there with many of them. the same games or those suited for the NES and some other consoles that might be a more valuable choice. Overall, this is a functional gaming novelty that makes a phone case all right. If you are looking for something more, I would advise you to buy an actual gaming device.

Pros
  • Compatible with iPhone XR
Cons
  • Updates available