Ok, so the Retron 5 is set up and good to go. Before I begin, I didn't mean to come off as one of the entitled in my last post. Even though the majority of people who have it so far seem to be satisfied with the unit, the last thing I wanted after all this time was to run into one of the many issues I've been reading about. I'm not one to really complain about much and especially this, and I haven't been, but after all this time and knowing Hyperkin's quality record, the last thing I need is a paperweight
So onto my initial impressions. I am pleased to say that so far, so good. When you first power on the system (hold the button down until you see a white screen), it will ask to establish the wireless connection (pair) the controller with the unit. You press the HOME button until the LEDs at the bottom start flashing. Simple. About 30-60 seconds later, controller is paired. I then went to the system settings to see if I needed the 0.2.2 software update. I did, so I took my 1GB camera card and formatted it so I could give it the space it needed (200-300MB). After getting the system update, I put the card in the back of the unit, the system detected the update, and I let it patch up. It took a little over a minute for this process, at which point the system rebooted, with a few black "Retron 5" screens during this process. The system software update was installed.
Now, the firmware (application) update. After the system update, the Retron 5 will notify you that new firmware is available, and it has the option to put the request on your SD card. I did that, and took it to my computer and got the firmware. Same process as before, except the firmware update took about half the time to complete. After another reboot, everything looked to be in order.
With everything updated, I first tried an older GB game I had cleaned for this test, Revenge of The Gator. The unit recognized the cartridge and started it up. I was blown away by the visual quality. I played a fast game of that with the wireless controller and found no problems with latency or input lag (as some have been reporting).
I then wanted to test the new firmware out with a GBA game that can save. I tested it with The Lost Vikings, fresh off completion from last month's Together Retro. It recognized this game and imported the saves to the unit. I also connected an original SNES pad to the unit for this test.
Again, the visual quality speaks for itself. I must add the sound quality is great too. This looks a lot better than the Game Boy Player. The SNES pad also worked perfectly, despite reports of people saying that SNES pads may not work correctly. To test if my saves were wiped, after playing a little bit, I put this cartridge back in my GBA SP, and nothing was erased, all the save files were still there.
Later on I'll be back with my impressions on SNES and possibly NES games.
A few notes about the controller: I like how it feels, the corner grips on the bottom make it comfortable, I like the click of the microswitches, possibly because my X-Arcade joystick also makes use of microswitches. By default, the round button in the upper right corner is mapped to Fast Forward, and that really is nice. The controller also comes fully charged; I used the included Micro USB cable to see how it charges up and that works great too. The LED lights come on when it's charging, and shut off when charging is complete. The controller will also charge with the power off.
So far, I am liking what I am seeing. More testing and reviewing later.
