Review K101 Revo, Official GBAtemp Review

Another World · Dec 19, 2012

i've been playing the minish cap the last few days. there are a few spots where some "bleeps" play that seem out of place. i haven't played the game since it was released so i don't recall if these are incorrect sounds. they happen when the shell enemies fall from the sky. these are the guys that flip over and then take two sword hits to kill.

i was really enjoying the revo until this evening. i turned it on and my minish cap save file was blank. pretty annoying. the last time i played i turned off the system without making a save or going back to the file listing. i don't know if that has anything to do with it. i didn't want to save anything at that point, i was running out of time to play, so i just shut it off using the power button.

i've read about other users saying that their saves are disappearing. i hope they get a handle on this and release an update really soon. if it deletes all my saves i'll probably just stop using it for serious gaming.

-another world

RyanRDLPS · Dec 20, 2012

I ran into that just once, but from now on I'm really good about hitting *+START to push the SRAM onto the SD card.
Did you do that prior to shutting off?

Another World · Dec 20, 2012

no, but, i hadn't saved any new progress. i booted up my save, played for 2 min, had to do something so i just shut it off. i wonder how that happened. at what point would it have written a blank save and/or does shutting it off corrupt saves?

i'm wondering if a save file stays open for writing the entire time its in sram. when it should be making a copy of the save to sram prior to booting. if it is always actively accessing the file then that might account for blank/missing saves if you just power off.

-another world

grandgroove · Dec 20, 2012

Satangel said:
For that money you can easily find a second-hand PSP, which can do all that stuff and more. Faster too.
I see you've kind of said that in the conclusion, which is good. Hard competition, even though it's cheap, I would always prefer a PSP to this.

If you're basing your decision around GBA gaming in particular, the K101 Revo beats out the PSP. As much as I love my PSP and the onslaught of emulation that it handles in stride, it has yet to move past some significant growing pains with regard to GBA emulation. With interest in the system continuing to wane, I doubt any major improvements will be seen in that area. If you're just a casual GBA gamer, though, you'll probably find most of your favorites will be served pretty well.

I guess it's like the "jack of all trades..." saying.

At any rate, the K101 Revo is awesome no matter how you slice it. I have a PSP 3000 and Go set up for hours of classic gaming. However, I have a very soft spot in my heart for the GBA, and the Revo is hard to pass up.

Did the rules say something about not allowing congratulatory comments? Oh well. This is an excellent review with great detail and the kind of info us gaming enthusiasts love. Thanks for your time.

Twiffles · Dec 20, 2012

RyanRDLPS said:
And as a last addition, a couple more for the TV mode. Love it.

Does it normally blow up to full screen like the way you have it in the picture, or is there some sort of scaling option?
Just wondering if it's a viable alternative to using the GCN's Gameboy Player in terms of GBA video capture.

alexei_gp · Dec 21, 2012

if you want to see the tv out mode of the revo i show you in this video:

RyanRDLPS · Dec 21, 2012

There are two scaling modes. This also can be utilized on the REVO itself, instead of using TV OUT mode. There is the 4:3 presentation, then the full stretch one that you see in the Donkey Kong picture. Doom is the 4:3 *native* option. I like it but not as much, it doesn't use all of the screen real estate!

As for SRAM problems AW I think it has a lot to do with not saving to the SD card after an initial SRAM write. If you created the file which would of been the initial save, then didn't hit "*+START" I'm guessing it didn't' write off to the SD card.

Bart Lemming · Dec 21, 2012

Who writes the firmware for the Revo? I'd like to know that they're readin people's concerns and hopes here.

Another World · Dec 22, 2012

RyanRDLPS said:
As for SRAM problems AW I think it has a lot to do with not saving to the SD card after an initial SRAM write. If you created the file which would of been the initial save, then didn't hit "*+START" I'm guessing it didn't' write off to the SD card.

if i didn't make any progress worth saving and did not save in the game, why wouldn't it just leave the old save file alone? unless its writing the save to sram, then deleting the save off the sd card. i don't know if its doing that, i would need to pull the kcard after launching a game with a working save and double check what is on the msd. i wouldn't think that it would behave that way, that would just be really bad coding. =P

i got a PM from someone who is also having saving issues. seems *+START and *+L don't matter. sometimes they boot up, load a game, and the save is lost.

-another world

EphGirl · Jan 7, 2013

Has anyone been able to get the K-Kard MicroSD to be readable in a pc? My laptop says it needs to format it to be readable, but if I do that I lose all the apps/games on the card and I want to upgrade the firmware on it.

Xuio · Jan 7, 2013

There should be no problem with reading microsd on PC, because this is how you put new games on revo...

TripleSMoon · Jan 7, 2013

EphGirl said:
Has anyone been able to get the K-Kard MicroSD to be readable in a pc? My laptop says it needs to format it to be readable, but if I do that I lose all the apps/games on the card and I want to upgrade the firmware on it.

Have you tried doing it on another PC? Using a different microSD adapter? either of those might be the issue, if you're lucky.

ruilong · Jan 8, 2013

EphGirl said:
Has anyone been able to get the K-Kard MicroSD to be readable in a pc? My laptop says it needs to format it to be readable, but if I do that I lose all the apps/games on the card and I want to upgrade the firmware on it.

Try another card reader and plug it on another computer to try it. It is possible to get the memory card readable in PC. That is how you put the games there.

Parasite X · Jan 8, 2013

Ruilong I have a question how do you tell what firmware your on and will we see new features added in the firmware update like support for more emulators on the SoC?

Parasite X · Jan 8, 2013

Satangel said:
For that money you can easily find a second-hand PSP, which can do all that stuff and more. Faster too.
I see you've kind of said that in the conclusion, which is good. Hard competition, even though it's cheap, I would always prefer a PSP to this.

The PSP is good but not great when it comes to GBA games but it's not perfect in GBA games it drops frames unlike the Revo but hardware solution always beats emulation everytime.

Another World · Jan 9, 2013

i added an update to the bottom of the conclusion which discusses the loss of save data. i could not continue to ignore the amount of reports. this is clearly a wide spread issue and one that must be addressed!

if they manage to fix the problem then the paragraph will be removed from the review. my intentions are not to damage the system or the reputation of the team behind it. i simply felt the need to publish these findings in the review itself.

-another world

EphGirl · Jan 12, 2013

I was able to get the card to be read in another system. That system runs XP. The one I had problems with was 7. I don't know if that played a role in it or not. I also was able to upgrade the firmware to the latest available on the Revo website

Pingouindunord · Feb 2, 2013

Hi, I read this forum for a while now and just decided to participate to this community.
I have the pleasure to play on the Revo K101 for three weeks now and I think it's time to share my remarks with you.
As you will see, most of them are negatives but my idea was to balance the review of the first post. I personally found this GBA clone amazing but suffering from several drawbacks.

The wall charger (EU) is a cheap one and already found its place in the defect box. When I used it to charge the Revo, I found my radio parasitized. When checking with an oscilloscope, I saw several peaks on the "fixed" 5V. I didn't check with a spectrum analyzer but I think it would not pass the CEM validation.

The screen possesses 5 6 brightness levels but the lower (0) is equal to off and the ~~four~~ fifth others (1-5) have barely the same brightness. However, when the level 1 to 4 ~~2, 3 and 4~~ are chosen, the Revo K101 produces a high pitched tone. Maybe, this is not a big deal for most of the people playing with loud sound, with headphones or in a noisy environment. But in my case I play with no or low sound level in quiet place and the spurious noise is untenable. I'm pretty sure this come from the PWM generated to tune the brightness, the frequency is to low. Then when the duty cycle is not set to the max (100% for level 5) of min (0% for level 1 = off) the PWM generates spurious tones in the audible frequency band.
This is a common issue with low quality hardware to drive LCD panels.
Another problem with the screen comes from the circuit in charge to convert the low resolution display of the original GBA to the higher resolution of the LCD. It seems to be a frame skipping due to bad synchronization. The issue is a bad transparency of sprites. As an example you can play with F-Zero Maximum Velocity (ROM and Cartridge), and the racing map in the bottom-left flash instead of being transparent as on a GBA micro.
The last problem with the screen is the presence of "dead" pixels. They only provide one color (full red or blue) during the first minutes of playing. First, they weren't visible but after few hours and game sessions they started to appear when the consoles are turn on. Then, after few minutes stacked to one color they start to work again, this dead-time prolongs from 20-30 seconds to 4-5 minutes and annunciates the approach of the death of these pixels.

The mono speaker do a great job most of the time and is similar to the one of the original GBA but sometimes produces some glitches.

The controls and specially the D-pad and shoulders (L, R) feel really soft, but we accommodate after 1 hour of gaming and they are responsive.

The last remark and the most important one is the bug of the save well discussed in another thread (). I hope an update will solve the problem because it's the first reason why I would not buy a second Revo K101 or recommend it to someone.

Edit: correct the number of brightness levels 5 -> 6.
added ~~deleted~~

enarky · Feb 2, 2013

Could someone test Dotstream from the Bit Generations series for me? That one had massive slowdown problems on my Supercard back in the days and I'd be interested how it works on the K101. Quite a nice game, btw.

Another World · Feb 3, 2013

Pingouindunord said:
The screen possesses 5 brightness levels but the lower (1) is equal to off and the four others (2-5) have the same brightness. However, when the level 2, 3 and 4 are chosen, the Revo K101 produces a high pitched tone.

you can press the button 6 times, 5 of them being brightness settings, the 6th turns off the backlight but not the LCD. i find that 5 (the brightest) and 4 have about the same level of brightness, but 3, 2, and 1 definitely have different levels. i also hear the high pitched sound when the volume is very low, this was not something i heard during the review. i only hear it on levels 4-1. on 5 and 0 i do not hear it at all. i mostly play with the volume turned up or with ear buds, so i don't notice the high pitch sound while gaming. i wonder if anyone around me does?

are you able to game and use the firmware menu while its plugged in and charging? i can not, as i pointed out in the review.

-another world

Review K101 Revo, Official GBAtemp Review

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