Hacking What are the differences between R4i Gold and R4i Gold Plus?

[Legato Darksummers]

After having made a post asking the typical question of “Why can’t my M3i Zero play 3DS games” and reading some of the feedback including the links, I have decided to become one more passenger on the “R4i Railroad Express”. In other words, I have decided to buy two R4i Gold carts to be able to “replace” the M3i Zero cards that I have already bought.

So to try and help this site out a bit as I know that I’m going to probably be using it a bit for the future (maybe when we’re all trying to figure out a complicated yet sure-fire way to be able to FINALLY hack 3DS games and we're all trying to figure out how to crack the new "N4DS") I’ve decided to contribute by buying my next two cards from GBATemp’s sponsor.
The only thing that is holding me back right now though from my final purchase is that I’m confused between two “look-alikes”
- r4i Gold (http://www.nds-card.com/ProShow.asp?ProID=149)
- r4i Gold Plus (http://www.nds-card.com/ProShow.asp?ProID=274)

Now I haven’t done a DEEP research between the two, but I wanted to search enough on this site before I ask yet ANOTHER “typical” question.
So far, I’ve found out from here by searching “r4i gold plus” that they are actually from two different companies and that basically means that they have two different core systems that they can run on… whatever the heck that means for playability.
And also that Rydian seems to be the skeptic about the Plus’s future.
Lastly, I’ve found out from the Sponsor Site that they are almost identical except that the Plus has a blue usb reader and makes it seem like that is needed for updating?
http://www.nds-card.com/ProShow.asp?ProID=273

I believe that this is a good question to ask though as it doesn’t seem that there really is that much information about this here other than in these two threads.
http://gbatemp.net/threads/m3-is-now-4-5-0-10-compatible.341081/#post-4519565
http://gbatemp.net/threads/r4i-gold-plus.316720/#post-4032268
And that others will likely have the same questions that I have as the r4 is one of the most popular carts out there.

So in what ways do these two differ? Feature-wise? Reliability-wise?
Any user experiences between the two? Opinions? Comments?
And most importantly, which one do you think that is going to last the longest in the future? It’s real great NOW if the Plus has more features, but if it dies out and the “original” comes out with an update that surpasses it then a lot fat of good that does for me.

 

[JoostinOnline]

Don't know anything about flash carts, but if it has "Plus" in the name, it must be WAY better!

PS: Sorry for the useless post.

 

[prectorian]

The one from R4ids.cn is the better one.
It got better developer support in term of keeping the kernel up to date to keep up with the latest DSi/3DS console firmware upgrades.

 

[Rydian]

http://gbatemp.net/t290097-which-flash-cart-should-i-get

The "Plus" is from a different team, does not have Wood support (the main selling point of R4s nowadays), and has only existed for a relatively-short time (it only has three 3DS updates, while the last one out is 4.5.x). We see tons of R4-named carts out there, and the majority of them are dead by now, getting no game updates or DSi/3DS updates. The carts listed in the sticky I linked with DSi/3DS support are the few that have proven themselves willing to update as far as they can, opposed to other carts that put out cheap hardware and so make you buy a new cart every few updates (like the R4-SDHC team).

 

[JoostinOnline]

http://gbatemp.net/t290097-which-flash-cart-should-i-get

The "Plus" is from a different team, does not have Wood support (the main selling point of R4s nowadays), and has only existed for a relatively-short time (it only has three 3DS updates, while the last one out is 4.5.x). We see tons of R4-named carts out there, and the majority of them are dead by now, getting no game updates or DSi/3DS updates. The carts listed in the sticky I linked with DSi/3DS support are the few that have proven themselves willing to update as far as they can, opposed to other carts that put out cheap hardware and so make you buy a new cart every few updates (like the R4-SDHC team).

So the "Plus", just like the Cake, is a lie!

 

[Rydian]

So the "Plus", just like the Cake, is a lie!

Well to be anal (hi I'm Rydian) the reason people buy these flash carts in the first place is that they are functional... as long as they're getting support.