Trimui Model S

Mood: mood: working

The Arduboy FX ended up being a wonderful travel handheld because of how small and light it is. It's so tiny, and has such a long battery life, I keep it in my bag all the time. It weighs around 40 grams.

The Retroid Pocket 2+ isn't a big handheld, but at about 170 grams I definitely notice it's there, and I don't ever pack it unless I'm relatively sure I'm gonna use it. It makes my bag juuuust bulky enough to be uncomfortable, so I don't bring it with me often. (The RP2+'s uncomfortable buttons don't help, either.)

I decided to search for something in-between, a handheld with a form factor close to the Arduboy, but with the ability to emulate games. Size and weight were my main priority, I wanted something so light I'd forget I was carrying it. And lo, I found the Trimui Model S! (Also sold as the Powkiddy A66) This little thing used to be about $30, but these days it's around $50. I picked up a used one for about that much with a bunch of games and MinUI preloaded. It's not much larger than a credit card, and weighs about 65 grams. The screen's big enough for handheld games to be legible, and the buttons are sufficiently clicky. The main caveat is the battery life, which is only about 3 hours. It's best suited to low-demand handheld games, and that's exactly what I wanted it for.

My device came with MinUI already set up, and while it was essentially plug n play, some things were wonky and I had to remove thousands of bogus roms and fine tune it a bit.

Gameboy (Gambatte) Palettes

I've found that color makes a HUGE difference on tiny screens and I enjoy Gameboy games so much more with a splash of color. There are some excellent DX colorization hacks, but for everything else, there are palettes. Add them to:

roms/Gameboy/.gambatte/palettes/

Borders are partly cut off, but I like to have the option and I've added a few of those.

roms/Gameboy/.gambatte/borders/

Updating MinUI

I was able to set up GB, GBC, GBA, and Neo Geo Pocket easily, but there evidently wasn't a Game Gear emulator loaded. Updating MinUI did the trick. The Model S is no longer supported on the current releases, so I had to use the last release of the Model S legacy version. Navigate to the releases (not the project files) and follow the instructions in the readme. If you've already got MinUI loaded you'll see an Update option at the bottom of the menu. Otherwise, you navigate to the file manager and select the .zip.

PICO-8 Support

It's as simple as dropping the contents of [Retro8] onto your card. Nerdy Teachers has a curated list of games to try. Celeste works for me, but many of the others don't. This is evidently an issue with unofficial emulators that can be resolved by using the official console. I think someone has compiled Fake08 for this device but haven't investigated much.

WonderSwan Color Mystery

I went around and around trying to get WSC games to play. I tried a bunch of stuff, and then on a whim, I unzipped the roms. Tada~! Unfortunately the screen's a bit too tiny for these IMO.

Verdict

This is a nice little handheld if you are interested in handheld games on a featherweight device. Honestly, I love this thing. The 3 hour battery life is sufficient for my purposes. I usually only play in short bursts, I think anything longer would cramp my terrible thumbs (arthritis boo). The buttons are super clicky (noice), but also loud (eh). YMMV on that one. If I'm in a really quiet place, the buttons seem crazy loud. I strongly suspect the SD card that came with the device was wonky and had lots of unplayable games and weird folders because it was probably originally for a different Trimui device (MinUI makes the card interchangeable between devices). At some point I'll get a new SD card and try a fresh install of the stock OS to see if I can sort out a few lingering issues, but right now it "just works" and I don't wanna mess with it too much more.

The Trimui Smart has a comparable form factor with a slightly larger screen (2.4" instead of 2"), but it weighs more (100g). I wanted to go as lightweight as possible for my use case but if you don't mind something slightly heavier in exchange for more power and screen space, there it is.

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