OK, I will have you know I do NOT have a Dingoo yet. I will be buying one in the coming months. I did however just buy a JXD300 and I figured, since everyone is in an uproar as to which is better, I’d give an HONEST review of how a JXD300 woks. I’m doing this because I noticed someone here (probably from jxd.cc) promoting the JXD300 and trashing the Dingoo. Well, I’m bout to rip him a new a$$hole because the JXD300 isn’t as good as he said it was.
Here’s my review
The package: I ordered my JXD300 (2gb white version) from dealextreme.com for $57.91 w/ the FREE S&H option on Aug 01 and it arrived Aug 15. So, roughly there was a 2 week waiting period with the FREE S&H option. The box itself was all bent up, but I didn’t give a sh!t seeing as how it was air mailed from China and I sorta expected that. everything in the box was in tact and fine though. It came with a pair of white headphones (ipod style) and instruction manual in chinese/engrish (funny as sh!t) and a USB charger with small USB cord to charge the system and transfer files on/off the flash drive of the system. Although I’ve only ever seen a 2gb and 4gb version of this PMP available, on the back of the box it has a check box for an 8gb version as well. I wonder if there really is or WILL BE an 8gb version?
NES emulation – Comes preloaded with 2 Jap games: Poo-Yan and F1 Grand Prix. Emulation seems perfect, sound is OK, doesn’t seem to move slow at all. All-in-all emulation is perfect (as stated by others)
Games tested: Super Mario Bros. 2 and 3, Megaman 6, Air Fortress
SNES emulation – If the sound is on, gameplay is about 1 second off. In other words, emulation moves at about 1 second slower than normal. If the sound is off, emulation is about 1/2 a second slower than normal. A slight improvement but still not perfect. SOUND IS ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE… seriously!… it’s like electronic screeching and will drive you mad. The funny part is everywhere you read about the JXD300, they don’t mention that this machine even emulates SNES. Well it does and strangely enough, the SNES roms have to be placed in the same folder as NES roms… kinda weird, especially if you have a ton of roms for both systems, it’ll take a while to navigate to it. All-in-all, YES, it is PLAYABLE and NO it’s not even close to perfect or full speed.
Games tested: Super Mario All-Stars+World, Super Punch-Out, Pop ‘n Twinbee: Bell Adventure
P.S. There was a rumor that this device has no R/L shoulder buttons… not true… it has both shoulder buttons and they work from what I’ve seen.
GBA emulation The system came preloaded with 4 Japanese games: Prince of Tennis, World Soccer Winning 11, Spider-Man, and Gunstar Super Heroes (fun game!!!). Interestingly enough, despite reading the GBA emu on the JXD300 was bad, everything seemed to work great! I didn’t notice any lag time on emu. Everything seemed to run at full speed including sound. The sound would maybe jerk here and there but not even to a point worth complaining. So, overall, GBA emulation is GREAT. I’ll have to test some more games on this to see how things are.
SMD/Sega Genesis emulation. Came preloaded w/ 5 Jap games. I don’t know what any of them are because the titles are in Chinese. From what I saw, it plays these games fine. Sound is fine and there doesn’t seem to be any lag in emulation speed. Please keep in mind I was only playing the preloaded games which had Chinese titles so I have no clue what games they were. I will offer up more info as I load up some Sega games to test it. The funny part is everywhere else I read that it emulates SMD horribly, yet that doesn’t seem to be the case so far
The buttons: The buttons take some getting used to. They are somewhat tacky, as in it doesn’t have that smooth pressable feeling you’d get from a REAL SNES controller. Placement seems to be fine, not awkward. There is a 1/2 a second to 1 second lag time upon pressing a button within the menu, so you kinda have to time your fingers to get that “smooth transistion” feel while navigating the menu. This “lag time” doesn’t happen when you’re playing games though.
Some buttons have a double function. This can be frustrating depending on what program you’re using. For example: When I use the FM Radio, and I’m in the menu to save a station, the navigation buttons on the left also operate as volume buttons. So, when you press a button, it will either go up or down or adjust the volume, you never know which one! So sometimes you’ll have to press a button 2 or 3 times to get it to do EXACTLY what you want
The Radio: The radio SOUNDS pretty good. The clarity of the signal goes in and out depending on where you move the player (as expected with ANY radio). A problem I have though is that when you do the “Auto Search” (for stations), it’ll save the station, but it’ll also save the number next to it. For example: There is a station here called 98.5 KLUC, well it’ll save that but it’ll also save 98.4. Your best bet is to manually save the stations as to avoid this problem. The dual functionality of the buttons as states in my button review above plagues the radio functions Overall, the radio is GREAT.
