Revo K101 Plus

A quick first look and teardown and at the Revo K101 Plus GBA "Hardware Clone".

This was provided to me by a friend who knows I'm real into Game Boys and thought it would be a cool addition to my collection. Of course I had to do a teardown of it too. At first I was unsure if this is "legit" or a clone or something but it appears to be as legit as these things can be.

I don't think I provide much new information to what's already known. There is already a fantastic review of the Revo K101+ and they covered just about everything I did and then some: https://gbatemp.net/review/revo-k101-plus.427/
One thing I can comment on, however, is that for the price these things go for compared to the price of a backlit GBA + GBA flash cart in 2021, the K101+ appears a lot more appealing than it did in 2012.

Spoiler alert: The internals of this thing are not that interesting. Looking at the specs of this thing, it appears to not be a hardware clone but rather dedicated hardware with a CPU of similar architecture of the ARM SoC the GBA used running a GBA hypervisor with an integrated flash cart. In other words, this thing is more like a Wii running Game Cube games via Nintendont. It's kinda native and performance is good but it's not the same hardware and it shows in places. Unlike Nintendont, however, the K101+ doesn't seem to be nearly as polished so there are compatibility issues in places. Game compatibility seems good enough in the few games I did test, aside from the background issue in Super Mario World.

The display is both the wrong resolution and wrong aspect ratio. Both of these can be adjusted on the device though I did not show that in the video. You can run games letter boxed to fix the aspect ratio and then add pillar boxes too to run at the native resolution. The sub-pixel layout of the screen is rather unique though and the scaling is not terrible so honestly don't even mind the resolution. The aspect ratio I can get used to but seeing a new version of this thing with a more appropriate screen would make this thing much more appealing, I think.

The buttons are completely fine. Nothing special but nothing offensive I think. They do feel different than typical Nintendo buttons but not in a bad way. Just different. It takes a wee bit of getting used to.

Also, Mini USB is terrible and needs to go away.

My verdict on this thing? It's definitely a neat novelty and definitely works well for what it is but this thing feels like a compromise between two ends of the portable spectrum. A modded GBA plays games better, feels better, displays games better, and has better cartridge compatibility (GBC) but is more expensive. The other alternative would be a portable emulator such as the Anbernic RG-351P which also plays games better and displays games better but is lacking actual cartridge and linking compatibility. The RG-351p makes up for this in the game compatibility and significantly more powerful hardware + shader and display options.

So would I recommend buying one of these? Not necessarily. I don't think it's a bad buy though, I just think either of the other options I mentioned are better and are worth the premium if you want to actually play games. This thing is cool as hell but I won't be reaching for it to play games.

This is an older device so stock may vary but this one was purchased from this store on aliexpress: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001900417359.html

Anbernic RG350 and RG351p: https://youtu.be/A4RSdtOrFlw
Retron SQ Video I referenced: https://youtu.be/N1_cqJX7p1A

mattcurrie's ROM pack of useful test ROMs (that I used in the video): https://mattcurrie.com/gb-lcd-tests.zip

240p-test-mini -- test ROMs for GB and GBA: https://github.com/pinobatch/240p-test-mini

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Видео Revo K101 Plus канала makho