I have just taken delivery of my GP2X, and am pleased to say it arrived safe and sound via airmail from Hong Kong. Thanks Lik Sang. 
Initial impressions weren’t good. The plastic felt cheap, and the unit itself didn’t feel that sturdy, especially compared to the PSP (plus the plastic screen cover arrived scratched). However, it’s also half the price. Once the batteries go in the weight changes and after using it for about an hour I’ve got used to the build. It’s almost as if it just needed a bit of use to firm things up.
There are an awful lot of resources already for this thing, considering it’s only been shipping for about the last two weeks. There are several very accomplished emulators, and I’ve been having a great deal of fun playing old Megadrive (Genesis) games. Sonic has a strange appeal on the device. I need to install a SNES emulator and find some other games I played when I had a machine.
I haven’t yet tried the TV out down to the fact I don’t have an adapter for the S-Video end of the GP2X cable.
There are a couple of annoyances I have with the GP2X. Firstly, it doesn’t reliably detect my expansion card. This may be because I’m using the 64MB RS-MMC (with adapter, before you ask) that came with my Nokia 6630 (which I had replaced with a 512MB), but I have tried it with a 1GB Viking SD that I normally use in my Dell Axim, and the same thing happens; either anything on the card isn’t viewable or it stalls on boot.
Secondly, the AC adapter input is on the right-hand side, right where you would normally hold the unit to get to the action button with your right thumb. It’s not unusable, but the plug and cable can get in the way.
Finally, the device isn’t detected correctly in Windows when plugged into a USB port. This means I have to remove the card and use a reader when transferring data. However, surprise surprise, it works perfectly in my install of SuSE.
Is it worth the money? Yeah. Is it for everyone? No.
technorati tags: gp2x
