Dingoo A320

[Demon Cleaner]

Ok, so far so good, time for a little half way through review.

I like this console a lot, I even convinced 3 of my collegues here at work, and they also ordered one, and I ordered another one, this time a black one.

I also ordered now a 16GB micro SD card (previously using an 8GB), because the amount of games I put onto it, is huge. I would say 8GB is far enough, as the internal memory is already 4GB, making it 12GB together, but if you're like me, you want every single ROM installed to it

The Dingoo uses mini SD cards, but as it's difficult to buy bigger ones, you should buy a normal micro SD with a mini SD adapter, fits perfectly. And with the buy of the micro SD cards nowadays often come the fifferent adapters anyway.

The first thing I did was installing a dual boot application to be able to put Dingux, Linux port for Dingoo, on it, to be able to install all kinds of emulators. This works fine without any problems, and after you get whole packages to install to it with already installed games, applications, ports, emulators... These packages are updated regularly, so you don't even have to install individual stuff over and over again. Btw, to install Dingux, you need an SD card, doesn't install to the internal memory.

Everything is updated via USB over the PC, and when you connect it, the PC shows you 2 partitions, the internal memory, and the external, meaning SD card, memory. I named the first one Dingoo and the second one Dingux, so you can easily hold apart, which partition has which filesystem.

The hardware of the Dingoo is really good, doesn't feel cheap, and the controls are also very well placed, ok, it has a bit of a stolen design look, but who cares as long it's good?

Ok, now about emulators from the Dingoo side, meaning Dingoo native emulators.

On the Dingoo come several emulators pre-installed, which are:

- CPS1 (Capcom Play System 1)
- CPS2 (Capcom Play System)
- NeoGeo
- GBA
- NES
- SNES
- SEGA Megadrive (Genesis)

These emulators work very good. Unfortunately they won't get any updates from the Dingoo team, but you can use the normal emulators, which can be installed to your Dingux system.

The CPS2 games have to be in .cp2 format and the NeoGeo games have to be in .mvs format though. This is not a big problem, as there are converters for both, which convert the .zip file into the needed format. Only downside is that the converted file is bigger than the zipped, obviously. Only remedy to this is to use the Final Burn Alpha emulator in Dingux, which supports zipped files, but doesn't yet play all of them, only the smaller ones.

The games are running at full speed, you can see that if you go to YouTube and search for Dingoo videos, they show how f.ex. Street Fighter II runs at full speed on this little machine. You have all the menus known from MAME or such, like button configuration, or even dipswitches.

The NES emulation is pretty good too, full speed and easy to use. Notice that all the native emulators work similar, the use the same buttons and options for every emulator, which helps when switching emulators a lot. So far I shrinked my whole NES set to 1826 games, everything included, no double files. The emulator doesn't support zipped files.

(As the ROM sets are always huge, and contain most of the games multiple times, different versions, trained, alternates, betas, previews, hacks...), I had to shrink it to the minimum of size, but still containing every single game. I did that with every set so far, you know, spare space is precious).

Sega Megadrive emulation is good too, perhaps not running at 100%, and had screen tearing with most of the games. But lately came a fix for the tearing and it works better. And if it's too slow for someone, you still can use frameskip. So far for Sega Megadrive I have installed 855 games. And again, this emulator doesn't support zipped files.

Then I also run the SNES emulator, which works fine with some games, but is rather slow when it comes to most games. Picodrive is the emulator to use on the Dingux side, because this one will get updated more often. The games I tested worked fine so far though. For SNES I have 845 games installed, and as usual, not zipped files supported.

Last there's still the GBA emulator, which works like a charm. I didn't put my games yet, because I don't have the space on the Dingoo partition, I have to put them on the external SD card, but I don't have my 16GB card yet, and the set is almost 6GB big, containing 798 files, and as you guess, .zip isn't supported.

The Dingoo has also some games pre-installed, which are normal small gamess like you also find on the GP2X, meaning official Dingoo games. Whilst not many and not overwhelming, there's 7 Days, which is in 3D and kinda Silent Hill game setting, and also pretty good.

Also tested were, MP3 player, great, flash player, great, video player, great, photo browser, great, and as you perhaps know, you can plug it to your TV, which seems to work fine, but I didn't test this yet.

Now let's go to the Dingux side. Switching the Dingoo off, then on again when holding the select button, takes you to the Dingux, if it is installed of course.

There you have also games installed, and also ports of f.ex. Doom, Duke3D, Heretic, Hexen, Rise of the Triad, Spear of Destiny, Wolfenstein 3D, Quake... mainly old 3D shooters.

Here you can also overclock your Dingoo easily by chosing at which speed it should run. Btw, this is alo possible in every emulator.

Coming to the emulators now.

There's ScummVM, I didn't test this one yet, games are really big, and also moving a cursor over the screen with a digital pad isn't the fastest, but I surely will once test it.

Then we have MAME4All, which is the same like on the PSP, it uses an older set, which is 0.37b5. You can still find torrents of it if you do a search. I use this set, and have 2261 games for it. It works perfectly, at least most of the games, but you still can tweak before running the game. And who doesn't like MAME games? Supports zipped files.

There's Final Burn Alpha, which is very new, but already runs some of the CPS1, CPS2 and NeoGeo games. So far I only have few games installed, as most of them I will probably run through the native emulators, as they're faster and support all of the games. Have to see how often this one gets updated. Supports also zipped files.

We have SNES9x, which, as you probably notice, is for SNES. Tested it, working fine, not better imo than the native one, but at least it will get updated from time to time.

Nofrendo is a NES emulator, which is an alternative to the native NES emulator, but which one works fine enough to run most of the games.

Gnuboy is a GBA emulator, but again the native one runs the games just fine, so you have to see for yourself which one you prefer to use. EDIT: Actually it runs only Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, not Game Boy Advance, zipped files are not supported.

SMSPlus is again for several SEGA stuff, I use it mainly to run my Game Gear ROMs, meaning 219 games, which run unfortunately in a small window, the screen isn't used at full resolution.

PicoDrive is a SEGA Megadrive/Genesis/SEGA CD, but I also use the native emulator. It's like with all the other native emulators, it's up to you which one to use, you just have to try which game runs better in which emulator.

GP2Xpectrum is obviously a Spectrum emulator which comes from the GP2X. It runs fine so far, but I didn't test it fully yet. Tested with .dsk, .tzx and .tap files, and they all run perfectly. Supports zipped files.

OpenMSX is an MSX emulator, and although I tested it, but didn't put games yet (only 3), I don't get them running because a cartridge is missing, which is needed to run the emulation. So it boots fine, which takes a lot of time not seen with other emulators, and then says that the cartridge is missing. I have so many, but I don't know which one to use, and where to put it yet. But I guess a faq will bring me further. EDIT: Works fine now, without adding any ROM files, games just run fine.

Hatari is an Atari ST emulator, tested with 2 games, and it works also very good, although I have to go deeper with that one yet. Supports also zipped files.

Stella is the Atari 2600 emulator, and it works just fine, I put 586 games on it, not because they are gems, but because they're very small in size, and obviously if I show someone the console, it has to have as much stuff as possible

For the C64 there's 2 emulators at the moment, Frodo and Vice, which work both fine, but games I tested had some slowdowns, and some work better in Frodo, some better in Vice. But I also have to say that the Dingoo Vice port came out some days ago, and carries version 0.1, so very early stage of emulation. I'm currently shrinking my C64 set (over 40.000 games), to install, but that takes me a lot of time when I want to shrink it to a reasonable amount of games, there's just so many Supports also zipped files.

And finally there's a PC Engine emualtor called uPCE. I installed 103 games to it, and the ones I tested worked very good. I think this one is also very new and still will get updated.

Ok, I still have a lot to do until it is really like I want it to be. But I do everything here at work, where I have to time and patience to do it. But as a final word, I can already say now that I don't regret the 48£ I spend, and I definitely love this handheld, well build, great software and loads of fun. If you want a portable device, which only weighs about some gramms, lasts for 7-8 hours and you're into emulation and retrogaming, just get one, you won't regret.

Happy gaming

[burns flipper]

No Amiga emulator?

[Demon Cleaner]

No Amiga emulator?

Nope. I mentioned that already the C64 emulator struggles sometimes.

Couldn't get Megadrive or NEO-GEO working, it wouldn't recognise the roms I had. Haven't looked into that further.

The NeoGeo ROMs have to be converted into .mvs files, otherwise they don't run.

MegaDrive games have to be in .smd format. If you have .bin files, just rename them, and they will run, no conversion needed.

[Harrison]

Sounds like a great little device from your initial testing and review. Very tempting to buy one, especially at that price, but I then think of the PSP and the fact it can run SNES and Megadrive games perfectly at full speed without problems, and has emulators more all of the systems you mentioned and most work well. So I will probably not bother and stick with the PSP for mobile gaming for now.

[Demon Cleaner]

Ok, but the battery of the Dingoo lasts for 7-8 hours, at that point the PSP already died, just imagine you being in a plane. And how big are the memory cards for the PSP, what's the maximum size? And it's 5 times lighter, you can put it in the front pocket of your jeans, it's like having a mobile phone. I totally agree with you and the PSP, but as a mobile device I think the Dingoo has more advantages, it's really mobile.

Emulators will still be updated, and there's more to come in the future. And for a third of the price of the PSP, you can't go wrong.

How about Frontier on the Dingoo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIVhL...layer_embedded

[Harrison]

That is a good point if you do a lot of travelling. I generally don't so it isn't such a problem. As for battery life, I've managed to get my PSP lasting up to 10 hours on a full charge as I run games and emulation all from memory cards so it isn't draining the battery accessing UMD discs.

I think with the latest custom firmwares you can now use 8GB Memory sticks. At the moment I have a couple of 4GB Memory sticks which can fit a lot of software and roms on them and are more than enough for my current needs.

[Demon Cleaner]

I now added 4170 Spectrum and 445 MSX 1&2 ROMs. There will be hell of a lot of ROMs on that little sucker in the end

[Teho]

Couldn't get Megadrive or NEO-GEO working, it wouldn't recognise the roms I had. Haven't looked into that further.

The NeoGeo ROMs have to be converted into .mvs files, otherwise they don't run.

MegaDrive games have to be in .smd format. If you have .bin files, just rename them, and they will run, no conversion needed.

Yes, I figured this out before I left for that job I've been on the past weeks. I installed only a select few titles I thought I'd actually be playing and took the system with me. Not that I'd have much spare time to use it, but had a couple of hours in the evenings if me and my colleague wasn't doing anything else. Also, was great to pass the time on the plane with it. Played a couple of arcade beat'em-ups, me and my mate passing it between eachother every other credit.

The rooms we had had old 19" CRT TVs in them, with a scart connector on the back. Had to get a longer cable for it, but otherwise hooking the unit up to those TVs worked fine, so spent many an evening playing SNES RPGs before going to bed.

[Demon Cleaner]

The rooms we had had old 19" CRT TVs in them, with a scart connector on the back. Had to get a longer cable for it, but otherwise hooking the unit up to those TVs worked fine, so spent many an evening playing SNES RPGs before going to bed.

Have still to test the TV out yet.

Btw, I got my black Dingoo today, now starting to install Dingux. I will use the 8GB card I still have for this one, won't buy another 16GB, they're still too expensive, got one from eBay, really cheap, for 36€ with shipping. In the shops here in Luxembourg they're still above 50€.

[Tiago]

must read all this post again, but,
Demon, Teho, do you know what is the average price in ebay for Dingoo 320?

i see most of them around 80 pounds, but i can see some at 60 pounds...

what specs should i look for? any significant differences between models?
or are they all the same? all fo them are ok for the ps3 stuff?