You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/elgato-stream-deck-xl.1688/

Productivity is my passion. I’m the kind of person to put a lot of energy into saving energy down the line. Whether it be by creating applications to streamline trivial tasks or finding shortcuts to established processes, there’s always something satisfying about knowing you didn’t do everything you had to do to get the results you want. Enter Elgato with their range of Stream Decks. A panel of custom buttons with assignable icons to do whatever you might need? What’s the drawback?

The Stream Deck XL I have is the most expensive of the family, featuring 32 buttons in an eight by four grid. Coming with a solidly built and aesthetically pleasing stand, as well as a really premium-feeling USB C cable, you have almost everything you need right out of the box. All you’re missing is the free software to be on your merry way. Once downloaded, you’re greeted with a solitary animated button in the middle of the console inviting you to play. Pressing it takes you to Elgato’s support site should you want the guidance, which is a really cute idea. Having said that, I decided to dive right in instead.

At its core, the software is about as simple as it can be. You get a display showing the currently connected device and its live layout. With the toolbar to the side, you drag and drop buttons into place, and watch them magically appear on the Stream Deck itself. From here, you can configure the type of button you’ve placed down, as well as add a custom title and icon. It’s brilliantly intuitive. The software comes with a huge variety of useful button presets, ranging from media keys, to opening a website or application, to specific utility in apps like OBS. It’s the kind of device where your only limitation realistically is your imagination, as cheesy as that might sound. With 32 buttons to assign, I must admit I struggled a bit. On my standard layout, I have volume controls and media buttons. As well as those, I created a few batch files to power off and restart my PC, which are then opened via a button press. I even managed to create a button to enable and disable my external GPU, since my laptop has issues in recognising it unless it’s disabled on shutdown and enabled on boot via Device Manager. Again this was a simple affair of creating a few batch files and this time using a switch button which changes when pressed. This marvellous button saves me around 20 seconds whenever I start up my laptop, something I find myself constantly grateful for.

Beyond this, I started running out of ideas, at least for a universal layout. I created shortcuts to my most commonly used games, and I made a folder of anime to take me to the page on Funimation since I have a significant dislike for browsing the site. It can be frustrating at times to have so much power at your fingertips but not know where best to direct it. I’m certain my current layout won’t be final, and as I pick up on more small acts of timewasting, that I’ll create more buttons to streamline them. Though a panel of 32 buttons already sounds like a lot, you’re really not limited to this at all. You can create folders of buttons, which is how I keep my anime to one side, but you can also have different profiles entirely that will open with an application. For Visual Studio, OBS, Photoshop, all these apps with a myriad of shortcuts and odd keypresses, all can be organised in an easy to view way. My favourite profile was actually one I made for Gtuner, the companion app for the Titan Two. For those unaware, the Titan Two is a fancy adapter for consoles that lets you use pretty much any controller out there. More than that though, it enables you to write scripts, and even pass through inputs from your PC. You see where this is going?

With a basic panel of keyboard input buttons, I suddenly have a controller for the Switch. Though this may not exactly be what the Stream Deck is made for, I was interested to see exactly how far I could take it in its versatility. I went to the extreme end of the spectrum and decided to try Project Diva, with expectedly middling results. The buttons are satisfying to press and give a pleasant enough thud when hit, but they aren’t designed to be hit quickly over and over again. It worked, but not well. I can see there being great utility in games as an accessibility controller, or just something you assign a limited range of buttons to when playing a game to get a young child involved without giving them too much control. As long as the actions you’re doing aren’t relying on being hit multiple times in a second, it stands up surprisingly well. The most obvious gaming use case that comes to mind is as a visual skill bar for an MMO, especially with how daunting it can be at first to have so many options bound to a keyboard with limited feedback. 

One aspect of the device I really do love is the ability to try before you buy in a genuinely meaningful sense by downloading the Stream Deck mobile app. Though it is a subscription service at £2.59 a month or £22.99 a year if you want to keep using it, the 30 day free trial gives you more than enough time to try everything out. Functionally it’s identical to having the regular 15 button Stream Deck. You use the software the same to assign buttons, and you get a nice bit of haptic feedback when you hit them. Though a subscription service may not be ideal for everybody, it does also provide an affordable entry point to the utility for those interested, but without the money to actually buy one. With the regular Stream Deck being sold for £140, you could get just over six years use out of the mobile app for the same price. I’d certainly say this route isn’t for everybody, but for those interested in the physical units, there really is no drawback to trying it out first.

All in all, the Stream Deck is a brilliantly capable piece of kit that, despite its name, delivers for more than just streamers. If you’re short a few buttons in a game, if you’re interested in savings seconds or minutes on trivial actions, if you want a panel of bookmarks and applications, you’ll find the Stream Deck useful. It’s like having another screen dedicated to productivity, and I am in love with it. For those not needing of the larger XL model or unable to justify £230 on such a device, both the regular and mini models come in at significantly cheaper price points, at £140 and £80 respectively. Though the smallest model only sports six buttons, I can see this being enough for some, especially when paired with the ability to add folders and switches to make best use of the available screen space. 

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/remarkable-2.1687/

I love writing, I love recording, I love documenting. For years I’ve bought fancy pens and equally fancy notebooks for the joy of writing in them, but they’re not all I’ve sought out. For just as long, I’ve looked for a decent way to write digitally. I’ve gone through graphics tablets, styluses, and even the bizarrely unique Yoga Book, but it never quite felt right. Historically for me, these devices become more a pain than a joy given enough time, and one by one they fall back into the obscurity they once crept out from. The reMarkable 2 is different, for me at least.

For those not in the know, reMarkable is a brand that’s been around for a good few years now. Attempting to offer a tablet to replace paper in both utility and feel, they first released the reMarkable in 2017 to middling reception. Though the idea was solid, it was let down by latency, cost, and to some extent, even its build quality. Roll on recent years and they’re back in business with a sleek new design, but has enough changed to warrant the still-premium price tag?

Out of the box, the reMarkable 2 is sleek. Aesthetically, I’d compare it to a large Kindle Oasis minus the bezel on the back, with a similarly asymmetrical design not dissimilar to that of a notebook. Moving away from the white plastic of its predecessor, the reMarkable 2 opts for a more premium feel, complete with an aluminium frame and slightly grey body. Both the back and front have a real papery vibe, which is fitting given its purpose. On the top and bottom of the spine, you can find the power button and USB C port respectively. The rest of the device remains free of buttons, or anything else for that matter. Given the asymmetric design on the left, it would have been nice to see the bottom bezel match the top to maintain some kind of aesthetic symmetry, but that’s my only real criticism here. As advertised, the tablet is incredibly thin, being just under half a centimetre thick. For its £399 price point, you want the device to look nice and feel durable; the reMarkable 2 checks both these boxes.

Of course, the tablet itself is unlikely to be the only thing you’re buying here. After all, how can you write on a paper tablet without a pen of sorts? While, as I mentioned, the tablet costs £399, it doesn’t actually come with a Marker, the tablet’s titular stylus. Instead, you’re required to build yourself a bundle on buying the device. Sure, you can buy the tablet alone, but you won’t really be able to do much with it outside of being an oversized eReader. For the basic Marker, you’re looking at £49, and for the more expensive Marker Plus, you’re looking at £99. But that’s not all! To protect your lovely new device, you’ll probably want a case. Is this included in the £399 retail price? It is not. The cheapest case, essentially a sleeve to keep the tablet in while you’re not using it, comes in at £69. Moving onto the book folio cases, these vary between £99 and £149 depending on the material you choose to go with. With these in mind, the real cost of the reMarkable 2 comes in at somewhere between £517 and £647 depending on your choices.

Turning on the tablet for the first time, there isn’t much in the way of fanfare. You create an account for reMarkable’s free cloud storage service, and you’re let out on your merry way. The overall experience is brilliantly intuitive. After having a scribble for a few minutes, my mum wanted to try it for herself. I passed it to her, and she just started writing. She flicked the screen from right to left to turn the page, and she even tried her experienced hand with the calligraphy pen to really quite pleasant results. There’s a reasonable assortment of templates for you to write on, varying from lines, to grids, to sheet music, and even a few daily planners. While you can’t yet create custom templates to import, you are able to read and write on both PDF and EPUB format documents, so you could easily create your own planner this way and fill it in like any other page on the device.

Along the left side of the screen by the spine, you have the toolbar. This contains a few helpful things like your choice of pen, your line thickness, eraser tools, selection tools, zoom, and the ability to undo and redo. Most of this is fairly self-explanatory, and in practice I found it just as easy to use. The menus never go more than one or two levels deep so you find things are right there when you need them, and when you don’t, you can just hide the toolbar entirely. There’s a few nice features lurking in this toolbar, one of my favourites being the ability to create and use layers as you might in a modern image editor. Though the larger use here may be artists using the device as a sketchpad, I did find some pleasant utility in being able to annotate my scrawlings without having to desecrate the runes directly. You can also export pages or even full notebooks as SVG files, allowing you to retain these layers should you want to continue your work on a PC. When it comes to export features, you can even convert your writing to text, with surprisingly positive results.

To test the handwriting to text functionality, I figured the easiest way would be to write out this paragraph by hand, and see how the software copes. Now it’s worth saying my handwriting isn’t exactly neat, nor is it really that consistent. I’d say it’s somewhat middle of the road all things considered, so should prove at least a modest challenge. I can’t say it’s perfect, but based on the few times I have used this feature, I can say it really isn’t bad.

You can see the above paragraph written on the reMarkable 2, and the email I sent with it converted to text. Notice something? It got it perfectly. Now it’s not to say that it is perfect, as I mentioned above. In the few times I’ve tried this, I’ve had the gist of what I’m writing communicated well, with it struggling in particular with things that aren’t real words more than anything. When writing the notes out for my recent K101+ review, the reMarkable 2 struggled consistently to translate my writing of “K101+”. This would largely be down to my Ks looking like Hs, but also likely because it couldn’t rationalise it to any kind of actual word. As somebody who has random spurts of inspiration before bed or on the train to work, it’s great to know I can write out my thoughts and have this feature turn it into legible text at worst with the odd word wrong. Where I am a little disappointed is the lack of integration in the reMarkable PC app. Though you can view your notebooks and pages in full, you’re only able to use the writing to text feature from the device itself, which is then sent as an email. It’s all just a bit convoluted for what could be such a simple and convenient process.

The eReader capabilities of the device are fairly standard, with it handling EPUB and PDF files as mentioned earlier. I’ve had a nice time reading The Night is Short, Walk On Girl on the large screen. Having said that, I doubt it’ll be replacing my Kindle Oasis as my primary reading device. With the reMarkable 2, I would say I read on it as a convenience. I take it with me to work, so I read on the train and on breaks. While I’m at home though, I have every device at my fingertips without having to justify its space in my bag. There’s no fancy features on offer here. You can’t highlight words for their definition, you can’t save your favourite bits, nothing like that. You can however write on the pages as if they were any other page on the device though, which could be handy for those needing to annotate and distribute documents as a part of their job. I’d be really interested to see a smaller and cheaper device with a larger focus on students. I’d have loved something like this through my GCSEs as I worked through Of Mice and Men and An Inspector Calls. I really do think a more affordable A5 model would do well in this respect.

The tablet aside, I think it’s time we looked at the Marker and Marker Plus to dissect exactly what you’re buying for £49 and £99 respectively. At their core, these are both unpowered stylus pens and both come with nine additional tips. I assume any Wacom pen would work, since my Yoga Book’s stylus had no issues writing on the screen, but it didn’t really compare to the feeling of writing with the Markers. It’s irritating difficult to put into words beyond “wow it’s like real paper!”, and as somebody reading I can completely understand how difficult it is to contextualise that beyond it sounding like a stoic repetition of an advert. In an attempt to be a little more descriptive, it’s not quite the same as the paper feel they so clearly strive for; it’s something entirely its own. Despite being an eInk screen, I’m really impressed to see such low latency between writing on the screen and it showing up. It all just feels natural. It’s a real shame the device isn’t out in stores to try, because that really is the moment where you realise it is or isn’t for you. While reMarkable do offer a 30 day satisfaction guarantee, I understand the difficulty for many in putting down the money in the first place.

When it comes to comparing the two Markers, there’s only one functional difference: the Marker Plus features an eraser on the top. I didn’t think much of it at first, and with reMarkable sending both Markers for this review, I can say the writing experience is identical. The more I used the Marker Plus though, the more I found myself making those small and quick alterations enabled by the eraser. Sure you can go into the menu and select the eraser, but the Marker Plus goes that one step further in aiding the overall intuitiveness I love about the device. Both Markers can be mounted to the side of the tablet via magnets, and I’ve found they hold really quite well. I’ve walked around an office with the reMarkable 2 in hand with the confidence the Marker won’t randomly come loose.

Looking to the folio cases, reMarkable again provided the cheaper sleeve, as well as the more expensive brown leather book folio. It’s worth saying there’s a grey polymer book folio that sits between the two I have on hand too, coming in at £99. You can think of this option as having the material of the sleeve, while retaining the more functional book design. Of the two cases I have, I can say I have never used the sleeve outside of the initial box opening and testing. There’s nothing really wrong with it, it’s just the book folio suits my needs far better. The reMarkable 2 attaches to the book folio securely using magnets, with the case aptly protecting the screen without adding much in the way of bulk. I really love it, but it is a little frustrating the device doesn’t unlock by opening the case. It’s a small grievance, but when you’re spending upwards of £600 on a device so focused on doing one thing, you want it to pull out all the stops to make that one thing as seamless as possible. Sure it’s just pressing one button after opening the case, but it’s one button press that feels out of place.

The reMarkable 2 is a device I adore, and it’s a device I can see others loving too. Having said that, it’s the kind of thing where you need really need to know what you’re buying to avoid being disappointed. When talking with reMarkable’s PR, they quite bluntly recommended an iPad for those looking for a device that can do everything, and frankly, I agree with them. You have two similarly priced devices where one does one thing magnificently, and the other does a spectrum of things well. If you want something to keep you focused, something without distraction, and something that feels just as much a joy to write on as paper, the reMarkable 2 is unmatched. 

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/revo-k101-plus.1680/

The GBA is a beloved console not only for myself, but for our forum itself. Serving as my go-to console for the vast majority of my childhood, it’s blessed me with fond memories across many years. Roll on 2021 and people wanting to re-experience this joy find themselves with a dilemma–how exactly do you play? Do you cramp your hands for the square clamshell that is the SP? Do you put a backlight in your original console? Or do you just throw authenticity to the wind and resort to emulation? There is another way: the clone console. And this is exactly what I’m checking out today with the Revo K101 Plus.

Getting straight into the box, we have a delightfully clean design, sporting everything you’ll need to get started:

• The K101+ console
• K-Card custom “flashcard”
• A mini USB to USB-A cable
• A 2.5mm AV cable
• A screen protector
• A screwdriver (for the battery compartment)

That’s all, and that’s all you really need to get going out of the gate. Starting with the console itself, I was shocked by the quality. With clone consoles and emulation devices, I’ve come to expect something cheap with a horrid screen and poor software; think back to the early BittBoys and you’ll understand my general apprehension. Having said that, I’m in love with this particular design. Recreating the Famicom design of the limited edition Gameboy Micro, it feels like a weird blend of that, and the bottom half of a DS Lite. The DS Lite comparison goes a bit further with the inclusion of the X and Y buttons, but we’ll go into more detail on those later. The screen clocks in at a reasonable three inches, but doesn’t match the GBA’s aspect ratio, going with the more common 4:3. It’s bright with decent viewing angles, and I’ve had no issues playing it in a variety of differently lit environments. The buttons are a joy to press, and the L and R buttons have some of the most satisfying clicks I’ve found in a while. The point of usual contention is the D-Pad, and while I wasn’t all too fond of it out of the gate, it’s definitely not bad. While it’s possible to push it inwards from the centre and hit several inputs together, in practice I found it worked fine.

Along the top of the K101+, you have two ports and a button. The button lets you configure the screen brightness and, if held while pressing another button, will let you switch the screen display between 4:3, 3:2 with bars along the top and bottom, and pixel-perfect. I’ve kept it to the more traditional 3:2 myself, but for people who perhaps didn’t grow up with these games, the 4:3 aspect ratio generally doesn’t look too bad, and being able to fill the screen is nice. Of the two ports, one is a mini USB for charging the system, and the other supports link cables for connecting with other K101+ and GBA owners. I did manage to test this briefly with a third party cable I had lying around, and had no issues trading between an official system and the K101+. It’s just a shame the port is set in the system without the holes for the wireless adapter or GameCube link cable to clip into. It would’ve been great to try the unit out with these, but I just couldn’t bring myself to dismember my peripherals on such a whim. Other minor things of note on the unit include a volume rocker on the right of the console, a power button on the left, and on the bottom next to the cartridge slot, a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Moving on from the unit itself, I find the K-Card particularly interesting. Not quite a flashcard in itself and not functioning on official hardware, it serves more like a micro SD adapter for the system, allowing you to access the firmware settings. You can naturally play GBA backups too, and there are a great deal of features improve the experience when compared to a standard console, or even standard cartridges on the K101+. The most interesting of these improvements come in the form of cheat support, including a handy menu that can be loaded in-game to toggle cheats on and off. It reminds me more of DS flashcards and how they’d operate. The K-Cart also supports RTC, which can again be toggled on and off, with the option to set the current date and time. Being able to change these settings on the fly makes things like berry growing in the Hoenn Pokemon games trivial, and it’s a really nice inclusion. Really, my faults with the card are skin-deep. Functionally it’s hard to fault, but using it just doesn’t feel like using a GBA. It feels like a clone console, and I just can’t bring myself to be fond of that. Fortunately, the device has no issues handling both legitimate cartridges and other flashcards, the EverDrive-GBA X5 Mini being my card of choice. It’s also worth noting that it’s the K-Card you need to use to have any of your screen settings save, so even if you’re in a similar boat to me, it’s something worth keeping around.

I’ll briefly touch on another feature of the K-Card: emulation. I’m only briefly touching on it because it’s a novelty, and not something you should be picking up the K101+ for. Officially, the device supports GB, GBC, Sega Master System, Game Gear, NES, and PC Engine. I would say using Goomba for your GB/C games is a better pick, and to abandon the idea of playing the other systems on the K101+. There are better consoles for this, so get them instead. With the lacklustre emulation in mind, it stands as a real shame to me that the X and Y buttons can’t be remapped. There would have been a real saving grace here if you were able to set Y to be select and X to be start to mimic the more modern Pokemon games, just as a quick example. As it stands though, you’re stuck with Y being L, and X being R.

The biggest disappointment I’ve found with the K101+ is the lack of HDMI output. Instead of a mini or micro HDMI port, the device opts for the frankly sad 2.5mm AV option. I will concede it works fine when paired with something like a RetroTINK-2X, but the quality at best is on par with the GameCube’s Game Boy Player. I’ve included a bit of recorded footage to give you an idea of how this looks at its best. Without some kind of upscaler though, you’ll be struggling for both quality and compatibility with modern TVs.

Looking at compatibility, I’ve struggled to find any faults. Between frequently using my EverDrive for actual play, and the K-Card for testing, everything I’ve pitted against the unit has come up rosy. Even my fake cartridge of Sims Bustin’ Out ran without issue. I’m not sure if I was expecting any particular problem with fake games, but it’s nice to see it running fine all the same. I don’t really see much point in listing random games I’ve tested when I’ve faced no issues so if you want me to try a particular game, let me know in the replies and I can give them a shot.

Frankly, the K101+ is an incredible piece of kit that I didn’t expect to like. It’s become my go-to for anything GBA, and I expect it will be for the foreseeable future. While its additional features feel a little shoehorned for the sake of advertising, the core functionality is strong enough that it stands tall anyway.