2023 Splurge Log

2023 was a fairly significant year for me, and a busier one. The price of being busy is that I messed around with a lot of stuff but couldn’t be bothered to write up impressions. Half the time I’d tinker with something, list it on eBay, and then feel even less like writing. You can call me busy, you can call me lazy, or I can just say the thing had no highlights and wasn’t worth writing about. But it’s the end of the year, and I don’t want this year’s business spilling into the next. So here’s a summary looking back at what I messed with this year that’s worth mentioning, with some blunt takes and a recommendation ranking thrown in. These are all short notes, no screenshots. Anything that deserves a deeper writeup I’ll do separately.

Pixel 7 Pro

Bought it when I saw Amazon slashing prices. Nobody expected that not long after, my Pixel 6 Pro screen would crack. Was I prescient, or was it fate? Using it feels almost identical to the Pixel 6 Pro — the only real difference is that frame drops in games got a lot better.

Pixel 8 Pro

Jumped on the launch for the flat screen. Blue, discounted, came with a watch, and somehow it didn’t get taxed on arrival. Total win. All I can say is that apart from the vertical screen being nice, it’s somehow worse than the Pixel 7 Pro. Performance doesn’t show any superiority, and the screen DPI was changed, which makes it look really awkward to me. As for performance, the benchmark scores went up, but games run worse than on the Pixel 7 Pro — extremely embarrassing. That mess got fixed with the December update, at least.

Essential Phone

A lot of people don’t get why I bought this. I needed a hotspot I could fire up anywhere to get around the Great Firewall, and also break through my workplace’s restrictions. So an Android phone that can be rooted and set up as a VPN router was the obvious choice. Picked up an “father of Android” on eBay for dirt cheap. It’s obviously a refurb, but the condition is good, it roots fine, and it basically does what I need. Shame the eBay version has no wireless charging.

Unihertz Titan Slim

Bought as a backup after the Pixel 6 Pro died, and I got to properly experience a physical-keyboard phone. And honestly, physical-keyboard phones died for a reason. It’s just brutal to use — the kind of bad you can’t fix no matter what. The phone itself isn’t bad, and the manufacturer put in a lot of thoughtful features, but with the whole world abandoning full keyboards, there’s nothing to be done.

Redmi 10A

Technically not a phone I bought — it’s the on-duty phone at work. But after using it for a week I found it actually has its merits. Battery life is absurdly long. Performance, though, is a “heh.” The build quality isn’t as cheap as I expected, but the weak performance drags down what’s otherwise a decent-looking, decent-feeling device.

Clockwork Pi Devterm

A pure impulse buy. I even 3D-printed a protective cover for it. As a “cyber-retro figurine,” the Devterm has a genuinely fun look and lots of play value, great as a toy, and it draws attention no matter how you use it. I actually did some text editing on it — two blog posts were written on this thing.

But the Devterm’s biggest flaw is that it can’t “sleep.” You can’t imagine how awkward and abstract a portable device that can’t sleep is. You have to boot it every time you use it and shut it down when you’re done, which dooms it to being an ornament. I’ve tried lots of tricks to shorten boot and shutdown times, but it’s still nowhere near as convenient as sleep. The despairing part is that no matter which module you pick — Raspberry Pi or RK3399 — none of them support sleep properly. Maybe I can only hope the future CM5 has better power management.

Sony Walkman ZX707

Bought purely to replace the ZX505, because the 505’s screen is garbage, and the ZX700 series supposedly shares the design of the Gold and Black bricks. So I put it on installments and sold the old one.

The screen is indeed good and the performance is a big step up, but the sound didn’t do much for me. Maybe I’m past the age of being an audiophile. Though thinking about it, “audiophile” isn’t one scam — it’s a bundle of scams. These days I’d rather just listen to more music.

Ayaneo air Plus 1215u

An impulse purchase, a cheap one off eBay. I figured I could play visual novels on it — the handheld is so portable and it’s a low-power CPU, so battery life should be good, right? Wrong. The thing is heavy; at 600g, holding it up to play means it’ll smack you in the face. And battery life is bad because Intel’s uncore power draw is huge — the best you get is under 4 hours.

Ayaneo’s own frontend software is also a pile of crap. Looks shiny, but it’s painful to use, drains more battery, and you can’t turn it off. It’s like being force-fed shit. I got through two games and sold it. The buyer seemed to be buying it for visual novels too. I wish him happy gaming.

Switch OLED

Not much to say. Bought it to play Octopath Traveler II, and didn’t even finish the game.

Microsoft Surface Go 3 i3

Purely to replace my old GPD Pocket 3 and all those Chrome tablets I used to have. I care more about screen color and overall presentation than raw performance. How to put it — apart from the weak performance, everything else is pretty good. Even the battery life everyone complains about beats the bigger-battery Ayaneo air Plus, because the Surface Go 3’s total power draw is kept very low, probably because Microsoft carefully picked lower-power components. Playing visual novels on it gets about 4 hours — that already crushes the bigger-battery handheld. It also works as a small Windows laptop for simple document work and writing, which basically covers my needs.

Microsoft released the Surface Go 4 in the second half of the year. I wanted to upgrade, but it’s too expensive, and given a possible 11-inch Surface Pro next year, I decided to wait.

SteamDeck OLED

A long-awaited upgrade. Bought it the moment it launched and sold my old LCD model.

Worth every penny. Screen upgrade, lower SoC power draw, better cooling — my gaming experience improved a lot. Truly the best x86 handheld out there.

The launch batch still had plenty of build issues. Mine had these problems:

1. Headphone jack hiss. Per a Reddit thread, open it up and put insulating tape on a specific screw.

2. The X button sticks. Again, open it up, find the X button, and sand down the flashing.

3. The old thumbstick caps don’t fit. Awkward. My fix was to force them on, barely usable.

Also, the OLED screen comes in two versions. The 512 version usually uses a Samsung OLED panel; the 1TB and limited editions use BOE panels. Word is BOE’s QC is worse and lots of people got dead pixels, so if you’re buying in China I’d suggest the 512 version — at least the screen is less likely to have problems.

Lenovo Legion Y700 Tablet 2023

The one and only choice for the legendary 8-inch tablet. Bought it to play mobile games, obviously. I personally had no issues — it basically meets all my needs, and the screen is good, way better than the previous generation.

Lots of people complain the system is bad, but for me it’s just a mobile game launcher, so I never even glance at the OS. No problem for me.

Sometimes I want to sell it because I don’t want to play mobile games anymore, but sometimes I want to keep it as a regular tablet.

GPD Micro PC

Picked up a broken one on eBay and fixed it myself — bought parts, swapped the battery and screen, and it came back to life. At first I used it for visual novels, and it’s actually good for that. First, the 720p resolution means most visual novels are pixel-perfect (lol). Second, the total power draw is genuinely low, so even with a small battery you still get about 4 hours. Third, it’s not just for games — it works as a “pocket computer,” the keyboard feels fine, it’s backlit, and the three-button layout for handheld operation is standard. This might be one of GPD’s most successful machines, still on sale today.

But it has flaws. First, the hinge isn’t sturdy — use it long enough and it’ll snap, and only a shell replacement will fix it. Second, the battery has no over-discharge protection — leave it uncharged long enough and the battery dies, and you have to replace it. Third, the screen is stuck on with double-sided tape and falls off easily.

If you’re interested, I don’t recommend buying new — there are plenty of good-condition used ones on eBay for around 1,000. If your budget is low and you want to play visual novels, this is a consideration, at least cheaper than a GPD Win 2.

Remarkable

From that batch of Qingzhou Xiaoxiong stock. I tinkered with it after it arrived and used it as a real e-paper device for two months. My feeling: “fine.” At least reading and handwriting are good. The only stupid thing is the constantly-failing sync — if you don’t pay for the subscription, sync is garbage.

Oh, right, I don’t even know if the cloud service is still garbage after paying.

Handheld RG-Arc

Bought it because the looks and buttons appealed to me, thinking I’d play Saturn or MD games. After it arrived I found the thing is actually abstract.

First, the machine’s performance can’t perfectly emulate the Saturn, even though its shell replicates the Saturn controller. The only thing you can really enjoy on it is MD games.

Which is stupid — like a machine that looks like a PS but can’t run PS games smoothly. The machine itself ends up looking like a clown. The build quality issues are also serious; mine had a stuck joystick out of the box, and the system is bare-bones. Not really recommended.

Analogue Pocket

A handheld that emulates at the FPGA hardware level, though there are also various OpenFPGA emulators.

The biggest draw is the screen, along with all the filters and masks, plus the perfect speaker and sound. That alone makes it the top-tier retro handheld.

But the downside is clear: it’s only good for emulating GBA, MD, NEOGEO, FC, and the like. Don’t even think about the higher-end stuff.

Playdate

A very unusual handheld with a black-and-white screen that has a decent refresh rate, no backlight, and a crank as an input method.

The device is tiny and has its own exclusive game ecosystem — meaning the games on it are “exclusive.”

Unfortunately the games aren’t much fun. Most are just casual little games. Considering the hefty price, I think this thing is more of a “cyber curio.”

GPD Win mini

I once swore I’d never buy another GPD machine, but I broke that vow for this one. After it arrived, all I can say is it’s great.

The biggest feature is how light it is. It also uses GPD’s best screen ever — high refresh rate, wide color gamut, no color shift.

Honestly, the screen alone is enough to satisfy me, and the rest of the build didn’t have any major disasters, which makes me even happier.

AMD CPU plus a big battery means visual novels run for a comfortable 7 hours. Satisfaction plus satisfaction.

H3C Book Pro 14 G2

An H3C laptop. Not mine — work issued it for CTF competitions.

In my view the biggest advantage is dual RAM slots and dual 2280 SSD slots, plus an i7-1360p…

Nothing else stands out, and the 1360p’s performance didn’t exactly blow me away, which indirectly killed my plan to buy a new laptop this year. If I really need more performance, I might just grab a Mechrevo and make do.

Pinebuds + Pinetime + Pinepencil

A series of e-waste from Pine64. The only one worth it is probably the Pinebuds. The earbuds are interesting, battery life is super long, but they disconnect easily.

Sound quality is a surprise — the higher the ANC level, the better the sound…

Other similar products are the exact opposite. Truly abstract.

Summary:

There’s plenty more splurging this year I didn’t list. Some I only received on the last day of 2023 (pre-ordered half a year ago!) and haven’t even opened, so I couldn’t be bothered to write them up.

Of what I did list, here are my three most satisfying products of the year:

First up is the SteamDeck OLED. It basically solves all my gaming needs. The newest model supports HDR and even beats the desktop experience. Fixing the battery life makes it far more competitive.

Second is the GPD Win Mini. I don’t usually recommend GPD products, but this is a real exception. Everyone knows the biggest problem is cooling, but if you’re not playing the latest AAA games, this is probably the best product GPD has ever made.

Then the phone: Pixel 8 Pro. Apart from weak performance, there’s basically nothing wrong with it, and the performance caveat is just that it can’t run Genshin. If you just want the pure Google experience, it’s worth it. Finally, I still want to say: curved screens are garbage.