I’ve been playing fewer galgames lately, but that doesn’t mean I’ve left the scene — I’ve just played a bunch of stuff and haven’t felt like writing about any of it. And since that last post, I’ve upgraded my “gal machine” too: swapped it out for a GPD Win Mini, which I’ve been using ever since. This little thing is honestly better than I expected. As a “gal game player,” I can’t find anything more suitable right now. I’ve said before that if I ever bought another GPD product I’d eat shit, but this little guy has somehow become GPD’s best product to date, and the “gal machine” I’d recommend most. So, well — time to eat.

I actually got this thing back in December, having joined the whole pre-order process, and later got kicked out of the Discord group by GPD’s marketing guy “Old Zhu” (real name Zhu Kaihui, overseas ID: Kendyzhu). I was so pissed off at the time I thought about making a video to fire back, because this asshole is just that repulsive, and he’s even cultivated some asshole lackeys. But after half a year of learning about other manufacturers (AYN, AYA, Anbernic) and seeing the state of the whole industry, I figure Zhu Kaihui might not even be the biggest asshole out there. Thought about it and let it go. So here I’ll just briefly go over the pros and cons of this product, plus my personal views on GPD, including some thoughts and advice on the so-called “Win handheld” market as a whole. Around September 2021, GPD revealed design sketches of the next Pocket series product, the Pocket 3. Along with their constipation-like “leaks,” the product’s appearance became clearer and clearer — basically an enhanced GPD Micro PC with better performance, a bigger screen, a new manufacturing process, and a rotating screen.

For the whole of last year my eroge machine was the Chuwi Minibook. It’s got plenty of small problems, but I thought it was fine — good enough for playing games. Then at the start of this year I lost my laptop bag, and the Chuwi Minibook went with it, so I started thinking about getting a new machine. My requirements were pretty clear by then: A good screen. The Chuwi Minibook uses PWM dimming, which is a pain over long sessions. Good battery life. A galgame machine doesn’t need much power, but the battery has to be biiiig. Enough cooling. The Chuwi Minibook got scorching hot when I ran it, and the fan sounded like a plane taking off. Expandable storage, at least NVMe. 16GB of RAM. I like leaving a ton of stuff open in the background. USB-C for docks and charging. After shopping around, the only thing that fit was the GPD P2 MAX, so I grabbed one on Taobao.

Why I bought it: I’ve always used a Surface Pro 4 as my “secondary machine.” The reason is simple: I need Windows, especially for playing Galgame. Unfortunately my Surface Pro 4 later went to my wife, so I no longer had a Windows machine. I started thinking about getting a new one, and that’s when I saw the Chuwi Minibook project on Indiegogo. I was hooked instantly. I compared it against other similar products, including the GPD Pocket 2 MAX and the One-Netbook, and each had its merits, but the Chuwi Minibook had these highlights: Supports Yoga-style tablet flipping Front camera quality better than the GPD Pocket 2 MAX User-replaceable/expandable NVMe SSD The Chuwi Minibook has the biggest keyboard buttons (typing is no problem) Internals are closer to a real laptop, with metal shielding — less of the knockoff feel than GPD and the like Cheap, cheap, cheap! The One-Netbook with the same specs as the Chuwi Minibook costs more, GPD isn’t cheaper than Chuwi, and it doesn’t support Yoga mode either Keyboard backlight, which GPD doesn’t have Pressure-sensitive stylus support, which GPD doesn’t have I figured the Chuwi was the most well-rounded overall and fit my needs well, so I joined the crowdfunding campaign and picked the 16GB RAM / 8100Y version. The campaign ended in August, with a few free spec upgrades along the way, plus a stylus and an EVA hard shell case thrown in. It didn’t arrive until October, though. As everyone knows, Chuwi is a Shenzhen shanzhai factory, so I didn’t have to wait for an international package like the other foreigners on Indiegogo. Mine came by SF Express. But that was only the start of a whole saga.

Obviously I’m a handheld nut, and my love for handhelds outweighs any other kind of console gaming. In some ways I even use the Surface Pro 4 as a handheld, even though it’s not remotely “handheld” sized. A while back I got my hands on the GPD Pocket. It’s great in every way except that gaming on it is a hassle — compared to the GPD Win it has no built-in gamepad buttons, and the default keyboard is just painful. So pairing it with an 8BitDo portable gamepad does the trick.

The GPD Pocket is the follow-up to the GPD win. There were a few things I wasn’t happy about with the GPD Win: The screen was awful. After finishing Baldr Heart on it I felt like I was going blind. Bad cooling, which is why so many people modded theirs. I didn’t want to bother. Cheap build. All plastic, and the construction was just passable — usable, nothing more. The keyboard was useless. That thing was on the level of calculator buttons… worse than a Wenquxing electronic dictionary. So I backed the GPD Pocket crowdfunding campaign… and once it arrived, plenty of surprises.