The F-200 build quality is actually quite good. I haven't personally handled an F-100, but the only major complaint I have about the F-200 is the rubber port covers, which don't quite go back in properly. Obviously the d-pad is a lot like the original PlayStation pad's and is not ideal, but it's functional enough. If I had known this Pandora was on the horizon, I might have held off on my F-200 purchase, but at the very least it's valuable experience in knowing what I do and don't want in an alternative handheld platform, be it Pandora or Wanga or anything else purported to be coming.

Also, as I pointed out multiple times, I don't like the F-200's battery life. Even with hard-to-find 2800 maH rechargeables, battery life management still needs a lot of improvement, and that's from someone who avoids overclocking whenever possible.

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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director | Armchair Arcade, Inc.

It all comes down to design quality, power consumption and build quality. And these are tough to get right. My 1st edition gp2x fx-100 was badly made - the headphone connector was only soldered to the motherboard and came off the first time I tried to plug in my headphone. The gp32 was build to a high standards with good grade plastics and solid design. The gp2x fx-200 seems to be of similar design standards as my fx-100 is, although it does feature a slightly better thumb pad - which is of course a badly chosen one as it is not a real thumb pad that can be found on the commercial hand-helds.

The Pandora seems to focus on hardware specs, but as it is a system designed by non-commercial users of gp32 and gp2x-fx100/fx200 series it can end up either one of these two directions:
1) designers/users have learned from the bad choices of the GP design team and do a better job instead. Resulting in a near commercial quality product suitable for pleasing main-stream end-users.
2) designers/users have learned from the bad choices of the GP design team and are not able to do a better job because they are not commercial/professional hardware developers, resulting in a similar-to-gp2x experience that can only be truly appreciated by enthusiasts.

I think it is wrong to expect a built quality comparable to other commercial hand-helds out there, but perhaps the Pandora team will come up with solid choices. As far is software support goes, it will probably have similar software available to it as a lot of gp2x/gp32 devvers are into the Pandora as well. Dev boards will probably be distributed to devvers as well - so I wouldn't worry about that too much. But the OS on Pandora is just like on the gp2x a Linux variant what will have all sorts of raw-Linux idiosyncrasies that probably will not make it a mainstream device.

In my opinion this is just another must-have gp32 successors that will probably be not for the mainstream end-user, but will no doubt please a lot of enthusiasts. A must have for portable-emulation of psx-era 3d consoles.
Future reviews of the Pandora will probably be influenced by the reviewers enthusiasm - as they often are part of the enthusiast-group. The same thing happened to the gp32/gp2x and it left some main stream users with a bad experience because they were expecting a too polished end-user-experience. Se be careful!

Editor / Pixelator - Armchair Arcade, Inc.
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