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blog/anbernic-win600-first-impressions.markdown
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blog/anbernic-win600-first-impressions.markdown
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---
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title: "Anbernic Win600 First Impressions"
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date: 2022-07-14
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series: reviews
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---
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Right now PC gaming is largely a monopoly centered around Microsoft Windows.
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Many PC games only support Windows and a large fraction of them use technical
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means to prevent gamers on other platforms from playing those games. In 2021,
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Valve introduced the [Steam Deck](https://www.steamdeck.com/en/) as an
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alternative to that monopoly. There's always been a small, underground market
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for handheld gaming PCs that let you play PC games on the go, but it's always
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been a very niche market dominated by a few big players that charge a lot of
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money relative to the game experience they deliver. The Steam Deck radically
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changed this equation and it's still on backorder to this day. This has made
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other manufacturers take notice and one of them was Anbernic.
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[Anbernic](https://anbernic.com/) is a company that specializes in making retro
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emulation handheld gaming consoles. Recently they released their
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[Win600](https://anbernic.com/products/new-anbernic-win600) handheld. It has a
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Radeon Silver 3020e or a Radeon Silver 3050e and today I am going to give you my
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first impressions of it. I have the 3050e version.
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<xeblog-conv name="Mara" mood="happy">A review of the Steam Deck is coming up
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soon!</xeblog-conv>
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One of the real standout features of this device is that Anbernic has been
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working with Valve to allow people to run SteamOS on it! This makes us all one
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step closer to having a viable competitor to Windows for gaming. SteamOS is
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fantastic and has revolutionized gaming on Linux. It's good to see it coming to
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more devices.
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## Out of the box
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I ordered my Win600 about 3 hours after sales opened. It arrived in a week and
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came in one of those china-spec packages made out of insulation. If you've ever
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ordered things from AliExpress you know what I'm talking about. It's just a
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solid mass of insulation.
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[](https://cdn.xeiaso.net/file/christine-static/img/FXozAEjUsAQEg9d.jpeg)
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The unboxing experience was pretty great. The console came with:
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* The console
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* A box containing the charger and cable
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* A slip of paper telling you how to set up windows without a wifi connection
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* A screen protector and cleaning cloth (my screen protector was broken in the
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box, so much for all that insulation lol)
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* A user manual that points out obvious things about your device
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One of the weirder things about this device is the mouse/gamepad slider on the
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side. It changes the USB devices on the system and makes the gamepad either act
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like an xinput joypad or a mouse and keyboard. The mouse and keyboard controls
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are strange. Here are the controls I have discovered so far:
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* R1 is right click
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* L1 is left click
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* A is enter
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* The right stick very slowly skitters the mouse around the screen
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* The left stick is a super aggressive scroll wheel
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Figuring out these controls on the fly without any help from the manual meant
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that I had taken long enough in the setup screen that [Cortana started to pipe
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up](https://youtu.be/yn6bSm9HXFg) and guided me through the setup process. This
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was not fun. I had to connect an external keyboard to finish setup.
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<xeblog-conv name="Cadey" mood="coffee">This is probably not Anbernic's fault.
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Windows is NOT made for smaller devices like this and oh god it
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shows.</xeblog-conv>
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## Windows 10 "fun"
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There is also a keyboard button on the side. When you are using windows this
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button summons a soft keyboard. Not the nice to use modern soft keyboard though,
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the legacy terrible soft keyboard that Microsoft has had for forever and never
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really updated. Using it is grating, like rubbing sandpaper all over your hands.
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This made entering in my Wi-Fi password an adventure. It took my husband and I
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15 minutes to get the device to connect to Wi-Fi. 15 minutes to connect to
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Wi-Fi.
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Once it was connected to Wi-Fi, I tried to update the system to the latest
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version of windows. The settings update crashed. Windows Update's service also
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crashed. Windows Update also randomly got stuck trying to start the installation
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process for updates. Once updates worked and finished installing, I rebooted.
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I tried to clean up the taskbar by disabling all of the random icons that
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product managers at Microsoft want you to see. The Cortana button was stuck on
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and I was unable to disable it. Trying to hide the Windows meet icon crashed
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explorer.exe. I don't know what part of this is Windows going out of its way to
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mess with me (I'm cursed) and what part of it is Windows really not being
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optimized for this hardware in any sense of the way.
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Windows is really painful on this device. It's obvious that Windows was not made
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with this device in mind. There are buttons to hack around this (but not as far
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as the task manager button I've seen on other handhelds), but overall trying to
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use Windows with a game console is like trying to saw a log with a pencil
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sharpener. It's just the wrong tool for the job. Sure you _can_ do it, but _can_
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and _should_ are different words in English.
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Another weird thing about Windows on this device is that the screen only reports
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a single display mode: 1280x720. It has no support for lower resolutions to run
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older games that only work on those lower resolutions. In most cases this will
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be not an issue, but if you want to lower the resolution of a game to squeeze
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more performance out then you may have issues.
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## Steam
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In a moment of weakness, I decided to start up Steam. Steam defaulted to Big
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Picture mode and its first-time-user-experience made me set up Wi-Fi again.
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There was no way to bypass it. I got out my moonlander again and typed in my
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Wi-Fi password again, and then I downloaded Sonic Adventure 2 as a test for how
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games feel on it. Sonic Adventure 2 is a very lightweight game (you can play it
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for like 6.5 hours on a full charge of the Steam Deck) and I've played it to
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_death_ over the years. I know how the game _should_ feel.
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[](https://cdn.xeiaso.net/file/christine-static/img/FXpIjhwUIAUEujg.jpeg)
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City Escape ran at a perfect 60 FPS at the device's native resolution. The main
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thing I noticed though was the position of the analog sticks. Based on the
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design of the device, I'm pretty sure they were going for something with a
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PlayStation DualShock 4 layout with the action buttons on the top and the sticks
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on the bottom. The sticks are too far down on the device. Playing Sonic
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Adventure 2 was kind of painful.
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## SteamOS
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So I installed SteamOS on the device. Besides a weird issue with 5 GHZ Wi-Fi not
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working and updates requiring me to reboot the device IMMEDIATELY after
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connecting to Wi-Fi, it works great. I can install games and they run. The DPI
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for SteamOS is quite wrong though. All the UI elements are painfully small. For
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comparison, I put my Steam Deck on the same screen as I had on the Win600. The
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Steam Deck is on top and the Win600 is on the bottom.
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[](https://f001.backblazeb2.com/file/christine-static/img/FXqSz_tVsAAU0wf.jpeg)
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Yeah. It leaves things to be desired.
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When I had SteamOS set up, I did find something that makes the Win600 slightly
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better than the Steam Deck. When you are adding games to Steam with Emulation
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Station you need to close the Steam client to edit the leveldb files that Steam
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uses to track what games you can launch. On the Steam Deck, the Steam client
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also enables the built-in controllers to act as a keyboard and mouse. This means
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that you need to poke around and pray with the touchscreen to get EmuDeck games
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up and running. The mouse/controller switch on the Win600 makes this slightly
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more convenient because the controllers can always poorly act as a mouse and
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keyboard.
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When you are in KDE on the Win600, you don't get a soft keyboard at all. This is
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mildly inconvenient, but can be fixed with the moonlander yet again. Here's a
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screenshot of what my KDE desktop on the Win600 looks like:
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[](https://f001.backblazeb2.com/file/christine-static/img/Screenshot_20220714_144655.png)
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Overall, SteamOS is a lot more ergonomic in my opinion and will let you play
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games to your heart's content.
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The D-pad feels really good. I love how it responds. When I did a little bit of
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Sonic Mania I never felt like I was inaccurate. There were some weird audio
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hitches on Sonic Mania though where the music would cut out randomly. Not sure
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what's going on with that. I could play through entire Pokemon games with that
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D-pad.
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## Conclusions for now
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Overall I'm getting the feeling that this device is _okay_. It's not great, it's
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not terrible, but it's okay. I need to get some more experience with it, but so
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far it seems that this device really does have a weight class and oh god if you
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play a game outside its weight class your UX goes to shit instantly. The battery
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life leaves _a lot_ to be desired so far. However it does work. It's hard to not
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compare this to the Steam Deck, but it's so much less in comparison to the Steam
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Deck.
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I don't know how I feel about this device. I'm not sure it's worth the money. I
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need to get more experience with it. I'll have a better sense of all this when I
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write my full review. Stay tuned for that!