Are any of the portable Famiclones worth buying?

[nerdynebraskan]

I've been thinking about buying a portable Famicom, but I'm generally pessimistic about the build quality of clone systems. Are any of them worth it?

[BonBon]

I bought the pokefami a few years ago and it worked great for a while then one day the speakers just stopped working. The headphone jack still works but no sound from the speakers. Has a nice size LED screen. If your interested it's for sale in my sales page.

[mrdomino]

I've tried a few (Pocket Fami, FC Portable/BG-828 and the Subor Z12) and had similar experiences with all three, honestly - okay build quality and compatibility but the screens are pretty poor by modern standards, it's hard to make out text and other fine details. Also the Pocket Fami had a truly horrendous d-pad.

There are some more modern PSP-looking ones that turn up on Aliexpress sometimes that have much nicer screens, but the colours seem to be noticeably off, plus they're based on newer chipsets designed for all-in-one systems which can have compatibility issues with some carts (also some of them omit a Select button entirely, while others awkwardly merge it with the Reset button - short press for Select, long press for Reset)

[nerdynebraskan]

Thanks for the mini-reviews, mrdomino. Unfortunately, I'm not surprised. I hate clones, but I sort of like the thought of carrying my Famicom Everdrive N8 around and having a near-complete library of games.

And Jay, yeah I'll have to pass on yours. I'm not very mechanically savvy, and I'm not keen on investing in the labor to repair a clone which is probably just made of iffy stuff to begin with.