- So you wanna play some pirated games,
but you're afraid of downloading a virus
or getting locked up like Gary Bowser.
Thankfully, AliExpress is here for you.
Look at all this... garbage.
Some of it's eye-catching.
100,000 games? Plug and play? HD big screen game console?
Wait, what's that "KINHANK Super Console X G1"-
A thousand dollars!
"Dual systems in one",
"Batocera 33", "Professional office entertainment".
What are you?
(laughs) Yeah, that's right.
As soon as I saw this thing, I had to buy it.
Or rather, Jake told me I had to buy it
so we could see if it actually comes
with over 120,000 games.
If it does, I assume they've got to be retro games,
since you won't be playing modern AAA titles
with a laptop chip from 4 years ago and 8 gigs of ram.
Or can you?
It has an Nvidia GPU.
What else is there for us to discover here?
Oh, 4K output, you say?
"Real and shocking picture effect".
Wow, I can't wait for a shocking picture effect.
This just looks like a very basic mini computer.
For a thousand bucks,
they better really wow me with the software.
It includes a big fat power brick.
Does about 150 watts,
so it's about what you'd get with a mid-tier gaming laptop.
We've got the box itself, a power adapter,
and an HDMI cable. That's it?
- [Plouffe] There's controllers.
- Oh right, the controllers.
Oh, the Beitong Bat2 Wired?
I've heard of this.
- [Plouffe] Have you actually?
- No, of course not.
- [Plouffe] Oh, okay. (laughs)
It's got a nice long cable.
Oh wow, that's actually not very long.
How many of you are this far from your couch?
Oh gosh, it doesn't even have analog triggers,
but hey, thank goodness there's a turbo button.
Okay, so it comes with a PS2-grade controller in the box.
- [David] Hey, PS2 controllers are better than that.
- Did they have analog triggers?
- [David] They had analog face buttons.
- Okay, so it comes with a PS1-grade controller.
(David laughs)
The plastics seem all right, and one of them is white.
Plouffe, it doesn't look like you tested the controllers.
You're just leaving me to figure out
how great they are on my own?
- [Plouffe] In this case, yes. (laughs)
- Not very.
I mean, this one's cute looking, at least.
Batocera 33+ Win 11 Pro.
Really, Windows 11 Pro?
Oh, how much you wanna bet that's pirated.
While I'm trying to get this open, we can talk about specs.
It's got an Adopt I9-9880h 8-core processor.
I don't know what "adopt" means in this context.
May be re-certified?
Either way, supposedly it's an Intel chip.
A 1650 independent graphics card,
8 gigs DDR4 with dual RAM slots,
which sounds like it's single-channel out of the box.
Hello. How does this... where are the seams in you?
I am extremely confused.
- [Plouffe] (laughs) We found something you can't open.
- Maybe this is a good time to tell you about our sponsor.
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- Okay.
I got under it.
There are clips.
Wow, that's a pretty good-looking cooling system.
Please tell me this thing's not running
off of a mechanical hard drive, though.
Oh, no. It has a boot SSD.
This is one of those weird products, guys,
where it would make sense to me
if they were just using main boards
that were destined for laptops, but then, you know,
the order was canceled or something like that.
But to actually engineer this board just for this product,
how many of these could they possibly be selling?
If it was cheap, sure.
But it's a thousand dollars for a 1650 and an 8-core chip!
And this SSD is very basic.
Wow. It's a Gudga. Not to be confused with a Badga.
I mean, I always like it when the Gudga is on my side.
(rimshot)
Ooh, high speed SSD.
I, mean "high" is relative.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
They say this is PCIe Gen 4?
Oh, man.
Well, we caught them in their first outright lie
on the spec sheet.
This is supposedly a PCIe by 4 SSD.
It is not that. It is, in fact, a SATA SSD.
You can tell from the keying here.
Not that being PCIe would make this any faster, really.
These are apparently available for as little as $9.80
in quantities of a thousand.
We've also got our memory stick here.
(Linus laughs)
Oh, the puns are real.
From the markings, these appear to be Samsung chips,
but I'm not sure if I believe that,
because the brand is Hoodisk.
(everyone laughs)
We've got Gudga and Hoodisk.
The antennas are both hooked up, so, you know, that's good.
Power button daughter board
seems to be about what you'd expect.
The I/O is not terrible by modern standards.
Gigabit LAN, quad USB-3s, 2 USB-2s,
display port, HDMI, and USB Type-C.
This has gotta be just an existing mini PC
that they juiced up with this aluminum plate
and then filled with pirated games. Like...
Wait, okay. We've already found
some conflicting information.
Depending where you look, it's over 110,000 or over 120,000.
Okay.
"The host is more powerful
and the loading speed is very fast.
Let happiness come faster."
See, that's what I'm always telling my wife.
(rimshot) (Plouffe laughs)
Oh, wow.
The marketing for this is extremely bombastic,
and I'm not using that word lightly.
"The performance of the GTX1650 is more outstanding,"
More outstanding than what?
"and it can easily cope with large-scale games
such as League of Legends, PUBG, and PlayStation 2."
Yes, when I think of large-scale games,
I really think of PS2.
"Dual-channel memory operation, more smooth."
But we didn't bother actually giving you any of that.
(Plouffe laughs)
Oh my god. Now It's 71,000+ games.
The farther I scroll down the page,
the fewer games are included. (laughs)
You know what I gotta wonder?
Is this stuff just way cheaper in China?
'Cause the thing is, in China, you can get great deals,
like, better than we can get here on some hardware,
like used mining cards for example.
So you can look at a product like this and go, oh Linus,
you don't understand, because it's for the Chinese market.
And I'm like, right, it has to be more competitive.
What makes a worse product good for the Chinese market?
I don't... let's fire it up.
Wait, where are you going?
You're not gonna help set this up?
- [Plouffe] No, no, no, no, no.
You said you'd set it up.
- No, come on!
- [Plouffe] What?
- The cable length is not a plus here.
- Yeah.
- And the rear I/O?
- Just flip it in reverse.
- That eats up a solid foot of your definitely not 7 feet.
Oh my God.
- (laughs) Now we got the pretty side facing us.
- (sighs) Okay.
- You just reach around to press the power button. (laughs)
- [Linus] Okay, I'm turning it on.
- Yeah, turn it on.
Oh.
We've gotta set it to the original boot in BIOS,
'cause it originally did boot into Batocera 33.
- Oh, okay. Well, let's do that.
- And it's, like, an arcade launcher. Yeah.
- Okay, let's do that. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So we need a keyboard and mouse.
But another thing to note while we're in Windows
is, look, it's got a little power,
'cause you know, it's connected to a power.
It's like it's on battery. (laughs)
- [Linus] Oh my goodness.
- But then it's, like, Xed out.
- It thinks it's a laptop.
- Yeah, it thinks it's a laptop.
- With a missing battery.
- And it's just plugged into the wall.
This isn't Windows 11.
- [Linus] Oh, yeah!
- [Plouffe] It lists Windows 11 Pro.
- [Linus] Yeah.
- [Plouffe] This is clearly Windows 10.
- Yeah.
What the heck?
- So, yeah, check specs, what else is in here?
- And also, what the heck's in-
no wonder I stumbled over the name of the CPU so many times!
I9-98-
19-98-
I didn't register why I kept saying it wrong.
There is no 9880HK.
- Oh, it's a 9980HK, yeah.
- Dang it.
- Now mash F2, F8, F10, and delete.
- What? How does-
- Because we don't know which one
is the the right BIOS key. - Oh my God.
Okay.
- [Plouffe] Hey! - [Linus] Hey!
- It dual boots by default.
Windows is installed, but so is Batocera.
Now, normally it originally boots straight into Batocera,
and he altered this when setting it up.
But yeah, if you boot into our hard drive...
- There we go.
- Yeah. - Wait.
Oh, interesting.
- So that's the other problem,
is we installed some games on Windows,
- Yeah.
- but there was not much space,
so there's only a few games installed.
- Right.
And the boot manager is on the hard drive.
Interesting.
Seems like they have a lot of confidence in their SSD.
- KinHank.
- KinHank, games retro.
All right. Hey, well let's get this keyboard outta here.
This is a console. - You don't need that, yeah.
Neo Geo? Sony PlayStation?
Quake 2? Wii U? - Quake 2?
I mean, if they've got, you know 100,000 games...
Hey!
- 122,647.
Sinclair. - Wow.
- ZX81. - Wow. What's it got?
- Okay, use this Japanese layout
for navigation. - Oh, this is...
Oh, okay. Perfect.
So circle is accept, and X is bad? Okay.
Cool.
- So I accidentally launched this game.
- Yeah. This is real great.
I'm having fun.
- Look, can you not be a Debbie Downer?
- (laughs) I don't think we're doing anything.
- I spent good money on this gaming console
and on your companionship today.
(Plouffe laughs)
Yeah, I'm really not getting a great value
on either of them. (both laugh)
- I think we should play a game we're familiar with.
I don't know what the hell this is.
I don't know how to play it.
This is like, I've played some really old PC games.
This is even beyond my time. (laughs)
- But can you even figure out
how to get out of the game? - I can't-
- Oh, oh, whoa, oh!
- There's a menu.
Yeah. - Great.
This is just RetroArch.
- Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. It's just a Linux distro.
- Ooh. 3D 3D.
(Plouffe laughs)
- Pick a game that you've actually played.
- All right, I will pick a game I have actually played.
- Okay.
- Here we go.
- NHL '94.
- Let's go!
- [Plouffe] Look at how many pixels
that guy's face is made out of. (laughs)
- Ooh, it's Gretzky!
Let's go, Great One!
(Linus cheers)
Hold on a second.
I think I can make him watch the instant replay.
Oh my God. - [David] No.
- This is like Rocket League
where one guy doesn't skip the replay.
- Yeah.
- Except you're going back
and then making me watch the replay.
It's even worse. - Yeah.
- [Plouffe] It's even worse.
Wow.
- And he can't stop me. - Wow. Incredible.
Incredible. What a game. (Linus laughing)
- You know what? The D-pad's pretty usable.
- It's not great.
- It's not great, but it's usable.
It's definitely usable.
In their marketing, do they say
that you'll spend so much time playing with it
because you can't figure out how to turn it off?
- (laughs) No.
Maybe join a- whoa!
- Oh, what'd you press?
- Back and start at the same time.
- What? I tried that.
- I don't know. Maybe it's 'cause I'm player 1.
Okay, They got Sinclair, all games, favorites,
3DO, Amiga, Atari.
Atari, Atari, Atari... - I don't think we're
gonna get through all these.
We're at at A, Plouffe. We're at A!
- Holy crap, you're right.
- We're still at C!
- Capcom.
I'm trying to-
- Oh wait, can I check the Commodore?
- Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah.
- Oh, wow, are there ever a lot of games for the Commodore.
122,000 games, all at your disposal.
So you're gonna get a lot of just complete garbage
in this entire list. - Holy crap.
- Yeah, you're not even... you just hit D,
and you've been holding scroll for, like,
a good 30 seconds or something.
(Linus gasps)
This was such a bad time for games.
- My childhood.
- Marble- Oh my God.
- I like how they, they've actually done the, like,
sidebars for the 3 by 4.
"Original game supported only 2 players.
N0stalgia gives you 4 player version!"
- You need to buy more friends.
- Crapped- Cracked from disk by s!r-
(Plouffe laughs)
I don't remember how it works, really.
- Seems fine.
I don't think I'm doing anything, but that's okay.
I didn't really wanna play Marble Madness.
- No, you try. See if your joystick does anything.
- Oh, it does! - Yeah, there you go.
- What? So we can mess with each other?
I mean, that's kind of cool.
This must have been incredibly frustrating,
playing with younger or older siblings.
Okay, this is riveting,
but we should probably play more games. (laughs)
- What? Yeah, you're not having fun?
- I mean, I am having fun, but we should see
how much software
- Are you not entertained?
- the Super XG 1 comes with.
- Okay.
- Honestly, it's not a bad selection, though.
We've got, like, every Game Boy iteration,
Color, Advance, regular Game Boy.
- It's interesting to me that for Super Nintendo,
for example, they don't just have the entire collection.
It's not like the ROMs take up a ton of space,
- No. - and it's not like
they're licensing it legitimately,
so there's no cost to it.
I guess it was just easier to-
wait, we get a total of one Xbox game?
- I was gonna say, this is really weird.
They've only- okay, to be fair,
they've got one of the best Xbox games. (laughs)
They've got Jet Set Radio Future.
But yeah, I don't know why it's the only Xbox game.
- Well, probably because they want
to advertise a huge library,
- Ah, yeah.
- and Xbox games - Xbox!
- actually take up space.
- That's true.
- Oh yeah, this is great.
Wow, that fan is going, boys.
The lab tested it briefly for thermals and stuff,
and it only maxes out on the GPU
around 73 degrees on the hotspot.
More like 67, 65 average. - Well, that's (indistinct).
- But you can hear why. (laughs)
The fans just crank right up.
- Okay, Battle Mode.
- Yeah, we're not practicing. That's lame.
- Okay, what do you wanna play?
- Graffiti Wars. It's got "wars" in the name.
- [Linus] Oh, yeah!
- [Plouffe] Oh, yeah!
- [Linus] Gum, Beat, Yo-Yo,
- [Plouffe] I'm Yo-yo.
(mutters) that. - [Linus] and Corn.
- I wanna be Corn.
This is a classic.
- Okay, I have never played this game,
so I have absolutely - I mean...
no idea what's going on.
- It's roller skating and graffiti.
That's all you gotta know.
- I wanna fight. How do we fight?
- I mean, we're trying, but it's not working very well,
'cause I haven't played Jet Set-
(Linus speaks gibberish)
- Ow! (Plouffe laughs)
What's your problem? (Plouffe laughs)
(laughs) Let's try a different game.
- Okay, The ethics of giving money to pirates aside,
if you are the kind of person who is not technical at all,
you're my in-laws.
The kids come over to your house,
and you've got something fun for them to do.
- And a lot of games to choose from.
They're not gonna say we've got nothing to play.
- Dreamcast?
- Oh, it'd be cool if they had Power Stone on here.
Power Stone 1 and 2. Nice.
- Okay, so we'll play Power Stone?
- Sure.
So the funny thing about Batocera
is it literally lists on its Linux distro,
"We do not endorse pirating".
You have to own these games, and blah blah blah,
get your own ROMs,
and they're clearly not affiliated
with the Batocera team at all.
- Oh, whoa, this is like 3D.
- Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was, like, really crazy for the time,
'cause Virtua Fighter
was out, - What the crap is going on?
- but Virtua Fighter - [David] You want the stones.
- looked like ass. - [David] If you get, like,
all the stones, you get a super mode.
- Yeah.
- What the...
- How do I pick up the guns, though?
- Yeesh. What just happened?
- Boom! I shot you with the bazooka.
- What is even happening
right now? - Bazooka time.
- [David] It's basically Smash Bros. in 3D.
- Pretty much, yeah.
- How do I pick up a sword? I don't even know how to-
- You hit the pick up button.
- Well, I don't know where the pick up button is!
(Plouffe laughs)
I can't tell what any of the buttons do!
- (laughs) Power Stone!
This was crazy good when it came out.
- I haven't even touched him!
- I know. This was, like, wild when it came out.
Everyone loved Power Stone, and for good reason.
(buttons clacking)
Yeah, you're just flying around, so that's nice. Nice.
- [David] That was pretty fast.
Did Linus beat you?
- Yeah.
- [David] That's embarrassing.
(Plouffe laughs)
- Secretly, I've played a lot of Power Stone.
- [Plouffe] Are you sure?
- Okay, tell you what.
Let's pick a game you think you can win.
- Oh my God.
Oh, Tekken. Sure.
- Oh no.
Another fighting game?
- Yeah.
Oh, what? It didn't even load Tekken.
- What just happened?
- Oh, is this when Konami had...
Loading screen games! - Loading screen games.
Yeah, they patented the loading screen game,
so no one else could do it.
- Destroyed an entire multiple eras of gaming.
- Hwoarang is really cheap,
'cause you just do a bunch of kicks all the time.
(Linus laughs)
That's what he does.
- So you're gonna just be like that.
All right. - (laughs) Yeah.
I'm just gonna kick you.
Nina might win, like, they're all good.
Tekken was, I don't know, reasonably balanced.
- I don't know what block is.
- I don't know. I think it's just back away.
Also, this looks terrible. - This is not running
very well.
- Yeah, this looks so bad.
Low kick. Low kick. Low kick. Low kick.
Low kick till you lose. (laughs)
- Oh no! Dang it! (Plouffe laughs)
Don't use the cheap low kick strategy against me.
Oh, that's it. The kick!
Oh, I was in- I figured out the stance.
Okay, how do I get back into the stance?
(both laugh)
- Too bad I knocked you out
by hitting you in the knee. - Yeah, I know.
(Linus laughs)
You know what's really funny,
is this is a lot like playing games with Luke,
because the first time we play something,
I will almost always win.
- Right, and then...
- And then once he has about 5, 10 minutes to pick it up,
he will annihilate me for the rest of the session.
In conclusion, for the price, it's woefully under-specced,
and all the software that is adding value to it
is pirated and available for "free"
if you're willing to pirate it,
which you are, because you bought one of these.
With that said, I think that it's worth
following up this video with a look
at some more AliExpress consoles
that come preloaded with things,
because at a more reasonable price,
while I would never recommend them or condone them,
I could see how they might be attractive to some people.
- Yeah, 100 or 200 bucks might be a lot more reasonable,
especially when you're getting
100,000 games with those ones too.
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- If you enjoyed this video, you might enjoy the one
where we showed the proper way to rip games
off of your old cartridges and play them in an emulator.