I love nearly everything about the mini apart from the build quality of the buttons, and the lack of pads.
with regards to the buttons I’d love them to have proper gamepad quality action, classic Nintendo style like all the current Anbernic rg35xx / rg40xx, powkiddy handheld gaming devices. they have that classic satisfying shorter travel when pressed, and just feel good.
the mini’s buttons have serious issues imo. the middle ones (play rec etc) especially are mushy, travel is too high, and the adjacent buttons cave in when you press a button. there’s no solid feeling when you’ve pressed the middle buttons like on a traditional handheld gaming device. sorting this out would greatly improve an mk2.
the rectangular button shape (mostly on the center row - Play, rec etc) might be better off being circular buttons imo, as in my experience the rectangle shape rubs off the side of the shell. circular buttons are tried and tested on handhelds. it’s worth considering anyway, maybe it’s not an issue if the action is sorted.
the shift button should be separated into 2 circular shift buttons imo, one for each thumb. currently its too long and causes issues when trying to keep it pressed.
I wish the joypad was a classic Nintendo style joypad. perhaps the enter button could be moved to the right of the joypad to allow this. I don’t know how this would work in practice but I’m sure there’s a good alternative so we could get a nice standard joypad.
pads: with regards to the pads, if you rotated the centre rows of buttons (play rec etc) from vertical to horizontal and move them up you could fit rows of pads below them. you could do 2 rows or pads, or maybe like 4 rows of mini pads. some form of pads would transform the mini.
and lastly, a standard high quality plastic for the faceplate of the unit instead of the soft rubber would avoid the oily fingerprints. I do like the soft rubber on the rear of the unit, like on the normal tracker & play. Just not on the faceplate.
again, I really love the mini. it’s an incredible device. and it sounds amazing. the reverb is lush, distortion models are crunchy and musical, the battery is stellar, and the synths are gorgeous. a few solid tweaks to the hardware on an mk2 would make it a world beater.
just my 2c
