![]() The need for direct light makes it difficult to have that kind of relaxed “lean back” experience that tends to fit best for mobile gaming. The wonky display doesn’t kill the experience by any stretch, but it severely limits the Playdate’s potential as a portable gaming device. Images are crisp and well-defined when you’re looking at the display directly, but that clarity is muddied almost immediately if your hands naturally tilt forward or backward just a little bit as you’re playing. The screen is too compact for glare to be much of an issue, but the Playdate’s razor-thin viewing angle is a real problem. ![]() I still often find myself struggling to see what I’m playing even when there’s a perfect amount of light. It’s not just the lack of a backlight, either. While the Sharp Memory LCD packed into every Playdate differs quite a bit from the black-and-white e-ink display that’s familiar to Kindle and reMarkable owners - you get a much sharper image than those other devices deliver, especially when it comes to a moving image - the viewing limitations are similar. The viewing experience suffers the moment light stops hitting the screen directly. That makes the gameplay all but impossible to see in any low-light conditions, so perish the thought of playing this thing at night in bed or even while lying down on a couch. While the Playdate delivers a nice and sharp monochrome image, it lacks any kind of backlight. Its small, rectangular 400×240 1-bit display is where those warts I mentioned make themselves known the most. When you do eventually plug the Playdate in, the included USB-C cable allows for a speedy recharge. I wasn’t able to run a proper test of the standby time given the review timetable we were working with, but I was able to put in multiple multi-hour sessions before even having to think about a recharge. The official specs promise two full weeks of battery life in standby mode and eight hours of gameplay. It lasted multiple days in standby mode during testing, and held up for many more hours than I could manage in a single play session. The Playdate only has a standby mode but even when it’s “asleep,” the always-on black-and-white screen shows you the time. But you may want to keep headphones handy (there’s a 3.5-inch jack on the bottom of the device) for those times when you’re out and about.īattery life is also impressive, especially for a piece of hardware that you can’t manually power down. You can easily adjust the volume by pressing the Home button and then using the D-pad on the menu that appears to highlight the sound setting and push it louder or softer. The Playdate’s mono speaker is set just to the right of the screen and it’s surprisingly powerful. There’s also a brushed metal button on the top edge that wakes up your Playdate when you press it twice, a smart battery-saving feature for a device that’s perfectly sized for pocket storage. The primary button controls all have a springy feel and satisfyingly click-y response when pressed. A smaller “Home” button is set into the top right corner, just below one of those donut screws. Its yellow-and-white A and B buttons sit directly across from a yellow four-point directional pad. As nifty as the crank is conceptually, it looks as awkwardly placed as it sometimes feels to use, positioned barely an inch away from the two “face” buttons. ![]() The Playdate is smaller and sleeker than its spiritual predecessor, but it strikes an odd profile nonetheless. The Playdate is pretty in the same kind of way the original Game Boy’s chunky gray brick body was pretty. That product-defining feature sports a yellow plastic handle that spins easily as you turn the crank, and the whole thing folds down into a side-mounted pocket when not in use. The Playdate’s ripe banana-colored body is nicely accented by flourishes of brushed metal, evident in both the donut-shaped screws in each corner that hold the Playdate together, as well as the spinning arm of the device’s crank. It’s about the same shape and thickness of a smartphone that’s been cut in half, and that’s exactly what it feels like when I wrap my hands around it. The lightweight device - it weighs in at just over three ounces - still feels substantial to hold, with a surprisingly satisfying amount of heft to its thin, round-edged, roughly 3-inch square of a plastic body. Nestling the Playdate in between my two average-sized palms is a marvelous feeling. The good indisputably outweighs the bad here.
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