Let me know what you think of my findings in the comments! Check out reviews for both devices here: EZ Flash: th-cam.com/video/3ir8KY4TmYs/w-d-xo.html Everdrive: th-cam.com/video/epLif4ju4F0/w-d-xo.html
But if you play using the launch version gba that uses AA batteries and use a EBL 3300mah rechargeable battery, you'll get a wooping 6600 mah battery life and that would make the Ezflash omega definitive edition more ideal because you wouldn't have a battery problem anymore, and the EBL brand has a super quick 4 slot AA battery charger. that guys will solve your battery issues with Ezflash Omega definitive edition hahaha
Recently got an Everdrive after having similar power consumption issues with the EZ Flash Omega (non-DE). The Everdrive's power consumption is definitely better, and I'll be sticking with the Everdrive because that's more important to me than a lot of the other stuff. Thanks for testing that! Been waiting for someone to actually show real-world results for that.
I got it recently also, but is there a way i can save my progress! A button or something like that cause i can't save it inside the games because when i turn the gameboy off my progress goes to 0
Really just depends on what you're looking for out of a flash cart. Both definitely have their pros and cons. To me personally, the absolute most important feature is the ability to transfer Pokemon up from the GBA games to the DS games, and so it was an easy choice for me to pick up the EZ Flash since it's the only one that natively supports that. But it seems that if you don't care about any additional bells and whistles and you just want to be able to play ROMs, the Everdrive does offer a bit more of a premium experience.
The Everdrive supports SD cards greater than 64GB, you just need to ensure it's formatted as FAT32 and not exFAT. This is tricky in Windows as the default formatting tool doesn't display FAT32 formatting options by default for cards greater than 32GB, but it can be done with alternative software. While the compatibility with exFAT in the EZ Flash is great, I use a FAT32-formatted 128GB card in my Everdrive and it works great.
That battery test does seem a lot more than I'd expect. Maybe it's worth retesting with the flash carts in the opposite units to see if there's any difference in the GBA batteries
Both the SP’s have the same new batteries, I made them both a few weeks apart from each other. I’m going to try some more tests over the weekend anyway so I’ll try doing the same in opposite systems and see if it makes any difference
Great comparison! I will admit I’m really biased towards everdrives. I’ve been buying krikzz’s stuff forever and never had issues. I actually really like the super simple, no frills, text based menu on all everdrives. Also, I think battery life is really important with portables. 2 hours is definitely not ideal. The rumble on the EZ flash is really cool, though!
But if you play using the launch version gba that uses AA batteries and use a EBL 3300mah rechargeable battery, you'll get a wooping 6600 mah battery life and that would make the Ezflash omega definitive edition more ideal because you wouldn't have a battery problem anymore, and the EBL brand has a super quick 4 slot AA battery charger. that guys will solve your battery issues with Ezflash Omega definitive edition hahaha
You know what this actually kind of puts me over the edge. When I have some extra cash, I think im going to mod my GBA instead of getting an analogue pocket, plus a EZ flash cartridge. I know that the price difference should be a lot, but I really want to go all out, new shell, new membranes, maybe a battery replacement, all the bells and whistles, so it'll come out to like $150 or something like that, which isnt far off from the pocket. But the pocket isnt compatible with the EZ flash which seems to be the better cartridge here.
Definitely important if you’re going to be playing away from a charger! I mostly use the GameCube as I record a lot of GBA games for videos, so for that purpose the battery draw isn’t that much of an issue for me
@@retrogamer64007 get yourself a megabatt. I have a 900mah battery in mine from retrosix and it lasts ALOT longer it's double the usual sp size and very affordable
It's also worth noting that Krikzz sells a lot of different colored shells for the Everdrive as well. Mine is yellow to match my modded GBA. I've seen other shells for the EZ Flash, but only Retro Game Repair Shop here in the US offers more than clear orange and smoky black. So Everdrive, IMO, gets a point for physical aesthetic customization. There's also Stone Age Gamer here in the US, who sells Everdrive kits with different colored shells and labels to match. I bought my GBA Everdrive straight from Krikzz, but I went to Stone Age Gamer for my GB Everdrive. For that order I also asked their customer support if I could buy one of their labels for my GBA Everdrive since I didn't get it from them and they obliged me there.
I have a 128 GB SanDisk Ultra card working in my X5 Mini. Also, it plays all of the GBA Video ROMs that I've tested, except for Shrek, Shrek 2, and Shark Tale.
@@RetroBreak I believe I can use the full capacity. I currently have 54 GB of 119 GB used on a single partition. I used guiformat to format it to FAT32.
very nice video! Greetings from Minas, Brazil. I got my Everdrive recently and retired my EZ Flash Omega. No regrets so far! Better battery life & no save issues.
Cara, pense na raiva daqui do Brasil, comprei o meu X5 da Stone Age Gamer, chegou no nosso querido país no dia 02/01/2022 e até hoje não recebi. Incompetência total dos Correios. Tava tão ansioso em usar ele.
@@geraldojunior7467 que azar mano.. é muito.difícil. Fora as taxas que aparecem. Tem que pagar 15 reais a título de taxa de manuseio, fora a importação, se pegarem. Essa taxa de manuseio vc já pagou? Eles só te mandam se você pagar.
While i still prefer the Everdrive, i can give credit where credit is due; the EZ Flash is pretty cool. I like some of the things in the menu like running video files and even opening text documents (which would be super helpful for my Zelda randomizer with the spoiler log). I’m still on the side of the Everdrive, but i think the EZ Flash is giving Krikkz a run for his money. Hopefully he can release some updates for the GBA that can allow it to do those things and maybe more! Great video! Really glad you made this :D
Honeatly, price is a huge point for me. ~$60 vs ~$120... eesh that a big difference. Not only that, the ez drive has a bunch more features. I know others may mind this, but its not that big of an issue for me that the battery dies faster. I dont get much time to play at a time any given sit down. And, i wouldve liked to see the test ran on both gba's just in case one had a battery performance issue. But it looks like I'll be going for the ez drive. Thank you so much for this comparison video!
A few things about the EZ flash, which also applies to the Omega. The internal battery does not actually provide real time clock functionality for games like Pokemon Emerald, it actually only keeps the clock on the EZ flash operating system. When using the GBA, the EZ flash charges the internal battery (according to website), therefore it drains the battery for no benefit. I simply removed it and the battery life was much better. However, I also did Funny play isp v2 screen with 10 brightness levels. On full brightness the battery either cut out instantly, or if fully charged, lasted about 60 seconds. Since the only solution is to play with it charging, I removed the battery and made a fake battery using a DC-DC mini buck converter set to output 4v connected to a USB cord. The cord plugs into any USB port and shows green light with max brightness.
However, the internal battery on the ezflash does appear necessary to properly unmount the sd card when turning off the console, as without it, my saves have become currupt.
Great video ! the probleme with the power consumption test is that the gba sp can have different quality of batteries one can be over used and the third party batteries are really bad and variable in terms of real capacity, the best way to do this test is to first test the Mah of the batteries to be sure they are the same or use the same gba sp and swap the cartridge
I’m happy to stick with the Everdrive. For reliability (no freezing) and battery consumption. It’s no contest for me. It’s always good to have options for consumers though
But if you play using the launch version gba that uses AA batteries and use a EBL 3300mah rechargeable battery, you'll get a wooping 6600 mah battery life and that would make the Ezflash omega definitive edition more ideal because you wouldn't have a battery problem anymore, and the EBL brand has a super quick 4 slot AA battery charger. that guys will solve your battery issues with Ezflash Omega definitive edition hahaha
If you disable the realtime clock function on the EZ Flash it adds an extra hour to the battery life i have read / seen. I want one for the Analogue Pocket. want the regular Omega or the X5 its about 69 vs 120 back here prisewise. I have seen the EZflash normally working. Is this only a thing with the definitive edition? Do you have the latest kernel?
Flash carts are cool, I'm still just a sucker for original cartridges though. There's something nice about having to be deliberate with deciding what games to bring with you on a trip. Or maybe I'm just crazy 🤷
I agree, I have a flash cart but I do like original carts because it gives you a lot more motivation to actually beat the games, unlike with a flash cart where you have access to thousands of games
If I had to guess about the Pocket compatibility, I'd suspect it's the extreme power draw of the EZ Flash that's the problem. I wouldn't be surprised if the Pocket tries to protect against overdrawing from out-of-spec cartridges, and fails to when you fake it out with a real cartridge first. I recall there being talk of flash carts damaging consoles over time because of bad power specs, so that seems something to be wary of.
Possibly! I was a bit worried about forcing it to play by replacing the game while it’s running… maybe a future EZ flash could me made with less power draw and make it safer to use on the pocket
It seems to be a problem on Analogue's side. The EZ-Flash team seems interested to try to fix it on their side, but Analogue doesn't seem to care to give them a response to them getting a console for fixing it. So they'll have to wait until 2023 like everyone else to get a console.
But if you play using the launch version gba that uses AA batteries and use a EBL 3300mah rechargeable battery, you'll get a wooping 6600 mah battery life and that would make the Ezflash omega definitive edition more ideal because you wouldn't have a battery problem anymore, and the EBL brand has a super quick 4 slot AA battery charger. that guys will solve your battery issues with Ezflash Omega definitive edition hahaha
good video, will probably be getting an everdrive when it gets back in stock, I got an ezflash and was curious about the differences... couple of things, you should've done the battery test swapping the cards between the consoles and take an average or using one console since the batteries on them might be worn out differently and they might not charge to the same level as they did brand new. also, minor observation, .XX seconds is actually "hundreds" of a second, not "milliseconds" lol... 85 milliseconds would be .085 seconds. if you wanted to use milliseconds, X.85 would've been "850 milliseconds"
If you're really* into this it's definitely worth having both, because the EZ-Flash's features are really cool, but they only apply to a very specific selection of games. While the Everdrive's battery life applies to the entire experience, that being said tho, I'm really glad I chose the EZ-Flash, because that rumble is just cool.
For your power tests, did you charge the SPs back up, swap the carts/SPs and then test again? Like does the EZ flash get 2ish hours with both SPs or only the silver one? I'm asking since the battery in the silver one may not be as good for all we know.
Great comparison video. The EZ Flashlooks looks like a very good option compared to the Ever drive. However, that terrible power consumption just kills it for me. I personally need the longer battery life over everything else.
True, I’ve been thinking I should have given the Everdrive 2 points for battery life as it very important on a handheld.. still think the EZ flash does a lot better in other areas though, especially with save states and the ability to return to the main menu
But if you play using the launch version gba that uses AA batteries and use a EBL 3300mah rechargeable battery, you'll get a wooping 6600 mah battery life and that would make the Ezflash omega definitive edition more ideal because you wouldn't have a battery problem anymore, and the EBL brand has a super quick 4 slot AA battery charger. that guys will solve your battery issues with Ezflash Omega definitive edition hahaha
The battery consumption can be remedied with the "Retromodding" USB C battery packs for the AGB 001/AGS101 configuration. My GBA mod setup with Ezflash Omega DE runs for 10 hours on a single charge. 😉 Come to think of it - You can probably get roughly 15-18hrs out of it using the Everdrive 😮
But if you play using the launch version gba that uses AA batteries and use a EBL 3300mah rechargeable battery, you'll get a wooping 6600 mah battery life and that would make the Ezflash omega definitive edition more ideal because you wouldn't have a battery problem anymore, and the EBL brand has a super quick 4 slot AA battery charger. that guys will solve your battery issues with Ezflash Omega definitive edition hahaha
@@Snowpiercer2 and comapre that 5600mah to the gba sp 600mah battery lol, its just a huge difference, and when its worn out its easy replacable compared to the faced out battery of sp
Very good video comparison. I found it very informitive. I do feel you left out a key category. GBA Video. I am certain both carts can play the Nickelodeon GBA Video carts. For years, Shrek and Shrek 2 for GBA Video can not run on such carts. It is still a mystery to this day as to why. I feel this is the ultimate test. Till that day…
I actually prefer the SD slot on the ez flash, it may be finicky but I can always get it in and out by hand. I can never get the SD card out of the everdrive without a tool like a flat head screw driver, a spider or anything else that can push it down fr enough to trigger the spring release.
I got the ez-flash omega (Definitive Edition) back in March 2021. I've never had a single problem with it but for the battery life. Later last year i got my battery tested by a friend and we found out that the brand new battery i was using had a very (and i mean VERY) low capacity compared to the original one, it was something like 45%. I still have to replace it, but just to let you know: i'm getting 1 hour and a half of gaming out of that crappy battery...
If you find a good place to get replacement batteries, let me know! I’m wondering if the new batteries I got for these SP’s aren’t very good, as even the Everdrive didn’t last as long as I was expecting..
But if you play using the launch version gba that uses AA batteries and use a EBL 3300mah rechargeable battery, you'll get a wooping 6600 mah battery life and that would make the Ezflash omega definitive edition more ideal because you wouldn't have a battery problem anymore, and the EBL brand has a super quick 4 slot AA battery charger. that guys will solve your battery issues with Ezflash Omega definitive edition hahaha
Turn on Fast Patch Engine on EZ ODE it will load games super fast (skip the GBA booting logo). I had freezing issue with Rev A, now I have Rev B, it's all good. You can apply Rumble Patch for heaps of GBA and GBC games. I have the both flashcart and I've been using EZ ODE most of the time, battery has no more issue for me as I'm using orginal GBA with AA lithium rechargeable battery, can play up to 5 hours and more. EZ ODE is more fun to play with in my honest opinion.
I’m also wondering if the glitch where the game got stuck on the title screen has anything to do with it dying so fast? I’ll try some more tests over the weekend and let you know if it makes any difference with the LED off!
@@RetroBreak I have both, and I noticed the ez has a love hate relationship with battery life. Some sessions, it lasts longer, other sessions it doesn't. How do I know this? The interesting thing is I tested it on a Gameboy micro and sometimes when my micro is fully charged, when I boot into a game on the ez, the red light (for low battery turns on). If I turn it off and back on, sometimes the red lights don't turn on (so it's almost like the ez decides if it will suck up more power with some gaming sessions)
@@jajabinx35 It could just be crud in the power switch. Sometimes my SP shows red light on full charge with a retail cart or no cart, and flipping the power switch off and on again usually makes it green and stays that way. As far as I can tell, once the light is red it will stay that way until the system is turned off or a charger is connected. I think this is to prevent the weird red/green rapid flickering the power light on the original GBA did when the batteries were borderline low.
I've bought the EverDrive half a year ago and it's been absolutely amazing. Although the other cartridge has some features I'm very interested in, I do really like me some build quality.
My EZ Flash turned up today, having trouble trying to get thumbnails to scrub as I only use ROMs I own but don’t want to manually download each one individually. But looking forward to using it once I figure it out. Nice comparison vid.
Hope you can figure out a way of getting the thumbnails to work! Let us know if you figure it it as I’m sure there’s other people who want to use their own roms too!
very good video but i think you meant hundredth of a seconds instead of milliseconds xD but we all understand the point. much love from switzerland i always enjoy your videos
For the power consumption test, im curious why you didnt run the tests twice, swapping the cartridge each time, and then average the times for each cart. That would have virtually eliminated any console specific or battery age biases.
My original Omega was from such a bad build quality - i thought they've been kidding me. It's that far now, that i put tape around it to get the damn thing out of my gba in one piece. I've been still crazy enough to buy the Omega DE, and i'm quite happy with it.
Only thing my mind cant handle here is you should have done the reverse power usage test, as in swap the carts in consoles and do it again just to eliminate battery variance 😄
I think the build quality is a super important factor here. I’m not some sort of technology dunce, I say that because I know this might sound hard to believe- I bought FOUR EZ Flash Omega DE carts and NONE of them worked. I had Micro SD initial errors with the first 2 and the second 2 couldn’t get the kernel updates past 1%. I tried several different brands and sizes of SD cards and they were all formatted correctly. I talked to their official support team and even they were stumped, I did everything right. You can see even in this video the EZ Flash is buggier and prone to malfunction, and he also mentions how shoddy the SD card slot is specifically. It’s simply an inferior build quality. Please keep this in mind when you buy…. I threw away hundreds of dollars on defective, brand new EZ Flash carts from trusted sellers.
I own the Everdrive X5 Mini and the regular EZ Flash Omega (not Definitive Edition). While I do love the savestates and cheat functionality of the EZ Flash, I cannot count how many times it has frozen like it did in the battery test in this video. I do not know if the Definitive Edition fixes this issue, but at least for me, I would rather have the stability of the Everdrive over the extra features of the EZ Flash. The smaller power consumption is a huge difference for me too, so the Everdrive wins there for me at least. I wish the Everdrive just came with SAV file support, but I haven't been able to find a way to get that working (other than just changing the file extension, which isn't hard but it is a hassle if you like to move saves around between emulators). Though the fact I can choose between EEPROM, SRAM, Flash64, and Flash128 save types with RTC on/off on the Everdrive is pretty cool.
To make it a fair power usuage comparison I’d say you have to disable the LED on the EZ Flash as that’s an “extra” feature the Megadrive doesn’t have. And then run the test until shutdown on one GBA for each, or ideally on both for each. The way you did it in this video means your result could also just be that your one GBA’s battery is 50% worse than the other, there is no way to tell even if the batteries are brand new in both since they vary so much in quality between units.
The led is the least of the problems for battery consumption, as they usually don’t draw too much power. It is a fact that the EZ Flash (in whatever presentation) has worse power consumption than the Everdrives. The thing here is what you prefer, the options of the EZ or the battery life of the Ever.
I have both I hear there is a few issues ppl been having/posting for the Ez flash ODE The Everdrive has better quality shell & it consumes less than the other ... I too hate the micro sd card slot it almost... slips to the PCB board
this is exactly why i chose ez flash omega de over everdrive it just packs more and its cheaper, i dont mind the pocket thing as i can still play it on the pocket using that gba method but yes glad i got ezflash over ed
Love the video! Can I recommend for battery tests in future you use the exact same console? Need to remove the variable of differences between batteries 😉 Keep up the great content
They both have the same new batteries as I made them only a few weeks apart from each other. I’m going to do some more tests over the weekend though so I’ll try the test again using the opposite console for each one and see if there is any difference. I’m wondering if the EZ flash died so soon too because of the glitch it seemed to have near the end?
@@RetroBreak yeah nice switching them will confirm. Good point, freezing up might have stuck the processer at full or somthing. Interested to hear if it's any different or if it really does use that much more power
Knowing Krikzz's naming scheme, an X7 may roll around at some point and match this EZ Flash in features. I'll wait for that. Because while the EZ Flash seems great, the battery life thing is a huge minus and I don't know how good their long term support is. I was also quite surprised you didn't mention being able to use it as a legit pokemon cart as a huge plus, no flashcart has done that before. That all being said, if you're not intending to go portable and just want to use it in a gb player or on a consolized GBA the EZ Flash seems better.
Save states alone make the EZ Flash a better choice. They actually work really well and are very convenient for ganes that don't support sleep mode. The battery consumption can be fixed (at least for the original gba) with a usb-c rechargable battery pack you can get on Aliexpress.
Nice comparison. Speaking of hardware compatibility, the Omega DE doesn't work with the GBA Consolizer, while the ED does. Unfortunately unlike with the Pocket there's no known workaround.
@@RetroBreak No one really knows, the EZ Flash team was made aware of it almost since the Omega DE was released, but they said they'd need a Consolizer to figure it out. They refuse to pay for one so unless someone sends them one they never will.
I feel like these categories should be weighted as most of the categories the ezyflash won are mostly "who cares". Based on this I would get the Everdrive as it excels or is equal where it matters.
Yeah, I’ve been thinking I probably should have awarded two points to the Everdrive for battery life, as for most people that is much more important than any kind of extra features.
I bought my gba x5 about a week ago and it delivers tomarrow , in my opinion - as far as quality goes - you can’t beat a krixx everdrive . Don’t have an ez flash but I do want one just to play around with
I'm sure that for the battery life you have done a second test and swapped GBAs since there's no way of telling how many mAh each one holds just by looking at them...
I'm genuinely confused, I've read the everdrive x5 can emulate NES, SEGA, and GB/GBC games and you said it couldn't? Also my EZflash has a really bad habit if corrupting it's own save data when you save (yes I wait over 5 seconds when saving and it still self corrupts)
For those who heavily value battery life over all other categories, there is still a reason to get the omega!! Spare gba sp batteries only cost ~$10. If battery life is this much of a problem, I'd recommend charging two different batteries and carrying them both with you for double the battery life!
Here in the states I can get an everdrive for $99, or an EZ flash DE for $71. $28 extra for almost double battery life? No brainer. Keep your rumble, ez flash, I’m all in for the Everdrive.
Game Compability: Have you tested things like the Pokemon Event Distribution Roms? Cause back in the days the old EZ Flash wasn't doing that well. The Everdrive had no problems at all with the roms.
eh, I still find the Everdrive to be better. The goal of these carts, in my eyes, is to allow you to play a huge library of ROMS on original hardware. To that end, emulation really means nothing to me. If I wanted to emulate games, I could (and actually have) dumped complete sets of every portable system I can think of on my smartphone and play them in RetroArch; and it will most likely be a more refined experience. I can even attach a controller. My focus is using my original GBA/SP or Analogue Pocket to play a huge library of games. For that I want battery, performance and reliability; and in all those categries, Everdrive is king.
The EZ Flash is better but people just can't change their bias toward Everdrive. They were all condition by other youtuber who got the everdrive for free to promote it. It's like telling an Apple fan that android is better....they will simply not listen
It might be that the with EZ-Flash it is slightly harder to get the SD card in and out. But I do prefer having it on the side of the cartridge, instead of on the back where it slightly sticks out and you feel it with your fingers depending on how you hold your GBA(SP). Also, I have had mine accidentally pop out on the Everdrive...
I had an original ez-flash omega and worked amazingly until i lost all my save files from a game that i was playing, maybe if you backup save files regularly you will be fine? I personally just end up selling it and got X5. In terms of battery life it will depend what kind of setup you running, with my og gba modded with a ags101screen and rechargeable batteries def lasts me a long time, sometimes i spend multiple days without charging them
i've tried two Ez Flash definitive editons and they both had a freezing issue like what happened in your battery test, tested plugged in. Not sure if im unlucky or if they just suck. Found they normally froze at the 1-3 hour mark, sometimes rarley making it to 5 hours
did they freeze during gameplay? or just if you'd left it idle for a while like I did in this test? Ive played it for a few hours and not had it freeze before, so I really hope this was just a once off, else that's a bit worrying!
@@RetroBreak I first noticed freezing as an issue during gameplay, I was playing a super robot wars game and during a attack cutscene it froze, so i decided to leave it idle to test further and yeah it would freeze. The ez flash support page for my first card was telling me that the issue might have been my roms not being clean but the pokemon emerald rom i used for testing came from my actual cartridge ripped with a gbx cart reader (I think thats what it was called ) and even the gba test rom they recommended would freeze. Again maybe I just have bad luck. The only way i could get the games to not freeze was to load them into NOR but I don't think it should be made that everytime you want to play a game without it freezing you have to load it into NOR. Honestly I think the chip that is not the nor for loading roms might just be unstable or something. I wish the support for the card was better. Also what kind of power stuff did your gba sp in the video have. Screen mods? Battery Mods? on the support forum they talk about those possibly causing issues.
I wonder if it might be something to do with the speed or capacity of the SD card, if moving it to the internal storage fixes it? The SP’s both has new IPS screens and new batteries, so they might cause a problem too?
@@RetroBreak considering you have new batteries it might not cause much of an issue. I have tried a few different sd cards with same results pretty much. I think how the ez flash works is that when you load a game it loads it onto a ram chip (Might not be right) , I believe what is happening perhaps the rom loaded into that ram chip goes bad perhaps? I would think power for me could be an issue but the gameboy player has the issue as well which I would like to think has good power. I also did update the cards to the newest firmware which was supposed to have fixed freezing. I might return the 2nd and get a 3rd card just to try once more because i really want the ez flash for pokemon rom hacks and the pokemon transferring feature is something the everdrive lacks.
What about the longevity of the EZ Flash? I'm seeing more mentions around various places that the EZ Flash has dies on them only after a few months or less. I don't see that about the Everdrive GBA or basically any Everdrive
Does anybody know if either cart supports the ability to transfer Pokémon from the gen 3 games (Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Firered, and Leafgreen) to the geb 4 DS games (Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, Heartgold, and Soulsilver)? From what I've heard you can send Pokémon to the PAL Park on the EZ Flash but I just can't find any super apparent answers since I guess I'm the only one attempting to use them this way.
I believe the core issue with the Omega was people turning it off right away after saving. Older EZFlash 4 and Reform saved to a battery-backed RAM chip like what old Gameboy carts used, and then write it back to the SD card on next boot. The core problem here was that if the battery dies it won't retain the save long enough to write it to the SD card. Omega writes it to NON battery RAM but then starts writing it back to the SD immediately after saving. Turn it off and you can lose your save or corrupt more stuff on your SD. Counting 3 seconds between saving and turning it off will ensure you don't lose data. Omega DE drops that method and returns to writing it back on the next boot, but swaps the battery-backed RAM for a pricier FRAM chip, which retains data without needing a battery. That way even if the battery in the cartridge dies completely all you lose is the realtime clock.
Ah I thought my battery issues were because not only did I have an IPS Screen, but I also got some wacky new battery that could charge with USB-C for my GBA Also another thing that wasn't mentioned was that the EZflash came with a separate casing so that you could stick it into a DSlite at half the size and it wouldn't stick out of the system. IDK if everdrive has this alternative
Should have swapped the carts in the GBAs when testing the battery as one of the batteries may be better than the other. See if the results are the same.
I'm a fan of the ez flash, but I haven't tried the new model yet myself. The feature set and low cost of the ez flash I think really help it considering it's significant power draw. I have a 2k mah battery in my GBA though, so I'm good with that too. I had a question though. In my experience, iridion 2 has always frozen on me after playing for 10 minutes across all the ez flashes I've tried and on all the consoles I've tried it on. Please try iridion 2 and let me know if the game is stable on either of those carts. I was thinking about getting another flash cart just so I could make sure that game works, it's my favorite shooter on the GBA.
To get the better boot time on the EZ Flash do you have to scroll down in the menu and select a specific boot mode every time to get the faster boot? If you do that’s time added.
You have to do it once, but when the game is in that list you just need to hold R when you play it and it skips the intro, so not really any extra effort
I wish there was a cartridge available with cheat support and low power consumption.. My old ezflash 4 has bad build quality and is too slow loading games, still don’t know what to upgrade to.
I think you can disable the RGB LED on the EZ Flash - could you test the power consumption again with the disabled LED? I would love to know the difference the LED makes on the EZ Flash
I've purchased both, the Everdrive X5 for myself and the EZ Flash Omega Definitive Edition for my fiancée, we use them in our NDS Lites, and they're both easy to use and both do the job.
i know this is late but is the gbsp running in stock battery? or modded? because my sp only last about 1 and half hour using ez flash 4 thinking of getting everdrive
Let me know what you think of my findings in the comments!
Check out reviews for both devices here:
EZ Flash: th-cam.com/video/3ir8KY4TmYs/w-d-xo.html
Everdrive: th-cam.com/video/epLif4ju4F0/w-d-xo.html
Why do you never mention the user replaceable batteries?? That’s a *huge* deal to those of us who don’t have the ability to solder batteries to a PCB.
But if you play using the launch version gba that uses AA batteries and use a EBL 3300mah rechargeable battery, you'll get a wooping 6600 mah battery life and that would make the Ezflash omega definitive edition more ideal because you wouldn't have a battery problem anymore, and the EBL brand has a super quick 4 slot AA battery charger. that guys will solve your battery issues with Ezflash Omega definitive edition hahaha
Recently got an Everdrive after having similar power consumption issues with the EZ Flash Omega (non-DE). The Everdrive's power consumption is definitely better, and I'll be sticking with the Everdrive because that's more important to me than a lot of the other stuff. Thanks for testing that! Been waiting for someone to actually show real-world results for that.
I got it recently also, but is there a way i can save my progress! A button or something like that cause i can't save it inside the games because when i turn the gameboy off my progress goes to 0
So if i mainly play the GBA attached to a power source on the wall, i should not worry about power consumption ?
@@pokiblue5870 ofcourse not
Really just depends on what you're looking for out of a flash cart. Both definitely have their pros and cons. To me personally, the absolute most important feature is the ability to transfer Pokemon up from the GBA games to the DS games, and so it was an easy choice for me to pick up the EZ Flash since it's the only one that natively supports that. But it seems that if you don't care about any additional bells and whistles and you just want to be able to play ROMs, the Everdrive does offer a bit more of a premium experience.
The Everdrive supports SD cards greater than 64GB, you just need to ensure it's formatted as FAT32 and not exFAT. This is tricky in Windows as the default formatting tool doesn't display FAT32 formatting options by default for cards greater than 32GB, but it can be done with alternative software. While the compatibility with exFAT in the EZ Flash is great, I use a FAT32-formatted 128GB card in my Everdrive and it works great.
The Mini supports exFAT. Has for a while now.
Yep, command prompt process didn't work. But DiskGenius worked.
Love my Omega Definitive Edition.The Build quality has really improved compared to the original
Hi! Which is the difference between Omage Definitive Edition and the regular one? Thanks!
That battery test does seem a lot more than I'd expect. Maybe it's worth retesting with the flash carts in the opposite units to see if there's any difference in the GBA batteries
Both the SP’s have the same new batteries, I made them both a few weeks apart from each other. I’m going to try some more tests over the weekend anyway so I’ll try doing the same in opposite systems and see if it makes any difference
@@RetroBreak hook a multimeter in there to test actual amperage consumed, way more accurate/convincing and less time consuming.
I don’t have one, but been considering getting one if I’m going to make more of these comparisons in the future with more accurate tests :)
@@RetroBreak Don't need to be a expensive one in this case.
I was gonna make exactly this comment. Swapping the carts would definitely rule out this kind of variance.
Great comparison!
I will admit I’m really biased towards everdrives. I’ve been buying krikzz’s stuff forever and never had issues.
I actually really like the super simple, no frills, text based menu on all everdrives.
Also, I think battery life is really important with portables. 2 hours is definitely not ideal. The rumble on the EZ flash is really cool, though!
Hopefully the competition means we’ll get even better Everdrive models in the future!
But if you play using the launch version gba that uses AA batteries and use a EBL 3300mah rechargeable battery, you'll get a wooping 6600 mah battery life and that would make the Ezflash omega definitive edition more ideal because you wouldn't have a battery problem anymore, and the EBL brand has a super quick 4 slot AA battery charger. that guys will solve your battery issues with Ezflash Omega definitive edition hahaha
That’s not how AA works, you don’t double the mAh because they run in serial not parallel!
You know what this actually kind of puts me over the edge. When I have some extra cash, I think im going to mod my GBA instead of getting an analogue pocket, plus a EZ flash cartridge. I know that the price difference should be a lot, but I really want to go all out, new shell, new membranes, maybe a battery replacement, all the bells and whistles, so it'll come out to like $150 or something like that, which isnt far off from the pocket. But the pocket isnt compatible with the EZ flash which seems to be the better cartridge here.
@@MajesticBookReadings I didnt manage to get either actually. Just dont have the money for it atm.
I'd try fb market place. Most sell for about 100 but I've seen a few as low as 50
The extra battery life offered by the Everdrive has to be the most important factor
Definitely important if you’re going to be playing away from a charger! I mostly use the GameCube as I record a lot of GBA games for videos, so for that purpose the battery draw isn’t that much of an issue for me
@@RetroBreak using it on a TV is more of a niche thing compared to how most people are playing Gameboy games.
What if you turn the led lights off and what size battery do you have in the sp?
@@nathanglynn7443 I got a DS battery in SP and drains in 2 hours
@@retrogamer64007 get yourself a megabatt. I have a 900mah battery in mine from retrosix and it lasts ALOT longer it's double the usual sp size and very affordable
It's also worth noting that Krikzz sells a lot of different colored shells for the Everdrive as well. Mine is yellow to match my modded GBA. I've seen other shells for the EZ Flash, but only Retro Game Repair Shop here in the US offers more than clear orange and smoky black. So Everdrive, IMO, gets a point for physical aesthetic customization. There's also Stone Age Gamer here in the US, who sells Everdrive kits with different colored shells and labels to match. I bought my GBA Everdrive straight from Krikzz, but I went to Stone Age Gamer for my GB Everdrive. For that order I also asked their customer support if I could buy one of their labels for my GBA Everdrive since I didn't get it from them and they obliged me there.
I have a 128 GB SanDisk Ultra card working in my X5 Mini. Also, it plays all of the GBA Video ROMs that I've tested, except for Shrek, Shrek 2, and Shark Tale.
Didn’t think a 128gb would work! Can you use the full capacity? Or is it formatted to only use 64gb of it as a partition?
@@RetroBreak I believe I can use the full capacity. I currently have 54 GB of 119 GB used on a single partition. I used guiformat to format it to FAT32.
@@RetroBreak you need to format the 128GB SD as FAT32
That's because the Everdrive doesn't support 64MB Video, whereas the Easy Flash DE does
very nice video! Greetings from Minas, Brazil. I got my Everdrive recently and retired my EZ Flash Omega. No regrets so far! Better battery life & no save issues.
Cara, pense na raiva daqui do Brasil, comprei o meu X5 da Stone Age Gamer, chegou no nosso querido país no dia 02/01/2022 e até hoje não recebi. Incompetência total dos Correios. Tava tão ansioso em usar ele.
@@geraldojunior7467 que azar mano.. é muito.difícil. Fora as taxas que aparecem. Tem que pagar 15 reais a título de taxa de manuseio, fora a importação, se pegarem. Essa taxa de manuseio vc já pagou? Eles só te mandam se você pagar.
I just googled for answers on this exact topic 2 days ago... awesome timing and great video as always!
While i still prefer the Everdrive, i can give credit where credit is due; the EZ Flash is pretty cool. I like some of the things in the menu like running video files and even opening text documents (which would be super helpful for my Zelda randomizer with the spoiler log). I’m still on the side of the Everdrive, but i think the EZ Flash is giving Krikkz a run for his money. Hopefully he can release some updates for the GBA that can allow it to do those things and maybe more! Great video! Really glad you made this :D
Definitely good to have some competition! Looking forward to seeing how the next version of each card stacks up, if they do make another one!
honestly, im surprised about the power consumption difference, it's like twice as much on the ez flash, crazy
Honeatly, price is a huge point for me. ~$60 vs ~$120... eesh that a big difference.
Not only that, the ez drive has a bunch more features.
I know others may mind this, but its not that big of an issue for me that the battery dies faster. I dont get much time to play at a time any given sit down. And, i wouldve liked to see the test ran on both gba's just in case one had a battery performance issue.
But it looks like I'll be going for the ez drive. Thank you so much for this comparison video!
A few things about the EZ flash, which also applies to the Omega. The internal battery does not actually provide real time clock functionality for games like Pokemon Emerald, it actually only keeps the clock on the EZ flash operating system. When using the GBA, the EZ flash charges the internal battery (according to website), therefore it drains the battery for no benefit. I simply removed it and the battery life was much better. However, I also did Funny play isp v2 screen with 10 brightness levels. On full brightness the battery either cut out instantly, or if fully charged, lasted about 60 seconds. Since the only solution is to play with it charging, I removed the battery and made a fake battery using a DC-DC mini buck converter set to output 4v connected to a USB cord. The cord plugs into any USB port and shows green light with max brightness.
Make a Video of it!
However, the internal battery on the ezflash does appear necessary to properly unmount the sd card when turning off the console, as without it, my saves have become currupt.
Great video ! the probleme with the power consumption test is that the gba sp can have different quality of batteries one can be over used and the third party batteries are really bad and variable in terms of real capacity, the best way to do this test is to first test the Mah of the batteries to be sure they are the same or use the same gba sp and swap the cartridge
I would imagine the Ez Flash would've had much better power consumption if you disabled the LED.
I’m happy to stick with the Everdrive. For reliability (no freezing) and battery consumption. It’s no contest for me. It’s always good to have options for consumers though
But if you play using the launch version gba that uses AA batteries and use a EBL 3300mah rechargeable battery, you'll get a wooping 6600 mah battery life and that would make the Ezflash omega definitive edition more ideal because you wouldn't have a battery problem anymore, and the EBL brand has a super quick 4 slot AA battery charger. that guys will solve your battery issues with Ezflash Omega definitive edition hahaha
If you disable the realtime clock function on the EZ Flash it adds an extra hour to the battery life i have read / seen.
I want one for the Analogue Pocket. want the regular Omega or the X5 its about 69 vs 120 back here prisewise.
I have seen the EZflash normally working. Is this only a thing with the definitive edition? Do you have the latest kernel?
If turning off the clock what games don't work well without it? I thought some may need it
@@netbirth Mainly pokemon games, other that i don't know of any other game series that need the RTC
Flash carts are cool, I'm still just a sucker for original cartridges though. There's something nice about having to be deliberate with deciding what games to bring with you on a trip. Or maybe I'm just crazy 🤷
I agree, I have a flash cart but I do like original carts because it gives you a lot more motivation to actually beat the games, unlike with a flash cart where you have access to thousands of games
If I had to guess about the Pocket compatibility, I'd suspect it's the extreme power draw of the EZ Flash that's the problem. I wouldn't be surprised if the Pocket tries to protect against overdrawing from out-of-spec cartridges, and fails to when you fake it out with a real cartridge first. I recall there being talk of flash carts damaging consoles over time because of bad power specs, so that seems something to be wary of.
Possibly! I was a bit worried about forcing it to play by replacing the game while it’s running… maybe a future EZ flash could me made with less power draw and make it safer to use on the pocket
It seems to be a problem on Analogue's side. The EZ-Flash team seems interested to try to fix it on their side, but Analogue doesn't seem to care to give them a response to them getting a console for fixing it. So they'll have to wait until 2023 like everyone else to get a console.
But if you play using the launch version gba that uses AA batteries and use a EBL 3300mah rechargeable battery, you'll get a wooping 6600 mah battery life and that would make the Ezflash omega definitive edition more ideal because you wouldn't have a battery problem anymore, and the EBL brand has a super quick 4 slot AA battery charger. that guys will solve your battery issues with Ezflash Omega definitive edition hahaha
good video, will probably be getting an everdrive when it gets back in stock, I got an ezflash and was curious about the differences... couple of things, you should've done the battery test swapping the cards between the consoles and take an average or using one console since the batteries on them might be worn out differently and they might not charge to the same level as they did brand new.
also, minor observation, .XX seconds is actually "hundreds" of a second, not "milliseconds" lol... 85 milliseconds would be .085 seconds. if you wanted to use milliseconds, X.85 would've been "850 milliseconds"
If you're really* into this it's definitely worth having both, because the EZ-Flash's features are really cool, but they only apply to a very specific selection of games.
While the Everdrive's battery life applies to the entire experience, that being said tho, I'm really glad I chose the EZ-Flash, because that rumble is just cool.
For your power tests, did you charge the SPs back up, swap the carts/SPs and then test again? Like does the EZ flash get 2ish hours with both SPs or only the silver one? I'm asking since the battery in the silver one may not be as good for all we know.
yeah I would have wanted to see this comparison aswell..
I didn’t test it on both, but they both had the same brand new battery which I’d installed a few weeks earlier so they should be the same
Great comparison video. The EZ Flashlooks looks like a very good option compared to the Ever drive. However, that terrible power consumption just kills it for me. I personally need the longer battery life over everything else.
True, I’ve been thinking I should have given the Everdrive 2 points for battery life as it very important on a handheld.. still think the EZ flash does a lot better in other areas though, especially with save states and the ability to return to the main menu
But if you play using the launch version gba that uses AA batteries and use a EBL 3300mah rechargeable battery, you'll get a wooping 6600 mah battery life and that would make the Ezflash omega definitive edition more ideal because you wouldn't have a battery problem anymore, and the EBL brand has a super quick 4 slot AA battery charger. that guys will solve your battery issues with Ezflash Omega definitive edition hahaha
The battery consumption can be remedied with the "Retromodding" USB C battery packs for the AGB 001/AGS101 configuration. My GBA mod setup with Ezflash Omega DE runs for 10 hours on a single charge. 😉
Come to think of it - You can probably get roughly 15-18hrs out of it using the Everdrive 😮
It's the double battery life of Everdrive for me. It's worth 5 points.
But if you play using the launch version gba that uses AA batteries and use a EBL 3300mah rechargeable battery, you'll get a wooping 6600 mah battery life and that would make the Ezflash omega definitive edition more ideal because you wouldn't have a battery problem anymore, and the EBL brand has a super quick 4 slot AA battery charger. that guys will solve your battery issues with Ezflash Omega definitive edition hahaha
@@knivez.official Those are 3300 mWh, not mAh
@@Snowpiercer2 ok my mistake, but there is a EBL 2800 mah and still thats a large amount
@@Snowpiercer2 you still get 5600mah with the two 2800mah EBL
@@Snowpiercer2 and comapre that 5600mah to the gba sp 600mah battery lol, its just a huge difference, and when its worn out its easy replacable compared to the faced out battery of sp
Very good video comparison. I found it very informitive. I do feel you left out a key category. GBA Video. I am certain both carts can play the Nickelodeon GBA Video carts. For years, Shrek and Shrek 2 for GBA Video can not run on such carts. It is still a mystery to this day as to why. I feel this is the ultimate test. Till that day…
The EZ Flash DE can play ALL GBA Video titles (the normal EZ Flash cannot and nor can the Everdrive)
I actually prefer the SD slot on the ez flash, it may be finicky but I can always get it in and out by hand. I can never get the SD card out of the everdrive without a tool like a flat head screw driver, a spider or anything else that can push it down fr enough to trigger the spring release.
I got the ez-flash omega (Definitive Edition) back in March 2021. I've never had a single problem with it but for the battery life. Later last year i got my battery tested by a friend and we found out that the brand new battery i was using had a very (and i mean VERY) low capacity compared to the original one, it was something like 45%. I still have to replace it, but just to let you know: i'm getting 1 hour and a half of gaming out of that crappy battery...
If you find a good place to get replacement batteries, let me know! I’m wondering if the new batteries I got for these SP’s aren’t very good, as even the Everdrive didn’t last as long as I was expecting..
@@RetroBreak The MegaBat800 by Helder is a lot better than the other SP batteries I’ve tried.
But if you play using the launch version gba that uses AA batteries and use a EBL 3300mah rechargeable battery, you'll get a wooping 6600 mah battery life and that would make the Ezflash omega definitive edition more ideal because you wouldn't have a battery problem anymore, and the EBL brand has a super quick 4 slot AA battery charger. that guys will solve your battery issues with Ezflash Omega definitive edition hahaha
@@knivez.official that's true indeed, but there are people out there who likes the SP form factor more than the original
6:11
It might've been worthwhile to retest and swap the carts just to make sure it wasn't the GBA battery causing the premature shutdown.
Turn on Fast Patch Engine on EZ ODE it will load games super fast (skip the GBA booting logo). I had freezing issue with Rev A, now I have Rev B, it's all good. You can apply Rumble Patch for heaps of GBA and GBC games.
I have the both flashcart and I've been using EZ ODE most of the time, battery has no more issue for me as I'm using orginal GBA with AA lithium rechargeable battery, can play up to 5 hours and more.
EZ ODE is more fun to play with in my honest opinion.
In The E-Z flashes defense you did have its light on for the power consumption test.
I think you should retest the battery consumption on the EZ Flash with the LED off. I’m sure that will make a difference, but by how much 🧐
I’m also wondering if the glitch where the game got stuck on the title screen has anything to do with it dying so fast? I’ll try some more tests over the weekend and let you know if it makes any difference with the LED off!
@@RetroBreak I have both, and I noticed the ez has a love hate relationship with battery life. Some sessions, it lasts longer, other sessions it doesn't.
How do I know this? The interesting thing is I tested it on a Gameboy micro and sometimes when my micro is fully charged, when I boot into a game on the ez, the red light (for low battery turns on). If I turn it off and back on, sometimes the red lights don't turn on (so it's almost like the ez decides if it will suck up more power with some gaming sessions)
@@jajabinx35 It could just be crud in the power switch. Sometimes my SP shows red light on full charge with a retail cart or no cart, and flipping the power switch off and on again usually makes it green and stays that way. As far as I can tell, once the light is red it will stay that way until the system is turned off or a charger is connected. I think this is to prevent the weird red/green rapid flickering the power light on the original GBA did when the batteries were borderline low.
@@jajabinx35 booting games with addons like RTS really hogs battery. Clean boot still hogs but less
@@RetroBreak Hi can we have an update ? Did you found a difference ?
I've bought the EverDrive half a year ago and it's been absolutely amazing. Although the other cartridge has some features I'm very interested in, I do really like me some build quality.
How reliable is it? Are the saves reliable?
My EZ Flash turned up today, having trouble trying to get thumbnails to scrub as I only use ROMs I own but don’t want to manually download each one individually. But looking forward to using it once I figure it out. Nice comparison vid.
Hope you can figure out a way of getting the thumbnails to work! Let us know if you figure it it as I’m sure there’s other people who want to use their own roms too!
very good video but i think you meant hundredth of a seconds instead of milliseconds xD but we all understand the point. much love from switzerland i always enjoy your videos
Amazing video, I have just gotten into flash carts and this answered every question I had about which I should get. Thanks so much!
For the power consumption test, im curious why you didnt run the tests twice, swapping the cartridge each time, and then average the times for each cart. That would have virtually eliminated any console specific or battery age biases.
My original Omega was from such a bad build quality - i thought they've been kidding me. It's that far now, that i put tape around it to get the damn thing out of my gba in one piece. I've been still crazy enough to buy the Omega DE, and i'm quite happy with it.
Only thing my mind cant handle here is you should have done the reverse power usage test, as in swap the carts in consoles and do it again just to eliminate battery variance 😄
I think the build quality is a super important factor here. I’m not some sort of technology dunce, I say that because I know this might sound hard to believe- I bought FOUR EZ Flash Omega DE carts and NONE of them worked. I had Micro SD initial errors with the first 2 and the second 2 couldn’t get the kernel updates past 1%.
I tried several different brands and sizes of SD cards and they were all formatted correctly. I talked to their official support team and even they were stumped, I did everything right.
You can see even in this video the EZ Flash is buggier and prone to malfunction, and he also mentions how shoddy the SD card slot is specifically. It’s simply an inferior build quality.
Please keep this in mind when you buy…. I threw away hundreds of dollars on defective, brand new EZ Flash carts from trusted sellers.
just ordered the omega de! can't wait to test it out!
I own the Everdrive X5 Mini and the regular EZ Flash Omega (not Definitive Edition). While I do love the savestates and cheat functionality of the EZ Flash, I cannot count how many times it has frozen like it did in the battery test in this video. I do not know if the Definitive Edition fixes this issue, but at least for me, I would rather have the stability of the Everdrive over the extra features of the EZ Flash. The smaller power consumption is a huge difference for me too, so the Everdrive wins there for me at least.
I wish the Everdrive just came with SAV file support, but I haven't been able to find a way to get that working (other than just changing the file extension, which isn't hard but it is a hassle if you like to move saves around between emulators). Though the fact I can choose between EEPROM, SRAM, Flash64, and Flash128 save types with RTC on/off on the Everdrive is pretty cool.
To make it a fair power usuage comparison I’d say you have to disable the LED on the EZ Flash as that’s an “extra” feature the Megadrive doesn’t have. And then run the test until shutdown on one GBA for each, or ideally on both for each. The way you did it in this video means your result could also just be that your one GBA’s battery is 50% worse than the other, there is no way to tell even if the batteries are brand new in both since they vary so much in quality between units.
The led is the least of the problems for battery consumption, as they usually don’t draw too much power. It is a fact that the EZ Flash (in whatever presentation) has worse power consumption than the Everdrives.
The thing here is what you prefer, the options of the EZ or the battery life of the Ever.
Krikzz EVERDRIVE products are the Best !!!
Thanks for the informative video! Still relevant information that will definitely help my decision making 👍
I have both
I hear there is a few issues ppl been having/posting for the Ez flash ODE
The Everdrive has better quality shell & it consumes less than the other ...
I too hate the micro sd card slot it almost... slips to the PCB board
I’ve had my micro SD card actually fall inside a few times now and had to shake it around to get it out! Terrible design!
Spring can snap in everdrive then you’re screwed
this is exactly why i chose ez flash omega de over everdrive it just packs more and its cheaper, i dont mind the pocket thing as i can still play it on the pocket using that gba method but yes glad i got ezflash over ed
Love the video! Can I recommend for battery tests in future you use the exact same console? Need to remove the variable of differences between batteries 😉
Keep up the great content
They both have the same new batteries as I made them only a few weeks apart from each other. I’m going to do some more tests over the weekend though so I’ll try the test again using the opposite console for each one and see if there is any difference. I’m wondering if the EZ flash died so soon too because of the glitch it seemed to have near the end?
@@RetroBreak yeah nice switching them will confirm. Good point, freezing up might have stuck the processer at full or somthing. Interested to hear if it's any different or if it really does use that much more power
I has the basic ez flash and just got an ever drive. The battery life is whats important to me
Power consumption and compatibility are my main worries, I'd go for everdrive
Knowing Krikzz's naming scheme, an X7 may roll around at some point and match this EZ Flash in features. I'll wait for that. Because while the EZ Flash seems great, the battery life thing is a huge minus and I don't know how good their long term support is. I was also quite surprised you didn't mention being able to use it as a legit pokemon cart as a huge plus, no flashcart has done that before. That all being said, if you're not intending to go portable and just want to use it in a gb player or on a consolized GBA the EZ Flash seems better.
Everdrive or EZFlash can be used as a legit pkmn cart?
@@birdiec Just EZ Flash Omega DE
year later....nope
Save states alone make the EZ Flash a better choice. They actually work really well and are very convenient for ganes that don't support sleep mode. The battery consumption can be fixed (at least for the original gba) with a usb-c rechargable battery pack you can get on Aliexpress.
Nice comparison. Speaking of hardware compatibility, the Omega DE doesn't work with the GBA Consolizer, while the ED does. Unfortunately unlike with the Pocket there's no known workaround.
That’s a shame! I’ve wanted to get a consoleizer for a while! Wonder why it doesn’t work at all
@@RetroBreak No one really knows, the EZ Flash team was made aware of it almost since the Omega DE was released, but they said they'd need a Consolizer to figure it out. They refuse to pay for one so unless someone sends them one they never will.
I feel like these categories should be weighted as most of the categories the ezyflash won are mostly "who cares". Based on this I would get the Everdrive as it excels or is equal where it matters.
Yeah, I’ve been thinking I probably should have awarded two points to the Everdrive for battery life, as for most people that is much more important than any kind of extra features.
Fantastic video mate. I think we just need a everdrive 7 for gba to come out 😁
I bought my gba x5 about a week ago and it delivers tomarrow , in my opinion - as far as quality goes - you can’t beat a krixx everdrive . Don’t have an ez flash but I do want one just to play around with
Did you get it
@@ongakuwotabeta luckily I did , yes
@@MrBlizzard769 you might be one of the last people to have an Ever drive new
Very Nice! Expect a sequel of this video in 2022, mainly about EZ-fixes I guess!
I'm sure that for the battery life you have done a second test and swapped GBAs since there's no way of telling how many mAh each one holds just by looking at them...
Definitely isn’t a valid test without running the same test with systems swapped.
I'm genuinely confused, I've read the everdrive x5 can emulate NES, SEGA, and GB/GBC games and you said it couldn't?
Also my EZflash has a really bad habit if corrupting it's own save data when you save (yes I wait over 5 seconds when saving and it still self corrupts)
For those who heavily value battery life over all other categories, there is still a reason to get the omega!! Spare gba sp batteries only cost ~$10. If battery life is this much of a problem, I'd recommend charging two different batteries and carrying them both with you for double the battery life!
Here in the states I can get an everdrive for $99, or an EZ flash DE for $71. $28 extra for almost double battery life? No brainer. Keep your rumble, ez flash, I’m all in for the Everdrive.
Game Compability: Have you tested things like the Pokemon Event Distribution Roms? Cause back in the days the old EZ Flash wasn't doing that well. The Everdrive had no problems at all with the roms.
eh, I still find the Everdrive to be better. The goal of these carts, in my eyes, is to allow you to play a huge library of ROMS on original hardware. To that end, emulation really means nothing to me. If I wanted to emulate games, I could (and actually have) dumped complete sets of every portable system I can think of on my smartphone and play them in RetroArch; and it will most likely be a more refined experience. I can even attach a controller. My focus is using my original GBA/SP or Analogue Pocket to play a huge library of games. For that I want battery, performance and reliability; and in all those categries, Everdrive is king.
i wonder how big the difference in battery consumption becomes if you turn off the EZ flashs internal led
The EZ Flash is better but people just can't change their bias toward Everdrive. They were all condition by other youtuber who got the everdrive for free to promote it. It's like telling an Apple fan that android is better....they will simply not listen
Ever drive in Australia is 250 bucks vs 120 ez omega DE. We all don’t live in USA
EZ I have been told works on Palpark and that's awesome
The ez flash doesn't work well like the everdrive on the analogue pocket
@@theo5675 it's a problem of the analog pocket not the ez flash tho
@@theo5675Have you tried it? Because my ez flash works just fine on my analogue pocket.
It might be that the with EZ-Flash it is slightly harder to get the SD card in and out. But I do prefer having it on the side of the cartridge, instead of on the back where it slightly sticks out and you feel it with your fingers depending on how you hold your GBA(SP). Also, I have had mine accidentally pop out on the Everdrive...
I love my everdrive but man… that ez flash user interface is Clean af!
I had an original ez-flash omega and worked amazingly until i lost all my save files from a game that i was playing, maybe if you backup save files regularly you will be fine? I personally just end up selling it and got X5.
In terms of battery life it will depend what kind of setup you running, with my og gba modded with a ags101screen and rechargeable batteries def lasts me a long time, sometimes i spend multiple days without charging them
I just loaded up all the 1g1r English romsets + 2023 translations for every system the EZ flash supports and they all fit on a 32 gig card.
I got the X5 Mini right when it came out, and I was disappointed with the lack of GBA cheat support, i.e. GameShark
i've tried two Ez Flash definitive editons and they both had a freezing issue like what happened in your battery test, tested plugged in. Not sure if im unlucky or if they just suck. Found they normally froze at the 1-3 hour mark, sometimes rarley making it to 5 hours
did they freeze during gameplay? or just if you'd left it idle for a while like I did in this test? Ive played it for a few hours and not had it freeze before, so I really hope this was just a once off, else that's a bit worrying!
@@RetroBreak I first noticed freezing as an issue during gameplay, I was playing a super robot wars game and during a attack cutscene it froze, so i decided to leave it idle to test further and yeah it would freeze. The ez flash support page for my first card was telling me that the issue might have been my roms not being clean but the pokemon emerald rom i used for testing came from my actual cartridge ripped with a gbx cart reader (I think thats what it was called ) and even the gba test rom they recommended would freeze. Again maybe I just have bad luck. The only way i could get the games to not freeze was to load them into NOR but I don't think it should be made that everytime you want to play a game without it freezing you have to load it into NOR. Honestly I think the chip that is not the nor for loading roms might just be unstable or something. I wish the support for the card was better. Also what kind of power stuff did your gba sp in the video have. Screen mods? Battery Mods? on the support forum they talk about those possibly causing issues.
I wonder if it might be something to do with the speed or capacity of the SD card, if moving it to the internal storage fixes it? The SP’s both has new IPS screens and new batteries, so they might cause a problem too?
@@RetroBreak considering you have new batteries it might not cause much of an issue. I have tried a few different sd cards with same results pretty much. I think how the ez flash works is that when you load a game it loads it onto a ram chip (Might not be right) , I believe what is happening perhaps the rom loaded into that ram chip goes bad perhaps? I would think power for me could be an issue but the gameboy player has the issue as well which I would like to think has good power. I also did update the cards to the newest firmware which was supposed to have fixed freezing. I might return the 2nd and get a 3rd card just to try once more because i really want the ez flash for pokemon rom hacks and the pokemon transferring feature is something the everdrive lacks.
Was that only with the options (to go back to menu for instance) on, or did you make clean boots?
I have an EZ flash, and it works on my Analogue Pocket.
How do these compare to the cheapo purple super card mini flashcart?
What about the longevity of the EZ Flash? I'm seeing more mentions around various places that the EZ Flash has dies on them only after a few months or less. I don't see that about the Everdrive GBA or basically any Everdrive
Does anybody know if either cart supports the ability to transfer Pokémon from the gen 3 games (Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Firered, and Leafgreen) to the geb 4 DS games (Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, Heartgold, and Soulsilver)?
From what I've heard you can send Pokémon to the PAL Park on the EZ Flash but I just can't find any super apparent answers since I guess I'm the only one attempting to use them this way.
EZ Flash Omega died after only 2 days of use for me. Nice to see I'm the only person who got a defective unit. I had to fork up $115 for an Everdrive.
Hey! Did you notice any save file corruption issue? The previous one (EZ Flash Omega) had many issues and the developers couldn't solve it.
Not had a problem yet, but If I do in the future I’ll let you know!
I’ve had the Definitive Edition for about a year and have had no issues with save corruption!
I believe the core issue with the Omega was people turning it off right away after saving. Older EZFlash 4 and Reform saved to a battery-backed RAM chip like what old Gameboy carts used, and then write it back to the SD card on next boot. The core problem here was that if the battery dies it won't retain the save long enough to write it to the SD card. Omega writes it to NON battery RAM but then starts writing it back to the SD immediately after saving. Turn it off and you can lose your save or corrupt more stuff on your SD. Counting 3 seconds between saving and turning it off will ensure you don't lose data.
Omega DE drops that method and returns to writing it back on the next boot, but swaps the battery-backed RAM for a pricier FRAM chip, which retains data without needing a battery. That way even if the battery in the cartridge dies completely all you lose is the realtime clock.
Omega definition edition fixes that with ferroelectric ram.
Personally the micro sd slot shouldn’t be an issue for anyone once you set it up, you’ll never have to remove it making the point mute, no offense.
You should have tested using the same SP. Really hurts the experiment. It doesn't matter if the settings were the same for both.
They both had the identical brand new battery as I’d just made both systems
@@RetroBreak It has to be the same individual battery. Two batteries theoretically the same can still produce different results.
Easy choice for EZ with all its features and it's made by a quality manufacturer.
Do either of them work with the Game Cube Gameboy player ?
They both do :)
@@RetroBreak sweet ty !
Ah I thought my battery issues were because not only did I have an IPS Screen, but I also got some wacky new battery that could charge with USB-C for my GBA
Also another thing that wasn't mentioned was that the EZflash came with a separate casing so that you could stick it into a DSlite at half the size and it wouldn't stick out of the system. IDK if everdrive has this alternative
Thanks, I can make a much more informed decision now.
Should have swapped the carts in the GBAs when testing the battery as one of the batteries may be better than the other. See if the results are the same.
How is the battery life of the EZ Flash if you run a game in single use mode? Any different?
That was running it in single use “clean boot” mode, so expect it to be even worse if you use add ons :(
Any update on comparitability with the Analogue Pocket?
I'm a fan of the ez flash, but I haven't tried the new model yet myself. The feature set and low cost of the ez flash I think really help it considering it's significant power draw. I have a 2k mah battery in my GBA though, so I'm good with that too.
I had a question though. In my experience, iridion 2 has always frozen on me after playing for 10 minutes across all the ez flashes I've tried and on all the consoles I've tried it on. Please try iridion 2 and let me know if the game is stable on either of those carts. I was thinking about getting another flash cart just so I could make sure that game works, it's my favorite shooter on the GBA.
I tried it for 12 minutes on my original omega not DE and it didn’t freeze. Have you updated firmware? Maybe your rom is bad get a new rom
To get the better boot time on the EZ Flash do you have to scroll down in the menu and select a specific boot mode every time to get the faster boot? If you do that’s time added.
You have to do it once, but when the game is in that list you just need to hold R when you play it and it skips the intro, so not really any extra effort
Dude 52 pounds for the ez flash? Over here in Germany its at least 80 € upwards not considering shipping
Which cart has an easier method of replacing the internal battery, do they both require soldering?
I wish there was a cartridge available with cheat support and low power consumption.. My old ezflash 4 has bad build quality and is too slow loading games, still don’t know what to upgrade to.
Does booting games directly from NOR in mode B decrease the power draw of the ODE?
I think you can disable the RGB LED on the EZ Flash - could you test the power consumption again with the disabled LED? I would love to know the difference the LED makes on the EZ Flash
The Everdrive can direct boot as well by pressing start and it is lightning fast.
I've purchased both, the Everdrive X5 for myself and the EZ Flash Omega Definitive Edition for my fiancée, we use them in our NDS Lites, and they're both easy to use and both do the job.
Thanks for this !
i know this is late but is the gbsp running in stock battery? or modded? because my sp only last about 1 and half hour using ez flash 4 thinking of getting everdrive
ez flash would glitch on me randomly, everdrive is super consistent.