This Low-Cost Android Box Is An Awesome Emulation Machine! Hands-On With The HK1

**The Benefits and Challenges of Emulation with the S905X 3**

The S905X 3 is a powerful little device that can handle emulation like a pro. This tiny box comes equipped with an s905x 3 processor, which allows it to run emulators smoothly and efficiently. One of the most impressive things about this device is its ability to emulate games from various consoles, including PSP, PS2, SNES, NES, PC Engine, Neo Geo, and more.

**PSP Emulation**

One of the devices tested with the S905X 3 was the PlayStation Portable (PSP). The PSP emulator worked seamlessly on the device, allowing for frame skips and smooth gameplay. However, the harder-to-emulate games did struggle to run well, indicating that the s905x 3's capabilities are best suited for more accessible titles.

**Comparison with Other Devices**

The S905X 3 was compared to other devices, such as the Raspberry Pi 4 and the HK1 box. While the Raspberry Pi 4 can also handle emulation, the HK1 box proved to be a better option due to its lower price point. The Raspberry Pi 4 may struggle with certain games, while the HK1 box supports both Android and microSD card boot.

**Android Emulation**

The S905X 3's Android capabilities are impressive, with many emulators running smoothly on the device. The device comes preloaded with some popular emulators, such as DraStic for DS games. Users can also download additional emulators from various sources. The device's Android interface is user-friendly and allows users to navigate their collection of games easily.

**MicroSD Card Boot**

One of the unique features of the S905X 3 is its ability to boot from a microSD card. This feature is made possible by a small button inside the device's audio jack, which must be pressed during initial setup. Users can install their favorite emulators and games on the microSD card, making it easy to switch between different devices.

**Dreamcast Emulation**

The S905X 3 was tested with Dreamcast emulation using U or Bosera emulators. These emulators work well on Android but may not be as smooth as they are in U or Bosera. When switched to N64 emulation, the device performs better in Android than it does with microSD card boot.

**Sega Genesis Emulation**

The S905X 3 was also tested with Sega Genesis emulation using an emu emulator. The device's built-in controller supports the emu emulator, allowing for seamless gameplay. Users can download box art and set up bezels to customize their gaming experience.

**Conclusion and Recommendations**

In conclusion, the S905X 3 is a powerful device that can handle emulation with ease. Its ability to run games from various consoles makes it an excellent option for retro gamers. The device's low price point compared to other options in its class make it an attractive choice for those looking to get into emulation.

For those interested in purchasing the S905X 3, there are several links available in the description below. Additionally, users can refer to a tutorial video on setting up emu on an Android box, which is also linked in the description.

**Additional Resources and Questions**

If you have any questions or would like to see more games running on this device, please leave them in the comments section below. For those interested in purchasing the S905X 3 or other related devices, be sure to check out the links provided below for further information and purchase options.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey what's going on everybody it's ETA Prime back here again today we're going to be taking a look at this inexpensive Android box and see if it would be worth picking one of these up as a little retro console now as making this video raspberry pies are a bit hard to find I mean you can find them but the price is going to be hiked up I've seen some people scalping them on eBay so I picked up a inexpensive Android box for $32 this is the hk1 Box powered by an AM logic CPU you you can actually get these with the upgraded storage of 128 GB for around 55 but 32 will work out for me it does have Android installed on it ready to go we've got access to Google Play and with this hk1 box we can install something like emu El or bosera from a Micro SD card so I've been a big fan of these little Android boxes for a while now and one of the main reasons is the price on them you can find some of these as low as 20 bucks with that am logic CPU but the one I have here I got for $32 if you opt to get this on Amazon you can get it shipped quicker in the US but it's going to be a bit more expensive we also get our power supply HDMI cable and a remote so the game controller you're seeing beside this was purchased separately these are relatively cheap on eBay and Amazon and one of the main reasons I opted to get this one is because it does have a 2.4 GHz dongle you're going to plug this into one of the free USB ports on the little Android box and you've got a game controller but remember these do have Bluetooth built in so you can connect an Xbox controller to it if you already have one and to tell you the truth if you already have a PS3 PS4 PS5 or even an Xbox controller I would go with that but you can pick these wireless controllers up for pretty cheap and they're not that bad they're not top the line but they will get you by so all in all I've got $58 into this little setup here and I've just pulled the top off to give you a look at the internals we do have a heat sink on that CPU this also has 4 GB of RAM and 32 GB of internal storage plus we have my micro SD card support so this is known as the hk1 box and if you're shopping for these make sure you get one with the amlogic s905x 3 you'll see some with rock chips but they're not going to perform as well we've got four cores up to 1.9 GHz Mali g31 mp2 GPU 4 gigs of RAM 32 GB of storage 2.4 and 5 GHz Wi-Fi Bluetooth 4.0 gigabit Ethernet 1 USB 3.0 Port 1 USB 2.0 port and a microSD d card slot so the way these sit coming right out of the box you can actually do some awesome emulation on it with Android and it's actually a little easier to set up because we do have access to Google Play and a lot of us already use Android so we kind of know what we're doing here but these also support micro SD card Boot and you can run something like bot Sera or emu elect just to have a full emulation frontend operating system running right on this little box by the end of this video we will take a look at emu El running on this but really when it comes to down to it these actually do a great job with emulation with Android plus we have access to other apps that we can use like cloud gaming apps and Native Android game so that's really what we're going to be taking a look at with this box in this video so with this one here we've got a pretty basic interface you can use your remote for it you can also use your controller to navigate the full Android operating system got my wireless controller plugged in it works just like an Xbox controller or one of my favorite things to do with these boxes is just plug a little wireless mouse and keyboard in we can navigate everything get in there really easy set everything up with that mouse and keyboard and then just use our remote to start up our games and when it comes to using Android for emulation personally I like to use a lot of Stalone emulators when it comes to the lower-end stuff I'll go with retro Arch but uh for like N64 PSP Dreamcast and things like that I do like going Standalone now another thing we can do is install a totally different launcher just to make it a lot cleaner and with this here we can actually set this up to be the only launcher so as soon as we boot it up it'll go right into the Android TV launcher this is one of my favorites just because we do have a lot of flexibility I've just set up the apps that I'm really going to be using on this Android box to be right at the main menu here you can also install a thirdparty emulation front end like dig or launchbox and it does work on this little box but personally with these setups here I like using something like the Android TV launcher because there's actually more apps that I'd like to use than emulation on this setup we do have access to YouTube Netflix and things like that plus my favorite cloud gaming apps we can stream from our local PC using steam link or Moonlight and we also have access to Native Android games now there's a few here that I personally like playing and they do perform pretty well on the s905x 3 so here we have Minecraft it's definitely not the best performance that I've seen but you know if you got a younger kid they're going to be more than happy to play Minecraft on this just like it sits now a little box like this isn't going to run Call of Duty mobile pubg or gench and impact but some of the older titles that were ported over like San Andreas do work really good on this thing this is uh from the Google Play Store this is the Android port of the game and as you can see here it is fully playable I'm even using that wireless controller that I picked up with this whole setup and when it comes to cloud gaming stadia GeForce now or even xcloud or Xbox game streaming works great we do have 5 GHz Wi-Fi built in on this little box but when it comes to cloud gaming I would always suggest using ethernet I've just plugged in my ethernet cable here and here we have Forza Horizon 5 streaming from the cloud this isn't streaming from an Xbox in my house this is the cloud gaming portion of everything so all around with these little Android boxes there's a ton that we can do on them but you know we definitely want to get into some emulation so let's go ahead and move over there now it's not going to run PS2 games it's not going to run GameCube games but but there's still thousands and thousands of games that do work well with the s905x 3 and first up we have PS1 I personally like using retro Arch like up to PS1 and on this box I'll even use it for Dreamcast and the flycast core but what you're seeing running now is retroarch with the PC SX rearm core we're running Colin McCrae dirt rally 2 looking great here running at 60fps and Playstation 1 runs great on these little chips next up we've got some Dreamcast using retro Arch and the flycast core Marvel versus Capcom 2 and I'm going to let you in on the little secret Dreamcast doesn't perform Super well on the s905x 3 whether you're using this core here with retro Arch the Standalone version of raycast or even redream just comes down to that CPU speed on the chip itself now don't get me wrong there are some games that will be fully playable with each one of those emulators but it's not the best performance that I've seen out of these mobile chips moving over to some N64 I personally used the Stalone version of muin 64 plus FZ and in the last year or so I mean we've gotten really good N64 emulation on a lot of these little Android boxes and especially these am logic boxes even a harder game to emulate like conquer Bad Fur Day does perform quite well a cow that could be useful right taking it up to PSP there's lots of games that are going to be fully playable here at 1X using openg or Vulcan I just happen to be using Vulcan here with Kingdom Hearts and I don't have any frame skip going on but I will tell you that you know the harder to emulate games just really aren't going to run well I mean when it comes to emulation on this little setup I've kind of noticed that it's about the same as the Raspberry Pi 4 if you wanted to do something like chains of Olympus Ghost of Sparta Killzone or even Midnight Club even with frame skip on it's just not going to run great but that doesn't mean PSP doesn't work on this unit it's just really the harder to emulate stuff struggles round so you know anything under what I've shown so far like NES SNES PC engine Neo Geo we've got a lot of FBA cps1 2 and three are going to run great even DS using the DraStic emulator runs at full speed this is just a really great emulator and in my experience it works on a lot of different chips so what we've taken a look at so far is running in Android but like I mentioned we do have the option to install something like emu elect to a Micro SD card now there's a lot of tutorials out there I've actually done a couple and with this box here there is a little tiny button inside of that 3.5 mm audio jack you need to press this while you're booting it up one time with that micro SD card and after that you can actually boot it from that micro SD card with no problem at all so I'm running this from a 256 GB micro SD card I've installed all of my games I've got a couple themes to choose from I really do like the way this looks and with some of these emulators especially with emu elect they've really kind of been optimized for the s905x 3 I find that Dreamcast does work a bit better with uh U or bosera than it does in Android but then when you move over to N64 it actually works better in Android so in the end it's really up to you I personally think that this is a nice little interface we've got all of our games listed here you can download box art you can set up bezels if you want to and it's just a nice streamline emulation front end it just makes it a lot easier to navigate once you have everything set up correctly so what we got here is just some Sega Genesis still using that controller I did have to set it up with emu but it does work over that 2.4 GHz dongle that comes with the controller and like I mentioned I have done a tutorial video setting emu up on an Android box I'll leave a link to that video in the description and I do need to update it but you should be able to get everything up and running plus there's tons of information online on how to do this but just remember we do have options you can always just use Android for your emulation needs and your streaming needs it's really up to you or you can go all out and install an operating system to a Micro SD card so in the end I personally think it would be worth picking something like this up given the prices of raspberry pies and other single board computers I haven't seen the price on these be you know super jacked up there are some sites that will charge you a little more and say that the box is much better because it does come preloaded but I would go with a cheap box like the hk1 you saw in this video and you can have a great time with emulation on this little setup for really cheap and especially if you already have a controller even if you already have just a wired controller you can plug it right into one of the fre USB ports and use it like that until you get a wireless setup so yeah if you're looking for a cheap emulation SL cloud gaming SL lowend native Android gaming device then I can recommend one of these little boxes with that s905x 3 I know for sure here that the hk1 does support that micro SD card boot but if you opt for something else there's a good chance it will also support it and before you pick it up just do a quick Google search and see if you can do that boot from micro SD but that's going to wrap it up for this one if you're interested in picking up anything you saw in this video I will leave some links in the description you can get them much quicker on Amazon but they are more expensive so I'm going to leave a few links down below if you have any questions or you want to see anything else running on this device just let me know in the comments below and like always thanks for watchinghey what's going on everybody it's ETA Prime back here again today we're going to be taking a look at this inexpensive Android box and see if it would be worth picking one of these up as a little retro console now as making this video raspberry pies are a bit hard to find I mean you can find them but the price is going to be hiked up I've seen some people scalping them on eBay so I picked up a inexpensive Android box for $32 this is the hk1 Box powered by an AM logic CPU you you can actually get these with the upgraded storage of 128 GB for around 55 but 32 will work out for me it does have Android installed on it ready to go we've got access to Google Play and with this hk1 box we can install something like emu El or bosera from a Micro SD card so I've been a big fan of these little Android boxes for a while now and one of the main reasons is the price on them you can find some of these as low as 20 bucks with that am logic CPU but the one I have here I got for $32 if you opt to get this on Amazon you can get it shipped quicker in the US but it's going to be a bit more expensive we also get our power supply HDMI cable and a remote so the game controller you're seeing beside this was purchased separately these are relatively cheap on eBay and Amazon and one of the main reasons I opted to get this one is because it does have a 2.4 GHz dongle you're going to plug this into one of the free USB ports on the little Android box and you've got a game controller but remember these do have Bluetooth built in so you can connect an Xbox controller to it if you already have one and to tell you the truth if you already have a PS3 PS4 PS5 or even an Xbox controller I would go with that but you can pick these wireless controllers up for pretty cheap and they're not that bad they're not top the line but they will get you by so all in all I've got $58 into this little setup here and I've just pulled the top off to give you a look at the internals we do have a heat sink on that CPU this also has 4 GB of RAM and 32 GB of internal storage plus we have my micro SD card support so this is known as the hk1 box and if you're shopping for these make sure you get one with the amlogic s905x 3 you'll see some with rock chips but they're not going to perform as well we've got four cores up to 1.9 GHz Mali g31 mp2 GPU 4 gigs of RAM 32 GB of storage 2.4 and 5 GHz Wi-Fi Bluetooth 4.0 gigabit Ethernet 1 USB 3.0 Port 1 USB 2.0 port and a microSD d card slot so the way these sit coming right out of the box you can actually do some awesome emulation on it with Android and it's actually a little easier to set up because we do have access to Google Play and a lot of us already use Android so we kind of know what we're doing here but these also support micro SD card Boot and you can run something like bot Sera or emu elect just to have a full emulation frontend operating system running right on this little box by the end of this video we will take a look at emu El running on this but really when it comes to down to it these actually do a great job with emulation with Android plus we have access to other apps that we can use like cloud gaming apps and Native Android game so that's really what we're going to be taking a look at with this box in this video so with this one here we've got a pretty basic interface you can use your remote for it you can also use your controller to navigate the full Android operating system got my wireless controller plugged in it works just like an Xbox controller or one of my favorite things to do with these boxes is just plug a little wireless mouse and keyboard in we can navigate everything get in there really easy set everything up with that mouse and keyboard and then just use our remote to start up our games and when it comes to using Android for emulation personally I like to use a lot of Stalone emulators when it comes to the lower-end stuff I'll go with retro Arch but uh for like N64 PSP Dreamcast and things like that I do like going Standalone now another thing we can do is install a totally different launcher just to make it a lot cleaner and with this here we can actually set this up to be the only launcher so as soon as we boot it up it'll go right into the Android TV launcher this is one of my favorites just because we do have a lot of flexibility I've just set up the apps that I'm really going to be using on this Android box to be right at the main menu here you can also install a thirdparty emulation front end like dig or launchbox and it does work on this little box but personally with these setups here I like using something like the Android TV launcher because there's actually more apps that I'd like to use than emulation on this setup we do have access to YouTube Netflix and things like that plus my favorite cloud gaming apps we can stream from our local PC using steam link or Moonlight and we also have access to Native Android games now there's a few here that I personally like playing and they do perform pretty well on the s905x 3 so here we have Minecraft it's definitely not the best performance that I've seen but you know if you got a younger kid they're going to be more than happy to play Minecraft on this just like it sits now a little box like this isn't going to run Call of Duty mobile pubg or gench and impact but some of the older titles that were ported over like San Andreas do work really good on this thing this is uh from the Google Play Store this is the Android port of the game and as you can see here it is fully playable I'm even using that wireless controller that I picked up with this whole setup and when it comes to cloud gaming stadia GeForce now or even xcloud or Xbox game streaming works great we do have 5 GHz Wi-Fi built in on this little box but when it comes to cloud gaming I would always suggest using ethernet I've just plugged in my ethernet cable here and here we have Forza Horizon 5 streaming from the cloud this isn't streaming from an Xbox in my house this is the cloud gaming portion of everything so all around with these little Android boxes there's a ton that we can do on them but you know we definitely want to get into some emulation so let's go ahead and move over there now it's not going to run PS2 games it's not going to run GameCube games but but there's still thousands and thousands of games that do work well with the s905x 3 and first up we have PS1 I personally like using retro Arch like up to PS1 and on this box I'll even use it for Dreamcast and the flycast core but what you're seeing running now is retroarch with the PC SX rearm core we're running Colin McCrae dirt rally 2 looking great here running at 60fps and Playstation 1 runs great on these little chips next up we've got some Dreamcast using retro Arch and the flycast core Marvel versus Capcom 2 and I'm going to let you in on the little secret Dreamcast doesn't perform Super well on the s905x 3 whether you're using this core here with retro Arch the Standalone version of raycast or even redream just comes down to that CPU speed on the chip itself now don't get me wrong there are some games that will be fully playable with each one of those emulators but it's not the best performance that I've seen out of these mobile chips moving over to some N64 I personally used the Stalone version of muin 64 plus FZ and in the last year or so I mean we've gotten really good N64 emulation on a lot of these little Android boxes and especially these am logic boxes even a harder game to emulate like conquer Bad Fur Day does perform quite well a cow that could be useful right taking it up to PSP there's lots of games that are going to be fully playable here at 1X using openg or Vulcan I just happen to be using Vulcan here with Kingdom Hearts and I don't have any frame skip going on but I will tell you that you know the harder to emulate games just really aren't going to run well I mean when it comes to emulation on this little setup I've kind of noticed that it's about the same as the Raspberry Pi 4 if you wanted to do something like chains of Olympus Ghost of Sparta Killzone or even Midnight Club even with frame skip on it's just not going to run great but that doesn't mean PSP doesn't work on this unit it's just really the harder to emulate stuff struggles round so you know anything under what I've shown so far like NES SNES PC engine Neo Geo we've got a lot of FBA cps1 2 and three are going to run great even DS using the DraStic emulator runs at full speed this is just a really great emulator and in my experience it works on a lot of different chips so what we've taken a look at so far is running in Android but like I mentioned we do have the option to install something like emu elect to a Micro SD card now there's a lot of tutorials out there I've actually done a couple and with this box here there is a little tiny button inside of that 3.5 mm audio jack you need to press this while you're booting it up one time with that micro SD card and after that you can actually boot it from that micro SD card with no problem at all so I'm running this from a 256 GB micro SD card I've installed all of my games I've got a couple themes to choose from I really do like the way this looks and with some of these emulators especially with emu elect they've really kind of been optimized for the s905x 3 I find that Dreamcast does work a bit better with uh U or bosera than it does in Android but then when you move over to N64 it actually works better in Android so in the end it's really up to you I personally think that this is a nice little interface we've got all of our games listed here you can download box art you can set up bezels if you want to and it's just a nice streamline emulation front end it just makes it a lot easier to navigate once you have everything set up correctly so what we got here is just some Sega Genesis still using that controller I did have to set it up with emu but it does work over that 2.4 GHz dongle that comes with the controller and like I mentioned I have done a tutorial video setting emu up on an Android box I'll leave a link to that video in the description and I do need to update it but you should be able to get everything up and running plus there's tons of information online on how to do this but just remember we do have options you can always just use Android for your emulation needs and your streaming needs it's really up to you or you can go all out and install an operating system to a Micro SD card so in the end I personally think it would be worth picking something like this up given the prices of raspberry pies and other single board computers I haven't seen the price on these be you know super jacked up there are some sites that will charge you a little more and say that the box is much better because it does come preloaded but I would go with a cheap box like the hk1 you saw in this video and you can have a great time with emulation on this little setup for really cheap and especially if you already have a controller even if you already have just a wired controller you can plug it right into one of the fre USB ports and use it like that until you get a wireless setup so yeah if you're looking for a cheap emulation SL cloud gaming SL lowend native Android gaming device then I can recommend one of these little boxes with that s905x 3 I know for sure here that the hk1 does support that micro SD card boot but if you opt for something else there's a good chance it will also support it and before you pick it up just do a quick Google search and see if you can do that boot from micro SD but that's going to wrap it up for this one if you're interested in picking up anything you saw in this video I will leave some links in the description you can get them much quicker on Amazon but they are more expensive so I'm going to leave a few links down below if you have any questions or you want to see anything else running on this device just let me know in the comments below and like always thanks for watching\n"