Cost me just £5.

This was a £99 piece of equipment not too long ago.

Who's hell's it for such a low price?

Ah Huh.

Oh Mmm.

Right, however, one welcome to another video notes that they were taking a look at this Julia.

This product is the result of a successful 2012 Kickstarter campaign in which over $8 million was raised.

But when the final version of this thing finally released to the public well, it didn't exactly receive brilliant reviews.

Put it that way.

The reason I want to look at this thing today is because, as off June, the service for it will be shut down for good.

So what is it, first of all?

Well, let's talk about that right now.

Announced in 2012 that area reached its $950,000 kick start a target in a matter of hours on the campaign went on to raise just over eight and 1/2 1,000,000.

It's an android based micro consul that connects to your TV with an HD my cable and features an exclusive app store full of mostly indie titles.

Spec wise It's powered by an NVIDIA Tegra 3/4 court process, er one gig of DDR three RAM, as well as an onboard you LP or ultra low power G force GPU.

The 25th of June this year marks its official death with Razor, the company who now owns two years software assets, shutting down the consul store after what will be six years since its initial public release, marketed as an affordable open consul that budding developers as well as gamers could enjoy that Leo didn't really live up to its hype.

In the end, it seems like it tried to target a middle ground between traditional console gamers and mobile gamers and ended up appealing to neither.

The game library consisted mainly of casual games you could play on your phone.

The controller itself was criticized, which is sort of an important thing to get right with a consul on both gamers and developers just lost interest quickly.

This means that there probably isn't any reason to buy one anymore.

But come on £5.

How could I know?

Let's fire this bad boy up before it meets its maker.

Like the more popular consuls from Sony and Microsoft.

This thing also makes a noise on startup.

It's not inviting musical score.

Played using a couple of delicate chords.

Know that we are just shouts its own name and likes your screen up orange.

Fair enough.

The first thing you need to do is allow the consul to check for updates while you accept the terms of agreement and sign up for an account.

Initially, I had a bit of trouble with this because the New York kept giving me an account creation error.

I thought this was because of the imminent service shut down.

But it turns out it had successfully created an account for me and just told me that it hadn't very sneaky.

It was then time to see what I could get out of my £5 investment.

So let's explore the software so you get four options from the main menu here.

Play discover, make and manage.

The make section is for the aforementioned budding developers, which once would have included tutorials for making your own software for this device.

These days, well, the best you'll get is a connection error when trying to view them.

You can also upload your creation here too.

If I'm honest, I think the inclusion of this section is really cool.

It probably gave a few amateur developers a stepping stone into the world of content creation.

And if I had one of these years ago, dare I say I might have even made my own game just for a bit of fun.

Of course, this could also be down through the traditional Google play or Apple App stores, too.

So maybe it's just the laziness stopping me.

The Discover section is where you'll find all the games available.

For that we are separated in different categories and drummers, for example, there are pages for trending games, new releases, Alphas and betas.

Andan exclusive tap to anyone from extreme game of battle sudoku.

You can see what I meant by the fact that this thing's game library consists of mostly casual games, a lot of which wouldn't really appeal to the traditional home consul, enthusiast or PC gamers.

Of course, I then looked for a few things to install but couldn't explore these subcategories due to constant server errors.

All I got was a blank screen, this box and then returned to the home page, so I guess Razor have begun the shutdown, leaving just the core functionality.

I could be wrong because this thing did also suffer from poor Internet connectivity, with some users requiring their router to be in the same room.

Or you could just use the bill in definite port to hook it up the old fashioned way.

So let's install a couple of games and see how they run.

First up, I chose motorbike, which looks pretty fun.

I had the option to either buy or download for free.

I wonder which one I'd choose.

The free option gives you a trial, I believe, but because of the shutdown next month, you can't add any funds in order to buy these games.

I'm not sure if you can still spend existing money on your account, but it's impossible to say whether or not these games will still be playable at the end of June.

This is why I prefer physical media.

I won't lie.

This game is pretty fun on.

Quite difficult to I do appreciate being able to play mobile games with a controller in some instances, and although it's not something, I would have spent £99 for back in the day.

I can see why this thing may have appealed to some.

It's easy to mock it, but if there was an audience for it and people enjoyed it, then I guess to them it was a decent device.

The general consensus, though, is that it was a technological failure.

I then decided to play aerial dodge, which again is basic by design but can easily kill half an hour.

What I did notice is that the fan inside that we are started to get a little loud.

I mean, this doesn't strike me as intensive, but the consul seems to think it waas.

Anyway, this is a pretty fun game.

But just like motorbike, there are probably many similar titles available on the play store, and they were back in 2013.

So finally I tried Shadow Gun.

This was featured in some of the you your promotion videos because it was probably one of the best graphically impressive mobile titles back then.

And although that you didn't feature the very best tech, it could still handle this game.

As you can see here, it still looks pretty good and runs quite well on this Consul There are a few lack sparks here and there, but nothing major.

And this is one of those games where the controller is a blessing.

I mentioned before that these games possibly maybe unplayable after the service is shut down, which will certainly be the case for ones that require purchase validation.

But those that don't might still work, So if you have one of these, be shorter.

Download as many games as you can now, just in case.

But let's move on to the New Year.

Saving Grace Emulation.

I downloaded F.

P S C from the game store and thanks to the U.

S.

B port in the back of the consul was able to transfer some of my PS one titles to it.

Now, these days you can't buy the full version, so you'll get a big red by now watermark in the top left corner.

But luckily I have a friend who revealed to me he's been emulating games on the area for years on purchased F.

P s a while back.

It was nice to see that this little box could handle Tony Hawk's pro skater at what seemed to be coast to full speed with a few slowdowns here and there, as well as the original Colin McRae rally.

I'm actually going to revisit Julia after the service shut down date to see what's still runs and whether we can still use it as a full on emulation device, even when we have to start from scratch.

You know, installing the required absent so on because if it can still be done through side loading and these applications work, then this thing might still be worth picking up for what will certainly be a heavily reduced low price.

I also gave a GameBoy and Violence simulator a quick go and fight up driver three, which ran perfectly.

I'd recommend going to day of the year dot com for a list of emulators that work on this device because there are quite a few of them.

And I think if the whole emulator thing was pushed a little bit more in the original promotion of this thing, it might have done a little bit better.

But is a gray area, as I'm sure most of you know.

So perhaps that's why it's so That's the earlier everybody now, because this was initially pushed as a pretty open consul, easily accessible to both games and developers.

I thought we'd do one last thing on Dhe.

Give it a little bit of a tear down because it's actually a very simple process.

As you can see, it's a bold with a fan on.

To put it in simple terms on this is what the area is built up off.

Doesn't it remind you of a lot of those other treat Chinese devices?

You could find that I've also got Android versions installed on the orbit full versions of Android operating systems that include the Google Play store.

Some of those little devices these days even have Windows on as well on.

DDE can run a few less demanding titles, but I guess that's besides the point here, Theo, you set out to target the middle ground between traditional console gamers and mobile gamers on.

There was a big emphasis on reinventing the purpose of the television, as you probably saw in a lot of those older promo videos.

If you paid close attention to this thing's release, didn't really do all that well, but to me is still a very interesting piece of kit because it did very well in its Kickstarter, and there was a crazy amount of hype around it for a while.

But I guess it never really got off the ground after launched.

And I will be revisiting it after the end of June to see what it can still be used for.

Perhaps it could still make a pretty decent emulation machine.

So there we have it for the area.

Let me know if you are in one of these in the comments below what you think of it.

Leave a like on this video if you enjoyed it, even dislike if you didn't subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already and hopefully I'll see all of you in the next world.