Write in front: In the editor's happy time as a child, the most impressive thing is to play overlord in front of the TV with his brother, who is one year older, in addition to catching shrimp by the pond in summer. "Tank", "Super Mario" and "Soul Fighter" are enlightenment games that are hard to erase from memory, and many post-80s and post-90s readers must feel the same way.

Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have become the world's leading three point computers after the technology has progressed, the products have changed, and the bully learning machine has withdrawn from the stage of history. As for the Chinese market, as the State Council officially announced the lifting of the 13 year ban on game consoles at the beginning of 2014, not only Sony and Microsoft, but also many domestic software and hardware companies began to take practical actions to shake hands with the domestic host market.

During this period, from the domestic Internet giant BAT to the mobile phone hardware giant ZTE Huawei, they have been successively throwing "gold" on the host or game console to "buy bones". However, at present, the results are not satisfactory. In this huge army, Shanghai Xiongjing Network Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Xiongjing"), an emerging Internet company specializing in game software and hardware products, launched a new cross-border product focusing on market segments - Wink PAX three in one game tablet in the middle of this year. Now, let's take a look at the performance of this three in one game tablet? Can you "punch PSP and kick XBOX"?

Unpacking: not many accessories

Among the tablet computers that the author has unpacked, the packaging box of WINK PAX is considerable (three dimensions 293 * 242 * 78mm). Why is it larger than normal? On reflection, you should have guessed - yes, in addition to the tablet itself and accessories, there is also a folding game controller in the box. As for the details of the game controller, it is not listed here.

There is not much to mention about the box itself, but rather a geek style: black large bottom, blue embellishment, product rendering printed on the front, and the main features of WINK PAX introduced in different languages on the back, which seems to indicate that this game tablet will also go abroad and enter the overseas market?

First look at the accessories. As a result, WINK PAX has a total of 7 accessories, which are not mentioned in the paper instructions. To our hearts' content, the male whale also gave us a patch. In addition, the charger is a common 5V 2A specification with Micro USB charging cable. There is another Micro HDMI to HDMI HD cable, and the emergence of this cable is related to one of the most important application scenarios of WINK PAX: connecting TV to become a game console.

Wait, what about the game controller?

Don't use handles as accessories.

In the author's understanding, as a game tablet device, the handle is an essential part to bring players a complete experience, and its importance has gone beyond the category of "accessories". As for WINK PAX, this game handle plays an irreplaceable role in its daily use, so the author will introduce it in detail.

At first glance, the WINK PAX game controller seems to be the same as what you see everyday, no matter in terms of key layout or shape It seems that except for the slightly larger part and the protruding part under the handle? The protruding part is the biggest difference between it and other game consoles.

Seeing the above figure, all readers should understand that the WINK PAX handle is a folding design. The purpose of such processing is to make the tablet and the handle combine to change into a game console. According to the official statement of the male whale, this game handle adopts a unique bat design, black metal "material, and built-in double vibration motor.

According to the author's actual experience, the weight of the WINK PAX game controller gives people a strong sense of weight, which I quite like. In addition, the surface sanding treatment is very good both in appearance and feel, and it is almost not easy to get fingerprints. As for remote poles and buttons, I will not repeat the specific functions, but talk about the materials and feelings in use: the two remote poles have moderate resilience and are very flexible; The key stroke of the left cross key is short, and the springback is slightly soft; The four high-end crystal process action keys on the right side perform well. In addition, this game handle also supports the mouse function, which is very practical in some cases.

In general, the WINK PAX game handle meets the needs of players, and the key layout design makes it easy for novices to learn. The frosted surface and mouse function support praise.

Attention should be paid to handle details.

△ The handle is designed with a built-in battery, with a capacity of 800mAh, and supports Micro USB cyclic charging.

△ The handle is connected to the tablet through Bluetooth. After the pairing is successful, the handle will vibrate to prompt the user, and the logo of the male whale in the picture will always light blue (red when charging), which is quite eye-catching and beautiful. In addition, you can also wake up the tablet by clicking the logo.

△ The handle fixes the flat plate through the buckle. When opening the assembly panel and the handle for the first time, the user needs to press the button indicated by the arrow in the figure above first, and at the same time ensure that the two buckles are in the unlocked state. After the panel is inserted, it can be adjusted to the locked state to ensure that the panel will not fall off during use.

Serve "main course" - WINK PAX tablet

Due to the nature of work and myself“ Love to play computer games ”In the past few years, the author has touched and experienced a lot of tablets. From the appearance alone, the WINK PAX tablet is quite special.

The special feature of WINK PAX tablet is that its front shape is not as "square and upright" as most tablets on the market. Its original four R corners have been cut off, making the transition of four sides more natural, and also making users more comfortable when holding the tablet horizontally. In addition, the back design and color matching are also commendable. The back of WINK PAX adopts a three-stage design of left-right symmetrical mobile phones, and boldly integrates fresh light blue color matching, making the tablet calm and lively. According to the official introduction of the male whale, the back of the WINK PAX uses an integrated "cold metal" process to ensure excellent heat dissipation. According to the actual observation of the author, in the whole three-stage design of the flat plate, the left and right sides are made of plastic, and the middle is made of metal.

It is a pity that the whole plate is slightly thick: its thickness is 9mm and its weight is 350g. Compared horizontally with 8-inch tablets of the same level, WINK PAX is really inferior. However, the author speculates that this may have something to do with the metal skeleton used by WINK PAX.

△ Front details of the plate. It has a light sensor, earpiece and an 8 megapixel camera. It should be mentioned that although the front camera with 8 million pixels is common in smart phones, it is very rare in tablet computers. As for the shooting effect, limited by the sensor and post adjustment, the actual film effect is ordinary.

△ The only three keys of the whole machine are distributed on the right side of the machine, and the key stroke and rebound are good.

△ The three-stage design has hidden secrets. The right side of the back of the WINK PAX is designed to be detachable. After disassembly, you can see a TF card slot and a Micro SIM slot. With the appearance of the latter, the tablet supports mobile/Unicom 4G access to Netcom. After inserting a card, users can not only access the Internet with traffic, but also make calls like mobile phones.

Actual combat: alternative PSP?

In the official introduction of the male whale to WINK PAX, it was described that "WINK PAX is a game console with both PSP and X-BOX functions, which is composed of an 8-inch game pad and a bat like folding handle. It is a game console product with dual ends, dual controls and multiple scenes. " In terms of modeling and design, WINK PAX is more similar to PSP, but to be a "game console product" is to challenge XBOX's position in function.

So, how does WINK PAX perform? We speak with actual combat.

In this part, the author believes that it is necessary to comprehensively consider whether WINK PAX is a qualified game console from three dimensions: the richness and quality of content (mainly games); Whether the performance is guaranteed to drive most games; Whether the combination of hardware and software is in place (that is, the advantages and disadvantages of actual operation experience).

(1) Content

As for the content, let's first look at the application market "WPAX Mall" of WINK PAX system developed by male whales.

In this application market, from the "Discovery" on the home page, we can clearly feel that the level of the game is at the first place. The first three major options (discovery, list and game) in the application market are all related to the game. Here, the male whale will officially push some popular games to users, such as "Glory of the King", "Battle of the National Tank", but most of them are online games. In addition, users can find their favorite games through search.

However, we all know that just because so many games do not mean that they all support handle control, so the official male whale has also developed a category of handle games. According to the author's rough browsing, there are still quite a lot of games supporting handle control (the male whale official said that its own app store provides nearly 500 handle control games), including such heavyweight games as Boxing King, Grand Theft Auto and My World. To say the least, even though many games do not support handle control, in the final analysis, WINK PAX is still a tablet, and there is no problem with touch control. However, in this way, it is out of the discussion of game consoles.

In addition, the male whale has also installed a third-party professional game software "Geleyun Game" for WINK PAX. The game platform provides many stand-alone and online games that support handle control, so that players can play large 3D games that can only be run on high-end PCs or game consoles on various Android devices after connecting the handle without relying on computer performance and storage. As long as the user's broadband connection is strong, playing games smoothly is not a problem. Is it true that male whales have insufficient confidence in the performance of their own tablets? The author will explain the performance in detail later.

It is a pity that almost all the games on this platform need to be purchased to play, which may be difficult for Android device users who are accustomed to opening up. In contrast, it is common for XBOX and PSP players to spend hundreds of yuan on a single game in order to play their favorite games. This is also based on the inherent disadvantage of the Andrid system WINK PAX. The user's game payment habit needs to be developed slowly in the later period.

(2) Performance

In the final analysis, processor and storage should be the focus of performance. According to the official data of male whales, WINK PAX is equipped with MTK MT8783, a nuclear processor from MediaTek, and 2GB LPDDR3 storage. About the processor, the author would like to mention that this is a processor officially commercially available on the tablet in the third quarter of 2015. It is designed by MediaTek specifically for tablet devices. It uses an 8-core 64 bit A53 architecture, with a main frequency of 1.3GHz, integrates Mali-T720MP3 GPU, and supports 16 million pixel cameras, LTE cat.4 networks, dual band WiFi and other functions.

It's a mule or a horse. The author selected several running software that were recognized by everyone to test, and restored the performance of MT 8783 from many aspects.

First of all, Anthare. Based on the software version V6.2.1, WINK PAX finally scored 379.07 million points. In the answer sheet of current Snapdragon 820 devices, the number is not beautiful enough. Detailed analysis shows that its 3D performance and CPU performance scores are far behind the current mainstream level. Although the eight core seems scary, it is a "paper tiger" after all. The natural defect (low-frequency A53 framework) is the main reason for the failure of the run.

Next, Master Lu and Geekbench 4 are used for testing. After getting a score of 34258, Master Lu commented that "WINK PAX's performance is moderate, and it will be difficult to deal with some high-intensity games". In the Geekbench 4 test, WINK PAX scored 599 points for single thread and 2241 points for multi thread. The single thread performance is close to that of Google Nexus 7 tablet in 2013; Multithreading, with its eight core processor advantages, is at the top of the list compared with HTC M8 equipped with Snapdragon 801.

On the whole, the performance of WINK PAX is average, which also answers the question that He Xiongjing will pre install the grid cloud game software for WINK PAX. But does low running score necessarily mean poor experience? Through the education of the mobile phone market in recent years, many readers will not be so simple. The result of everything still needs practical experience.

(3) Practical experience

Finally, I talked about the actual experience. Compared with the boring score running above, I want you to pay more attention to this part. In fact, this last link is really felt by users, and affects whether WINK PAX can be the top priority of "game console". Because the combination of hardware and software is directly related to the user experience, ordinary users may not really care about the number of games and performance.

For this reason, the author downloaded games ranging from tens of megabytes to hundreds of megabytes, covering shooting, sports racing, online games and other different types of games for experience and trial play (Mindo, Shadow Gun God, King Glory, death trigger and wild drag racing 8, etc.). These game editors mainly want to test the combination of hardware and software of tablet, game and controller. Among them, the game supporting the handle requires the user to remember the function of each key, otherwise the operation will inevitably be in a hurry. It would be better if the key function guidance can be added in the game startup animation.

As far as low-end small games are concerned, as long as it supports handle control of WINK PAX, there should be no pressure; In terms of performance, medium-sized games such as Wink PAX, the Trigger of Death, are unexpectedly smooth, and the whole process is basically free of stagnation. Using Perfmon detection software, the editor found that the tablet only called a few cores when there were few zombies, and only called five or six cores when there were more zombies.

Large game, Shadow Gun God and King Glory. Not surprisingly, when dealing with large games, the basic calls of the processor core are three or four or more, and when the scene is complex, the eight cores are fully open. In terms of operation, in the shooting game, the left rocker is responsible for moving the characters, the right rocker is responsible for turning the perspective, and other keys are responsible for shooting, loading and jumping, etc. The user needs to adapt when playing for the first time. When using the handle to control the currently popular PVP online player Glory of the King, WINK PAX has some difficulty. This is mainly reflected in two aspects: even if the eight cores are fully opened in the regiment war, frame dropping and stuck phenomenon still exist; The operation is not as smooth as that of the previous games. Because of the more touch control of the king's glorious skills, it is very urgent to transfer to the handle when the team war needs to trigger the skills. In addition, sometimes the control response is slow.

If you want to give WINK PAX a score in this part, the author thinks 6 points is quite appropriate (full score is 10 points). When dealing with most games, the combination of WINK PAX+handles turns into PSP, giving editors a good game experience. However, in view of the excellent control of all console games and the fact that console games account for only a small part of the entire Android game ecosystem, the console status will only be one of the application scenarios of WINK PAX.

Remove the handle, it is still an entertainment device

After removing the game controller and walking out of the game airport, WINK PAX is still an Android tablet device. When it comes to Android tablets, entertainment is an unavoidable topic.

In the official imagination of male whales, WINK PAX is also a good helper to accompany you to chase dramas and watch blockbusters. The tablet is pre installed with Taijie video software, which provides video services such as live TV sports, on-demand TV, and customized programs. It has more than 10000 video resources, including variety shows, TV dramas, high-definition movies, animation, and sports.

If you like the male god Li Yifeng, you can see the hit drama "Sparrow" starring him here. If you want to see a movie, there are countless blockbusters coming out here. However, don't be too happy. Many of these resources (especially movies) need VIP members to watch, and the monthly fee of VIP is 30 yuan, and the annual fee is 300 yuan. However, after purchase, you can log in and share them on the box and smart TV.

In addition, the aforementioned accessory HDMI cable also has a place for users. After connecting TV and WINK PAX with it, users can also play games or watch movies through the controller. At this time, PINK will become a game console or TV box, and when projected onto a larger screen, it will bring users a better listening experience.

So far, the "three in one" application scenario that male whales positioned PINK PAX has been presented. However, the author needs to point out that the last two application scenarios (tablet viewing and projection to the large screen) are actually false propositions, and other ordinary Android tablets can basically do the same.

In other aspects, I would like to share with you again. PINNK PAX runs WINK OS customized based on Android 5.1. The UI removes the secondary menu and redraws the system icon. The operation is similar to other Android devices, so users can easily get started. In particular, WINK OS has built a BlinkFeed similar to the HTC Sense UI on the left side of the main interface, which mainly shows the game. After clicking, you need to jump to the "WPAX Mall" to download.

△ In addition, WINK PAX also supports inserting cards to make calls and surf the Internet.

Summary:

At the end of April this year, IDC, a well-known research organization, released its first quarter report on the tablet market in 2016. The data shows that the sales volume of the tablet market has declined for six consecutive quarters, down 14.7% year on year, and the shares of the leaders Apple and Samsung have also continued to decline. In the poor overall environment, some of the old tablet manufacturers in China have transformed into mobile phones, while others have embraced Microsoft and Intel and launched Windows 2-in-1 devices.

On the other hand, the game industry is a big cake, and the envy of this hundred billion level market is not only BAT, but also Internet companies such as male whales that focus on game software and hardware products. The combination of "tablet+game", with the former as the carrier and the latter as the content output, is the fundamental reason for the birth of PINK PAX.

Just for now, looking at the whole market, there is still much room for improvement in the first answer given by male whales. However, don't forget that this is the first product of an Internet company in the tablet field. "Rome was not built in a day", let's wait and see.

Finally, I would like to thank Ainuoji and the male whale for giving me this very valuable experience opportunity. Thank you.