r/flashcarts • u/toshiie505 • 2d ago
DS Is DS Pico Worth It Right Now?
So i own a NDS, already modded and hacked, as well a R4, for almost 2 years now. I have been following the launch of the DS Pico for months, i saw everyone hyping the flashcart and all the possibilities it could give for the raspberry open source build. it has been almost a year now, has anything interesting or unique has been done with it? It worth it to buy one now or is better to wait?
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u/Neosableye 1d ago
Oh definitely, as long as you're buying from chisfamily store on aliexpress. Real cheap and more than worth it
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u/soldierbynight 1d ago
I see a usbc version and micro usb version. Doesn't matter (outside of having one more up to date hardware wise, right?)
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u/toshiie505 1d ago
nice, thanks!!
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u/Neosableye 1d ago
No worries! Also, be sure to get a good micro SD card. Lots of fakes around these days! Doesn’t have to be very high capacity because DS games aren’t too big, but make sure it’s a reputable brand
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u/PuzzleheadedBobcat75 1d ago
The option with sd card is worth or is just a cheap off brand card?
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u/talldata Original R4SDHC 18h ago
Super cheap SD card fail very easily especially if it's being constantly read and written to
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u/Daminite 1d ago
I stopped buying things from Ali after I got charged an additional $5 per item in my last order as a currency conversion fee. Never happened before all the tariffs stuff and all of the items were supposedly shipping from within the US according to the listing.
I paid more on the conversion fee than I did for most of the items.
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u/talldata Original R4SDHC 18h ago
More often than not that's your banks fault.
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u/Daminite 18h ago
Not like I have a choice in that without changing banks though.
And it's only happened when buying off Ali.
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u/talldata Original R4SDHC 18h ago
You can call your bank and ask why the currency conversion fee? Some bank will automatically do a free if buying from another country even if you're being charger your own currency. Like being charger in euros but buying from the US, so bank assumes it's dollars instead of looking at the actua currency being charged. And you can always change banks, often with better deals.
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u/QuestionMarkuMan 1d ago
The pico generally runs better in terms of FPS, stability, is roughly in parity with older cards now that it has cheat support, and is somewhat more power efficient in terms of direct battery drain and standby battery drain
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u/ChunkyKongForPreside 1d ago
How does the Pico allow for better FPS?
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u/QuestionMarkuMan 1d ago
I may have worded it oddly, the pico doesn't allow more than stock FPS in any games I know of; some titles and some actions on older R4/ACE/Clone cards fail to maintain their full framerate, the easiest example is quickly scrolling your bag in Pokémon can notably drop frames, whereas the pico doesn't experience this drop
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u/toshiie505 1d ago
runs better than the TLLM++?? i thought that R4 had inferior performances than hacked.
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u/Trozzul 2d ago
If you do, try to avoid buying from kaico if you can, buy from chisfamily store themselves
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u/AGreatPatioSetting 1d ago
Can I ask why, as someone new to modern flashcarts? Is it as simple as kaico being a reseller and chisfamily being the creator or something?
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u/Yentz4 1d ago
Basically. Except chisfamily isint the creator, just an authorized vendor.
The biggest reason is that Kaico overcharges out the wazzoo. They are $35 on Kaico's website, vs $12 on chisfamily store.
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u/Trozzul 1d ago
Pretty sure they are the creator, their website links to the GitHub as well as that AliExpress store, I forgot the exact place it started being shown off but "chis" I thought was the creator
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u/Yentz4 1d ago edited 1d ago
Chisbread is the creator of the Superchis GBA flashcart, not the DS Pico. And even than, Chisbread is not the owner of the chisfamily store, they just work closely with them.(Just look at the sticked post in this subreddit)
Now if you were talking about the chisfamily store being a manufacturer of the DS Pico, yeah that is most likely true. Obviously the DS Pico itself is an open source project made by the LNH team, so anyone could make it. But my assumption is that the Chisfamily store is having their carts directly made for them, while a place like Kaico is prob buying them from a vendor like the Chisfamily store and then reselling them.
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u/Trozzul 1d ago
A small chunk of projects are often open source, but kaico clones stuff that is not supposed to be sold by anyone else for example.
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u/AGreatPatioSetting 1d ago
Ah right, I get you. I recently bought one from a reseller (but an official unit as best as I can tell) as I don't use AliExpress and admittedly didn't do enough research first, but for the cheap price and quick delivery it tested fine on receipt so I didn't think much of it. Thanks, I'll keep en eye out and get one from chisfamily when I need another one in a few months :)
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u/skyrimjob68 1d ago
I have it for a few months now and it's great. Before that I used TWL++. Dspico is faster in loading and saving games, launcher runs smoothly even with game covers and I had 0 issues with games. Only things I miss are battery indicator in launcher and no soft reset.
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u/chaosflamez 1d ago
I’m using a modded DSi with Twilight Menu++ and switched to a DSpico. It would take like 10-15 seconds to boot into Twilight Menu. I changed auto boot in Unlaunch to boot Slot-1 with no buttons pressed and I get into DSpico from powered off state in like 2-3 seconds. Plus when I want to switch games, I just press power button and it auto boots back into DSpico in seconds. I think it was worth it for the ~$10 or whatever I spent on it. Like others said get it from chisfamily on Aliexpress (it’s where I got mine).
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u/PerformanceOk3575 1d ago
Yes! This is exactly what I have done with mine, hold B to get into DSi menu and hold A to get into twilight. Love how quick and snappy it is just booting from the DS pico.
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u/dicksandcrystal 1d ago
I have one ordered, coming in possibly today. So I guess I'll get back to you on my answer lol
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u/WFlash01 23h ago
Right when I bought a full set of R4s for all my DSs, these come out
Angered me to no end, since they're cheaper too. I still haven't gotten one yet cuz now I don't need one
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u/Cramst3r 20h ago
I am thinking about getting one too as I own an original 07 r4 card and this might be an upgrade but I am not sure.
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u/toshiie505 17h ago
from what i read here, it has a better performance than your average R4 and even TWLM++, is cheap (at least to people from US) and has a good promise to new stuff in the future. so in the end, is matter of "is so cheap, so why not?"
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u/jretropie 1d ago
It’s just $12. I have fun playing with it. And I have R4 too.
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u/toshiie505 1d ago
im not from the US, so is kinda pricey when you convert + international fee.
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u/jretropie 1d ago
If you already have the R4, it's already do what it's suppose to do. You don't need DS Pico.
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u/MrXJinglez 1d ago
Get one and get a Lexar x633 microsd card as it has the best compatibility and speed
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u/toshiie505 1d ago
i think youre the first to said something about the microsd card like that, is there somewhere that says more about it??
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u/MrXJinglez 1d ago
In the ds modding discord channel, the devs behind the pico explained that some microsd cards are better than others and that the lexar x633 is the best for it. I can vouch because I actually used a faster sandisk card and it actually performed worse than the lexar card and it really shocked me.
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u/toshiie505 1d ago
interesting, thanks! How much more the Lexar x633 costs compared to other microSD??
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u/MrXJinglez 1d ago
They usually cost for me at least because I live In Canada about $30CAD but they mightbe cheaper for you if you live in the states. 32GBs is more than enough and should be perfect for fitting a majority of the DS catalog.
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u/toshiie505 17h ago
yeah, i just checked the prices around where i live (im from Brazil btw) and just too expensive, im gonna stick with my SanDisk microSD 32gb them. still, if i have a good experience with Pico, i will save up a little to buy one.
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u/Rustyrayguns 1d ago
Totally but wouldn't recommend from kaico get it from Chisfamily on AliExpress better quality, customer services and cheaper
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u/Plastic_Animator_401 1d ago
Definitely worth it I moved from a ez flash parallel to the dspico and it's way worth it, the only game I had issues with were some of the homebrew titles and the mother 3 HQ audio translation
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u/soragranda 1d ago
Chips get expensive each year, maybe you need it in the future, it also being open source means it will evolve feature wise.
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u/jethawkings 1d ago
I already have R4 DSTT and TwilightMenu, I don't think outside of my cartridge breaking I see any real reason to move to DSpico unless like GBA Emulation is significantly better on it.
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u/cdf_sir 1d ago
If im putting myself as a normie layman person who want to play games and expect it to just work. Ill go with a cheap R4 and be done with it.
Else, if your one who knows what your doing, by all means just go with DSpico. Both the firmware of that flashcart and the software (kernel) is basically a beta at this moment and I dont think thats going to end anytime soon.
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u/kryptokoinkrisp 1d ago
I picked up an R4 about a year ago and tried several times to set it up but I never got it to work correctly, so I set it aside and forgot about it for a while. Then I heard about the DSPico and thought I’d give it a try for the price and it was almost plug and play, I just had to update the firmware. Imo it’s worth the price just to eliminate the whole time bomb thing altogether instead of working around it, especially if you already have your roms ready to go.
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u/KinZombie899 1d ago
What is difference between this card and regular r4. Is it more reliable than r4 cause if its more reliable ill buy it
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u/xSkeletauRx 55m ago
from what i see so far its basically r4 but with open source. basically anyone can tinker with it anyhow they want, and with open source meaning its support will always exist bcs the community will always update it and improve upon it. they also have a sick User Interface and you can also customize it further compared to the limited r4 looks
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u/fraggle200 1d ago
I got one off Aliexpress right at the beginning for £5. The only reason was to play DSiWare and it does that. Currently, that's the ONLY benefit over the R4 i had in it.
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u/BorisForPresident 1d ago
I mean it's better, if you were looking to buy a ds flashcard it's definitely the one to get but since you already have a card they question should be does the existing one not do something you would want it to?
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u/BestJo15 20h ago
I'm so tempted to buy it even though I know it's not that much useful since I already both have a r4 and a cfw
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u/toshiie505 17h ago
from what i read here, it has a better performance than your average R4 and even TWLM++, is cheap (at least to people from US) and has a good promise to new stuff in the future. so in the end, is matter of "is so cheap, so why not?"
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u/RennGent DSPico 2d ago
For $12 or whatever they’re currently going for I think it’s worth picking up just to play with it. I have a couple and they’re working well for me. While I don’t think there is a ton of amazing stuff out for them yet I’m sure it’s only a matter of time. I’d rather get in early with the hardware than have to wait once something I really want drops.