TRIMUI BRICK HAMMER

TRIMUI BRICK HAMMER

I
was trolling through Amazon, mainly because they were having a sale,
and I noticed this little thing and thought this looks rather smart,
the TrimUI Brick Hammer has an all metal chassis so I thought I would
treat myself, but which colour? Black, Space Grey, White, no let's
get something a little more colourful shall we, the other two colour
options are Wild Green and Rose Gold, I'm not a big fan of green, so
pink it is and why not, I don't possess a Rose Gold handheld.


The
box consists of the TrimUI Brick Hammer, USB-C cable (a rather short cable)
and for some reason two sets of replacement trigger buttons, no
instructions, no screen wipes, no screen protector but the handheld
does have a plastic film over the screen to take off.

My
thought with the TrimUI Brick Hammer is to do a little research and
see which machines emulate best on it, get some ROMS on to a microSD
card, insert and play. I have no intentions, at present, to tinker
with the OS, I have no intentions to mod, just plug and play and see
what the performance is like. Unlike the majority of my handhelds,
this runs Linux.

I
already have a TrimUI Smart Pro (November 2023) and a TrimUI Brick
(October 2024) but I didn't really spend much time with either of
them but from what I know the Smart Pro, the Brick and the Brick
Hammer are exactly the same machine, only the chassis has changed, I
wonder how long TrimUI can get away with rolling out the same innards
with a different coating. The TrimUI Brick Hammer is not a
particularly powerful handheld but it is a rather smart looking
thing.

I
understand the complexities of finding all the correct components,
there is no point in putting a 5.5” screen on a handheld that is
only powerful enough to emulate Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy
Advance and there is no point in putting a 3.2” screen on something
that is powerful enough to emulate PlayStation 2 and Switch, so the
question is has the TrimUI Brick Hammer got the specification balance
just right?

So,
the first time I switch on I have the TrimUI splash screen followed
by a loading screen which takes me to the games page showing zero
games, so let's do some set up, Wi-Fi first, well that's it, that
took no time at all. I now need a microSD card and some games. So I
now have a few steps to follow, switch off the TrimUI Brick, insert
the microSD card and switch back on, now use the SD card formatter
built into the firmware, once formatted move the microSD card over to my laptop.

The microSD card now has folders for multiple systems so I placed some ROMs onto the microSD card and re-inserted into the
TrimUI Brick and switched it on only for the games section to show,
absolutely nothing, no games, no systems. So what now? Well, there
are some custom firmwares available for the TrimUI series of
handhelds such as SpruceOS, NextUI, MinUI, muOS and KNULLI. I have
tried KNULLI.

I
had promised myself that I was going to use the stock OS and no real
tinkering but... While doing a bit of searching online I found RetroGame Corps set up guide for MinUI an operating system I hadn't looked
into before so thought it would be worth a go, nothing to lose. Apart
from losing a bit of time the end result seems really good,
minimalist, no box art, no game description, just white text on a
black background for the menus.

I
went for some early system that would play best on the 3.2” screen:
Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, NeoGeo Pocket, Nintendo
Entertainment System, Sega Game Gear, Sega Mega Drive, Sega Master
System, Sony PlayStation, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, PC
Engine and Nintendo Virtual Boy. I know these systems don't really
push the boat out with high end gaming but that wasn't the real plan
anyway, some nice gentle 8-bit and 16-bit gaming was the plan all
along.

Would
I recommend the TrimUI Brick Pro?
Yes.
At first glance it is quite diminutive, everything just seems to
blend well together, the quality is top notch with the all metal
chassis it has a very premium feel and the power of the processor
matches well with the screen size which is a good fit for the systems
that I would most want to run on this handheld. I couldn't get the
TrimUI OS to recognise the ROMs on the microSD card but that was
fixed by using MinUI.

Would
I Recommend MinUI?
Yes,
MinUI is a great accompaniment to the TrimUI Brick with its
minimalist look, no colourful box art, no long game descriptions, it
literally does exactly what it says on the tin, the game title in white text on a black background,
nothing more is needed.

Follow and comment below

Michael