Are you only allowed to say nice things about the ZX Spectrum Next?

A few years back, after ordering on Omni 128 HD, I had the opportunity to procure a Sinclair-branded ZX Spectrum Next. The Omni is made-to-order by one guy as far as I can tell, whilst the ZX Next was a KickStarter campaign. I had to wait for both machines to turn up. And it was the Omni that turned up first, although the screen arrived before the main unit. I'm not complaining about the delays here; I'd rather get something than nothing, and I was very happy to receive my Omni and ZX Next.

The Omni itself looks like a truly authentic ZX Spectrum if viewed from the front. The video output is different, and it has an SD card slot on the side with some dip switches to configure the device. It allows the addition of rechargeable batteries, so that it can be truly portable, and once configured and running, loading games via the cassette and/or from SD card is pretty painless. It is able to load TR-DOS images too, and as we know, any Spectrum clone already has plenty of software. I was very impressed. Forget your Apple something or other; not only have I never been a fan of Apple products, I think its historical devices are considered in higher esteem than cheaper machines (such as Sinclair and Commodore computers) for no good reason. I mean, who could afford an Apple ][, with Apple itself doing not much more that pioneering the high price point. I would say that though, wouldn't I?

Anyway, everything about the Omni felt right; the keyboard, the faceplate and the flat screen is good. The only issue really is that the hand-made plastic legs to fit the screen to the computer are a little brittle, and it could do with a bit more weight in the computer itself to counter the weight of the screen. Other than this, the Omni is a great device. You switch it on. It works. It's easy to use. And it can be used anywhere with some good battery life. It feels like a proper end-user product in the Sinclair tradition. Overall, I was and am very happy with it.

Getting my ZX Next some months later was slightly disappointing. The excitement when the box arrived, and seeing it for the first time, soon led to an anti-climax. Plugging in the device and testing it was good. Then I read online that I needed to update the firmware, which I did. I tested some games, and then unplugged the unit. The power cable was removed but I still saw what looked like a crashed Spectrum screen. I panicked as I thought I'd broken it somehow, but it turns out that using the HMDI port has its issues and you must remember to unplug the HDMI cable before unplugging the power cable. Well, at least I hadn't broken anything.

Next, I noticed that there was a CP/M mode, so I thought I'd try it. I had to get online to get CP/M working in the form of downloading some binaries. Once it was up and running, I was able to load some compatible software. Now, never using CP/M before put me at a disadvantage, but something happened where I couldn't get CP/M working at all anymore. I couldn't work out what I'd done, so I didn't know how to undo it. It wasn't until some months later before I could get it working again, but I don't know how I have, so any fix is purely accidental.

Some time after buying the Omni, I found some games that use the Nirvana engine; this allows ZX Spectrum games to be much more colourful, meaning that software sprites are not limited to two colours per 8x8 character cell as usual. One of the best examples of this is Pietro Bros by Cristian M. Gonzalez, Alvin Albrecht, and Einar Saukas. This works beautifully on the Omni, so I decided to give it a try on my Next. For some reason, it wasn't working, in that the Nirvana engine didn't seem to be working. It might have played the same, but it looked woeful and there was blatant colour clash everywhere. I know the ZX Next has more precise timings than the Omni, and clearly a better specification. So, what was going wrong here?

It turned out that the RGB output wasn't supported via HDMI, only by VGA. So, in order to play this and other Nirvana engine games on the ZX Next, I had to obtain a VGA monitor. As I didn't have one spare, this meant purchasing one. My monitor arrived, and I eagerly plugged in my ZX Next to my VGA VDU. And... Nothing. No video. Had I broken it again? Okay, so I tried the HDMI and got a picture. More searching the Internet and I found out that I needed to configure the machine to the screen it was using, especially if I changed screens for some reason. Well, luckily it wasn't too difficult, and the Next would run through its screen modes with a test card until you get one that fits. All good then, right?

Now my final gripe. I know that the ZX Spectrum never had a good keyboard, but a cheap one. The Speccy+ and 128+ also had cheap keyboards. I have aging models of these that still work today. Most importantly, the keys are still in place. On my ZX Next, however, I've had two keys somehow become detached from the keyboard, and I have to be very wary about using it and travelling with it. This is hardly convenient as I now take this and other machines to show to people, and to let others play on it.

With exception to the cheap keyboard, I think the issue with the ZX Next really is this: feature creep. I was happy when I heard about the original plans for the ZX Next. I think had the original specification and scope been adhered to more strictly, it would have been a cracking machine. But it seems like, maybe due to delays, and maybe trying to please too many people at once, the machine was released in an unfinished state. The HDMI is one pointer to this. The manual is another.

I know that this feature creep has meant a more powerful machine, but why did it need to be more powerful? Why wasn't the original specification enough? For most users I suspect, they will be playing original Spectrum games on reliable, modern hardware. So all of the nice extras, and some of which I haven't even used, are for limited use-cases where no more than 10 - 15% of the userbase will ever benefit. That's fine if you're planning to make a million machines, but this is a machine which exists in the thousands, so these limited use-cases should have been ignored in my view, and any of the extra goodies that were proposed along the journey should have been dropped, like the "SID chip" support, which isn't worth the PI Zero installation really, as it doesn't handle SID files very well. I guess this is what happens when enthusiasts are leading the development of a product, rather than a singular and more realistic and hard-nosed visionary. The ZX Spectrum Next is the Snakes on a plane of "new retro".

Here is the question? If I had to choose only one, which would it be? The Next or the Omni? Well, the Omni has been much less problematic, and once set up, it works perfectly well. I would choose that over the ZX Next. Of course, the Omni doesn't have the same exact timings of the ZX Next. And the ZX Next has a far superior specification, but that doesn't mean it plays my favourite Spectrum games any better. And those games that don't load on the Omni aren't significant in number enough for me to be worried about it.

The Omni plays enough of my favourites, and I don't have to mess about just because I use a different screen as there is only one video output to worry about, and the keyboard feels really authentic. It also works with the original Mic and Ear cables, whilst the ZX Next opted - for no good reason - for the Spectrum +3 tape leads.

Don't get me wrong. I do like my ZX Next. It's just not the finished product that I was hoping for. And in conclusion, I do hope that the next ZX Next irons out these issues with the next Next Kickstarter, especially to do with the keyboard, and as I am one of the backers of it. Anyway, I'm going to give Target Renegade a quick blast. Who wouldn't, eh?