Game Boy Color Q5 IPS LCD HDMI HD TV Output Mod Backlight Kit with OSD - Hispeedido

I did this mod on an OEM Atomic Purple shell. A pretty good result, but WOW, what a major pain in the *** . This is a combination review and advice for anybody considering this.

You have to trim the shell very extensively, and as usual, there’s not really any exact instructions on what to keep and what needs to be shaved down. Have to go painstakingly slow because 1. No way to add back material if the dremel slips and 2. These OEM gameboys in good cosmetic condition are not cheap. (Don’t @ me on repro shells, they all look and feel like nu-garbage, especially the transparent variations. Might as well just get an emulation device at that point.

Then, I almost screwed the pooch applying the LCD adhesive. The instructions breeze through this step, but I’ll warn you to take extra care - the adhesive is asymmetrical and directional - it must be applied in one exact orientation. Triple check that you’ve got the orientation correct, then peel off ONLY the back side of the film, then put down the film with a pair of sharp tweezers. If you accidentally peel off the front side of the film first, like I did, not realizing the left and right edges were different thicknesses, it turns into a nightmare. I almost had to give up and put the mod on hold to order a replacement film, but finally got it acceptable after about 45 minutes.

The soldering was better in comparison. The kit shipped with red 7 wires cut to full length, and 1 red wire that was too short to be usable. I assume this was a manufacturing/shipping oversight. The wire gauge was too thin to be stripped with my Hakko strippers that only go down to AWG 30, so the wire is probably AWG 32 or 34. It’s hard to find wire strippers that go down to that size, and I don’t recall if I have any that fine, so I just used the some standard AWG 30 kynar wire that I use for general modding. The two PCBs you make connections between fold shut like a book in the final assembly, so the 3d distance between solder points is really not much, but you end up with a lot of wire slack because you have to solder the points with the “book” open so you can actually get your soldering iron in there. I think some of my IPS glow I ended up with is due to the wires bunching up, and maybe could be improved, but near the end I was ready to be done with the mod already.

One other minor indignity is the mod does not ship with a lens of any sort, and you’ll need a new lens since the new LCD is bigger than the original viewport. I ordered a Glass lens, and the minor gripe I’ve got with this is the paper cover on the inside of the lens did not come off very cleanly - seems like some of the main adhesive had seeped in - so I had to do some detailed cleanup to get some paper fibers not to poke into the visible region.

Final assembly is the usual hold-your-breath jigsaw puzzle for these mods that cram way too much stuff in the case - try to arrange it just right so you don’t pinch any wires, hope nothing pops out of alignment in the process.

So that’s the numerous papercuts that happen during the process. For reference, that wasn’t my first mod - I’ve done about 6-8 various screen upgrades over the years across my DMG/GBP/GBC/GBA/GBASP collection, including some of the older, pre-IPS mods. This was the most annoying, challenging mod of the collection, with my OG, pre-bracket GBA IPS mod being a close second. of the newer mods have gotten way better - with screen brackets for precise alignment, laminated screens, exactly matching OEM dimensions or otherwise friendly assembly features. This one is an older style, classic pain in the *** finicky mod.

The end result is pretty good, hence the fact that I’m still giving it four stars out of five. The final flaws I ended up with are the screen is rotated just very slightly off vertical by about 0.5-1 degree, there’s a bit of IPS glow that I’m sure is due to the gentle squish I had to do at the end, and there are a couple flecks of dust/ dremeled-case-remnants that ended up between the lens and the LCD. Haven’t tested the HDMI output extensively, but it does work and fired right up in my testing.

It looks great, and plays great after it’s all done. But since I don’t really care about the HDMI output, if I had to do it again, I’d just do a drop in mod.

Very happy with this product. The IPS screen is bright, sharp, and vivid, and the image from the HDMI out is sharp and clear. A fun project if you enjoy soldering and case modding.

Install and shell modification was a bit of work but that was part of the fun. Works well on the TV, brings my nostalgia to a new level

One of these(black) I didn't do the Retro-Glow and it was fairly straightforward to build and put together both with the Rechargeable Battery mod(standard port, not USB-C) and Clean Amp v1.2. The semi-clear purple one with Samus on it was given to me so I put it to use and added Retro-Glow to this one. Only things I can say is that I have this electrical noise that I can't seem to get rid of no matter how I try to tackle it on both systems. Overall, awesome stuff guys!

Awesome kit! I would definitely recommend getting a q5 ready shell or it will be a lot of trimming though. Screen was easy to install after the shell was trimmed and picture is awesome! HDMI looks really good as well. Make sure to trim a bit of the top and bottom shell for the HDMI kit before installing and fit test often. Ordered a second kit already for a friend's upgrade.

This kit is fantastic. The screen is crystal clear and the hdmi out looks so good on the TV. I opted to trim the shell but I would have to say it was a giant pain and I would recomend buying a pre cut shell to put it in