Wii in HD? Is the Mayflash Plug-&-Play Wii HDMI Adapter GOOD?

In this episode, we unbox and test out, & review the Mayflash Wii to HDMI adapter for the Nintendo Wii to see if it is a good solution.Show more

When we began testing HDMI adapter solutions for the Nintendo Wii, many people wanted us to test out the Mayflash Wii to HDMI adapter. Having only used a handful of Mayflash products in the past, I wasn't a huge fan of them, but I didn't have anything against them either. As such, and as the request kept coming in, we decided to give it a look.

An incredibly simple device, it is similar in design to the generic Wii to HDMI adapter we tested in the past few weeks. It does have a 3.5 mm port on the back next to the HDMI port if you would want to connect it directly to a soundbar, AV system, or anything else. It's about half the height of other Wii to HDMI adapters, but I don't really know that that's a major advantage.

The Mayflash unit is completely molded composite, a little disappointed that there's no metal on the connector but then again most of these don't have that either. Plugging it into the back of our system, it was a super tight fit. Like, I had to struggle to get it out of my Wii. I wish it didn't have quite the death grip on the connector myself.

I once again started off my test with Super Mario Galaxy's opening, as I believe it is beautiful and provides a lot of key areas where you can look at for overall performance. I don't know if people had been promoting it so much that I had really high expectations or what, but I was not impressed initially. I thought the colors were a bit dark, even to the point of being slightly muddy. I also noticed some blurriness, specifically around the flowing of princess peach's hair. It wasn't off to a good start in my estimation.

One thing that I was surprised by in the manual was the indication that this is a 480P only device and that there was no onboard upscaling. This directly contradicts their Amazon listing which does indicate that it will output 1080P I will say looking at the footage I don't think there is any upscaling to it, and especially for the size of this dongle, I don't know how they could have snuck anything inside that would have done any upscaling.

I played my normal litany of games when I test these types of connectors, platformers, racing games, even though in a first-person shooter with Resident Evil 4, and everything has that very similar look. The edges were not smooth but rather jaggy, the text had some blurriness to it in some areas, and overall my feeling was that it was good but not great. It felt very similar to the Hyperkin we to HDMI cable, the one benefit of this is the ability to use whatever length HDMI cable you might want to.

Why it RoX
- Under $15
- Plug and Play
- Ability to use whatever length HDMI cable you need
- 3.5 mm audio output jack

What could be improved
- No upscaling
- Some jaggies around graphics
- Besides the size does not do anything different than anything else on the market

Should you buy one?

Overall, the Mayflash Wii to HDMI adapter is perfectly usable, but it's nothing extraordinary in my book. Performance really looked to mimic what the Hyperkin Wii to HDMI cable did, the one benefit this has is the ability to use any length HDMI cable you might need. It's usable, but the way people were hyping this up I was expecting a whole lot more. For the money, it still doesn't beat that $6 adapter we recently tested. I think as long as you go into this with your expectation set accordingly it'll be just fine, but don't expect 1080p graphics even though the Amazon listing says so.

#NintendoWii #Wii2HDMI #Mayflash

The footage used in this review are used under the Fair Use laws, referenced below:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107

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(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
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The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
(Pub. L. 94–553, title I, § 101, Oct. 19, 1976, 90 Stat. 2546; Pub. L. 101–650, title VI, § 607, Dec. 1, 1990, 104 Stat. 5132; Pub. L. 102–492, Oct. 24, 1992, 106 Stat. 3145.)