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[sinkhead]

Yeah, my M3 Simply got delivered today, and it's EXACTLY the same as the R4, right down to the blue case that holds the spare shell. The only differences I noticed is that
a) My R4 came in a white shell, and my M3 came in a black shell (but both has spare shells of the opposite colours)
b) The M3 comes with a card reader that has a silvery coating

Here's some pictures of the menu, M3 first then R4 second.



And when you select 'Games'



So yeah, you can see how similar they are. The menu and romlist files are exactly the same size, I found their checksums, here:

R4 CHECKSUMS
c4b742542759390772645738092ff4f9   _DS_MENU.DAT
badcc2f3d0da7d582dcf65e3b8c7db4b   _DS_MSHL.NDS

M3 CHECKSUMS
ca95e41c47a25cfdde4d44384c5890a8   _DS_MENU.DAT
badcc2f3d0da7d582dcf65e3b8c7db4b   _DS_MSHL.NDS

As you can see, the Moonshell loader is exactly the same for both the R4 and the M3. This is good, because that means the filesystem is the same, which is great because homebrew made for the R4 will automatically work on the M3, and vice versa.
Also, the utilities you get on the R4's MiniCD and the M3's download package are the same, they even have the same names.
I must confess, I like the M3's menu a lot better than the R4's!

<Review coming soon>

- Sam

[ZAFDeltaForce]

Well, I guess we kinda expected that the M3 Simply = R4 from their similar circuit boards. I wonder if we could actually use the firmware from an M3 Simply on an R4?

Thanks for the info, sinkhead!

PS: Nice DSLite skin!

[sinkhead]

There' a hack floating around that lets you use M3 firmware on an R4, somewhere...

- Sam

[ZAFDeltaForce]

Sweet. Thanks for the info!

[moviecouple]

sinkhead,

Since you have both... and they are essentially the same product... if you could only have one, which would it be and why?

[sinkhead]

I get them free as review samples, to make reviews of them.
If I could have just 1 of them, I would choose the M3 simply because the card reader is nicer, the menu is better and it's from a trusted company. The R4 is still really great though.
I've just made video reviews of both of them, I'm editing them now.

- Sam

[jbullfrog]

Great news Sam!  I will order a M3 today!

[jelbo]

Interesting. Please explain why you like the M3 menu better though. I'm especially interested in your findings of how the units compare running games without slowdown, and with what MicroSD card.

[Devil_Spawn]

nice skins!

[moviecouple]

I would like to know that too. How is the menu better compared to the R4? Also... have you tried to run the Opera Browser? Want to make sure it works on the M3 Simply.

One last note. I don't see a website for the M3 Simply. How are we to get upgrades like the R4 has?

[sinkhead]

I like the menu better because it looks cleaner and the icons are nicer. The actual functionality of the two menus is exactly the same. The website for the M3 is http://m3adapter.com however there has been nothing put on there about the M3 Simply...
I downloaded the firmware from Here.
The Opera Browser works well on both R4 and M3.

- Sam

[big123]

Can you make a photo of both similar circuit boards?
Perhaps the new cards are exactly the same!?

[sinkhead]

I just need to finish some of my History project, than I'll open them both up and take a look.

- Sam

[SynGamer]

Images aren't loading for me...any chance you could post the GUI's for each (R4 and M3) from a different host?

*Edit: images loaded...and they are EXACTLY the same.  I'm not familiar with coding and such, but would it be possible to port the SCDS GUI over to the R4/M3?  I'm not talking images (we know thats possible), but instead like the menu system/settings, etc.?

[sinkhead]

Yeah, I'll upload them here (but I'll have to compress them a LOT)

- Sam

EDIT
Just as I finished uploading these my website came back online...  :x