GoCube, GAN 356i, Giiker i3

Look and Feel

The GAN 356i is by far the best in that category. It looks and feels exactly like the other Cubes from GAN, very professional, also there’s no weight difference feel-able.

The GoCube feels a bit cheap because of its material. Additionally it has rounded Edges which look weird, but aren’t disturbing. All in all a good handling.

The Giiker (both the i3 and the i3S) in the beginning feels really good, but for some reason the smoothness of the movements decreases by time. It might be that I need to lube it again or better. Other than that, the Giiker by far the loudest.

An additional feature of the GoCube is the light, which is totally useless but looks nice. You cannot use any of the cubes in the dark. Even the lights on the GoCube cannot tell you the difference between red and orange.

Enabling the cube

With enabling I mean “enable” it’s technology in order to connect it to a mobile application. All cubes are using the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology to connect to the mobile application. In order to connect the cube to the application the BLE interface needs to broadcast “hey it’s me” to the mobile device in order to connect.

The GAN 356i enables its broadcast, as soon as you shake it.

The GoCube needs any cube turn in order to start broadcasting.

The Giiker broadcasts all the time until the battery is empty.

It’s interesting to see that all of them choose a different approach. I believe that this part is the main reason of the battery life. The GAN 356i doesn’t broadcast all the time, but it needs a gyroscope enabled in order to detect the shaking. This is more energy consuming than leaving it broadcast all the time as Giiker does. The smartest and with that the less energy consuming option is the one of the GoCube. I could leave the cube more than a week untouched and I still had 98% battery life on the cube. Both other cubes are FAR away from that. Whereby the Giiker has still a longer battery life than the GAN 356i.

The Application

All of the cubes come with their own application available for Android and iOS.

The GAN 356i comes with “CubeStation”

The GoCube comes with “GoCube”

The Giiker comes with “Supercube”

Look and Feel

The best look and feel app wise is the GoCube app. It‘s the most professional one. The Supercube app looks a bit clumsy and childish but since this seems intentional, it’s completely ok. I sadly cannot say this for the CubeStation app, which looks a bit cheap compared to the other ones.

Connecting

Connecting with all of them is pretty straight forward if the app opens up without crashing. This sadly happens to me regularly especially with CubeStation and Supercube. Sometimes reinstalling helps, sometimes rebooting helps. Nothing is really reliable here. The GoCube is the most stable here.

Data transmission

The way how the cube transmits the data to the app differs a bit. The Giiker as well as the GoCube can subscribe to a BLE service that emits updates on each cube change. As far as I can see this right now, the GAN 356i doesn’t do this. The app has to request the current state of the cube in a loop often in order to keep the cube state between the cube and the app synced. This involves a lot of requests and responds, which also effects the energy consumption a lot.

Gyroscope

The Giiker doesn’t know the orientation of the cube, because it doesn’t have a gyroscope sensor. Meaning that if you turn the cube you wont be able to see the cube turning within the app. This is one of the most energy consuming features of the 2 other ones and to be honest not really necessary, but nice to have.

Global Ranking

Also all of them have a ranking table. Even though you need to register. To mention on that is that the Supercube app comes with a very anonymous login and the CubeStation needs a logged in user even for training.

Teaching Mode

The Supercube as well as the GoCube have some kind of a teaching mode, where you can learn how to solve the cube using the beginners method. The GoCube one is a bit overcomplicated, you have to switch all the time between handling the cube and touching the screen, this is done better within the Supercube app, where you can steer the tutorial screens using the cube itself. The CubeStation hasn’t anything like that.

Device Language set to: german

Language support

The GoCube and the Supercube app are in english only, the CubeStation app is mainly in english with 20% chinese leftovers. When an error appears you’ll see a notification with some chinese text. Since, at least my chinese is not that good, I don’t understand what’s going on there. Same for the screen when you solved the cube. There’s some chinese text popping up, which probably means “solved” or “congrats”

Method support

Except for the GoCube app all the other ones are only supporting CFOP for statistics. The GoCube app at least can handle Roux as well, even though it’s not perfect (1st and 2nd block timer is somehow counted as one time).

None of the cubes support an M move!

Price

Price wise the Giiker for $50 is the cheapest. The GoCube with around $70 is in the middle class price wise. The most expensive is the GAN 365i for $90.

Conclusion

The best cube would be a mixture of all 3 of them. The Look and feel of the GAN 356i, technology of the GoCube. I personally could live without the gyroscope, if that improves battery life, the GoCube is able to disable it. App wise that can be way better! I would try getting rid of the Game Engine (afaik all of them are developed in Unity), this is not only making the app smaller but also more energy efficient.

If I need to choose between the 3 of them I would go for the GoCube if I am a newcomer until semi-pro. If you are a professional already, go with the GAN 356i. There’s no BLE cube with a better handling.

I hope you liked my comparison, leave some claps. Be aware when clicking “follow”, that I am mainly posting about technologies, less about cubing.