The first possitive thing to be said about the EFA is the small, and sweet, wooden box is comes packaged in, it gives a good feel of quality. Inside is the flash cart, obviously, which is available in either 256 or 512mbit. Inside the box is also two USB cables, one being around 1 meter while the other is quite short, just a few centimeters, how useful that is I don't know, but along with a USB extension cable it may become useful, or if the other cable should break.

The first notable difference about the cartridge, compared to other carts, is the small connector on the top side of the cart, which is where one end of the USB cable is inserted into, so you actually have linker and cartridge all in one, a very interesting idea, but with the downside being that this copier can't be used to backup cartridges, but then again that's not really a problem.

The upside is that the GBA doesn't have to be connected to the flash cart when games have to be uploaded to the cartridge, the cartridge does it all by itself. Please note though that the EFA cartridge has to be removed from the GBA before the software is able to detect it. If it's inserted while connecting, the software gets confused, thinking that the cartridge is a 256mbit, when it in fact is a 512mbit, which no games on it, when there actually is, so remember to remove it before connecting to the software.

When the PC and Flash cartridge are connected, a small green led in the cartridge will light up, and go red when data is transferred. When inserting the USB cable the first time, the cartridge was detected instantly and Windows (2000) asked for a driver, which is no where to be found in the box unfortunately, I believe they could've fitted a mini-cd into the box if they wanted to. To be able to start the installation you'll then have to visit EFA's website first ( WWW.EFA.CC ) and download the driver and windows software, all packed in one .RAR file. The upside by not including a driver cd is that people then will get the latest drivers available, and then most likely avoid any major problems with the older drivers.

Uploading 64mbit to the cartridge takes about 25 seconds which is the fastest I've ever seen. When a cartridge has been detached from the USB cable and then has to be reattached, a simple click on the button called SEARCH in the windows program and the cartridge is available again, I managed to get a few problems with this though, the cartridge couldn't be detected, but if the windows program was shut down and opened again, the detection would work again. Of course it would be great if the software could perform the search itself so you shouldn't have to press the button. A slightly funny message is displayed when no cartridge is detected, in true engrish style! :-)

The windows software is not pretty at all, but it gets the job done and that is all I care about really, I've seen too many fancy GBA copier windows programs that just didn't work, either being too buggy or just badly coded, the EFA client however works brilliantly, I've even, for the first time ever been able to easily set the Realtime Clock built into the cartridge. The RTC can also be set from the Loader GUI when the cartridge is running on the GBA. By pressing SELECT you'll enter the "EFA Time Menu".

I won't bother much with the save part of the cartridge, it seems to have the same save support as the latest GBA copiers like the EZF-Advance II and G6 Flash, there were no problems with the FLASH and EEPROM games I tested with the unit. Why a readme file included with the software and driver says "Please charge the battery in the card by connect the card with USB cable to a power-on PC for 8 hours or more before first use" is beyond me though, unless the battery used is rechargable, but that is unknown.

The cartridge also has a cheat option built-in where Action Replay codes can be used, a program and detailed manual is included with the software above v1.1 and seems to work quite well, and once again it's very simple to use.

When sending multiple games to the cartridge you'll have to make sure that a checkbox is marked in the bottom left corner of the windows software, else the loader menu won't be used, something like this would be nice to be added automaticly too, but again, this works and who won't have it marked all the time anyway? (it comes marked by default in V1.92 of the software).

The Loader GUI is simple and you're able to decide the background and text color yourself.... very nice :-)

When deleting a game from the cartridge, using the windows software, it is not possible to just delete the game you want to delete, it's always the last game on the list which get deleted, so if you want to delete the first game in the list, all other games have to be deleted, now that's what I call a nasty bug, hopefully it'll be corrected soon.

Despite this nasty windows software bug, I'll go as far as claiming that the Extreme Flash Advance is one of the best GBA copiers on the market. I love the fast upload time, the easy-to-use windows software, the awesome packaging and not least that the Linker is crammed into the cartridge itself so the GBA isn't needed to upload to the cart, but my biggest worry is that the mini-USB could break and your expensive flash cartridge is then quite useless. This will definately not a problem that should stop you from buying an EFA, just be careful when using your EFA.