Critique and controversies
Image credit - Retrogamingnr blog
Lies, lies, lies.
Clearly the biggest controversy around Analogue NT has been the broken promises, which have later revealed to be blatant lies. There was no way Analogue ever intended to ship the device in Summer 2014, despite their claims to the contrary. Especially damning was their broken promise of showing a functioning unit on 17 December 2014 - which could not have existed since they only showed a video in June.
HDMI bait-and-switch.
Analogue originally claimed to ship an external HDMI converter with Analogue NT. They talked about it as late as in December 2014. For one reason or the other, they did a stealth switch to an internal HDMI unit based on Kevtris HDMI NES mod. This was clearly a much superior solution, but it has upset customers who passed on the HDMI upgrade initially.
It might scratch your cartridges.
A poster in this thread had a problem with cartridges scratching, however OP doesn't. Recently more posters in this thread reported scratching problems on their *gasp* Gimmick cartridge. Your mileage may vary.
RGB Scart output is overly bright, due to missing capacitors
The
review from dark10x and JT shows that the Scart cable Analogue ships with the device results on an overly bright picture and no sound over Scart:
It's either HDMI or RGB, not both.
After HDMI units shipped it emerged that choosing to have an HDMI unit means you can't output RGB. This was never communicated by Analogue, and has upset players who wanted to have the option to play on a CRT directly out of the box. The root of this problem is that Analogue swapped their HDMI solution halfway through the project when their own HDMI development apparently had failed. The initial plan they sold was having an external HDMI upscaler. While the Kevtris solution is vastly superior compared to the original plan for those wanting only HDMI, people wanting HDMI+CRT are out of luck.
Compatibility issues with HDMI kit
Some posters have reported that certain games seem to not work on the HDMI unit. This problem has been acknowledged by Kevtris, who has promised to update the firmware of the HDMI kit. Analogue has not commented this, and the logistics of a firmware update are unknown. The root of this problem is that Analogue swapped their HDMI solution halfway through the project, and due to the massive delays shipped products the minute they got the HDMI kits from Kevtris.
Connector issues
Several posters have reported connector problems. Some games won't boot up properly directly, but seem to work when played through an adaptor or Game Genie, indicating that there might be a connector quality issue. The connectors also seem to be loose, so pushing a cartridge will freeze the unit.