Asus has struck a very good rhythm when it comes to dishing out quality HD media players and their latest offering is no different. There are enough HD media players in the market for all budget sizes. However, the cheapest one still hovered around the 5K mark, which is good when you compare the price to when they were first launched. But if you wanted something cheaper you had to settle for either the Amkette Flash TV or the WD TV Mini, both of which played only SD content.
Asus has stepped ahead and broken the price barrier with their latest O!Play Mini by pricing it at just Rs. 3,500 and it does everything the bigger boys do, except for the DLNA part. We thank Asus for promptly sending in a review sample.
Asus has stepped ahead and broken the price barrier with their latest O!Play Mini by pricing it at just Rs. 3,500 and it does everything the bigger boys do, except for the DLNA part. We thank Asus for promptly sending in a review sample.
Above is a little snapshot of the formats the Mini supports. As you can see, it does everything that its more expensive brethren can do.
Bundle
- Remote with batteries
- AC power adapter
- Composite AV cable
- Quick start guide
- CD (User Manual)
- HDMI cable
The O!Play Mini is the size of a little lunch box and is extremely light. The plastic used is tough with no flex whatsoever. There is only a single USB port in the front along with a memory card reader which continues to be a unique feature with their O!Play devices. On either side we have a power LED and an IR port.
The rear consists of the power jack, Composite, HDMI 1.3 and optical audio out (SPDIF). There's really nothing much besides this on the box. Next let's plug it in and check the interface.
nterface and Performance
The interface is fairly simple and basic with five icons lined up in a row. The first three are only active once the drive you've connected is indexed, which takes a while if you plug in a large hard drive. However, this only happens for the first time you connect the drive. If you don't want to wait, you can always go to the files manager and browse to your file. The settings offer the usual options like video resolution, aspect ratio, 1080p 24Hz, etc. You can also update the firmware from here.
Scrolling between the menus and your files isn't as smooth as we would like it to have been. There is a slight lag when scrolling through a long list. More than the menu it's the buttons on the remote that is to be blamed. The rubber used here is raised a bit too much, so at times the click is not registered as the button wobbles before you press it. Other than that it gets the job done by giving you full control of the player.
If you need to bring up the main menu bar or switch to "Photo" mode, simply hit the "Guide" button that brings up a menu from the bottom. You have a choice of browsing the files either by thumbnails, list or with a preview. You can fast forward a movie up to 32x speed or directly jump to a particular point in the movie by entering the time.
On the format front, the O!Play Mini was able to play everything we threw at it except the trailer of Alexander, which is a high bit rate 1080p WMV. So far, other than the WD TV Live Hub, no other player has been able to play the trailer smoothly. The O!Play Mini easily managed to play all formats with ease.
Picture Quality and Sound
We connected the O!Play Mini to our 55" Panasonic plasma to gauge the picture quality of the player. The TV is capable of displaying really good blacks so if there was any problem in the video it had to be the player. Thankfully we didn't encounter any such problems. All our test videos we reproduced well with bright and vivid colors and no loss in frame rate. The sound was also very loud and full with the treble and mid-range being well defined. The bass was not very punchy but that's the limitation of the TV rather than anything else.
Pricing and Verdict
Priced at an MRP of Rs. 3,500, this is currently the cheapest HD media player in the market. Asus has a really attractive offering here with the O!Play Mini that's really hard to beat. Currently, no other manufacturer has anything at this price point to compete with it, which makes it the best value for money HD media player out there. There are a few issues, like the interface is not always responsive and gets a bit laggy at times. Also, the remote could have been designed better, especially the buttons. These are just minor cons though, as for the price it retails at, it's really hard to complain.
UPDATE: We were just informed about a price change by Asus. The O!Play Mini is now available for Rs. 4,400. Though the pricing is still decent, it isn't as aggressive as the earlier mentioned price. Hence we have deducted half a star from the rating. The new rating is 4/5.
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