I got my RAmos T11RK - first impressions

I got my RAmos T11RK - first impressions

My sample of the T11RK landed on my lap early this morning, i was quite excited all night and couldn’t wait to get my hands on it.

Now does this player live upto the hype? Well i have been using it for a good 3 hours now and for the most part it is indeed a very nice player, it is off course not perfect there are some bugs in the software (but not that many) and some of the hardware choices that RAmos made could have been better.

Let me just do a quick run down on the hardware. Overall the player is well built, the front frame, although made to look like metal, is infact just plastic with silver paint. The back is also plastic and has RAmos new mumumusic logo engraved all over it, not that bad looking actually.

The player has a nice weight about it, not that heavy and it doesn’t feel cheap. The T11RK has a 5.0″ high res screen, capable of 800 x 480 resolution, however they seem to be using the same screen as they did the T12, so colors on this screen look a little washed out and the screen has the same viewing angle issues, in particular when viewing from down, images look particularly dark, the best viewing angle for this screen is either directly in front or looking from the top.

The touch screen is resistive, but it doesn’t really matter as the responsiveness from the screen is quite good, actually its surprisingly good, BUT, for whatever reason, RAmos choose to use a plastic screen, this causes a bit of a problem when moving your finger across it as there seems to be too much grip making it hard to smoothly move your finger across. Needless to say that this does cause issues with the navigation. I do think the finger grip issue is something that will subside over time as the screen gets more worn in and i myself become more accustomed to touch screen responsiveness and sensitivity. Overall though i think the touch screen has been well implemented, i don’t think i have seen such a nice touch screen/UI interaction on a Chinese MP4 player since the S:Flo.

One smart thing i found on the player is where the IR remote is placed, its located on the bottom edge of the player, at first i thought this was pretty stupid, i mean why would you put the port there when the player would have to be held at an angle if a person was watching a movie on it, making the port hard to be in direct line of sight with the remote. Then it hit me, its the first player thats had the port in the right place, as the remote it meant to be used while the players TV out is being used. Unlike other players which have the port in the front and would need to be stood up for the IR remote to work when your sitting on the sofa, the T11Rk can just be easily laid flat on a table with the IR port facing your sofa. Ok i know, its not a huge deal, but i thought it was nice of RAmos to actually think that through.

Software:

The UI is very well made, its not perfect and for the most part, its nothing that we have not seen on other Chinese players, just this UI is more slick with a few added bells and whistles.

The UI is smooth and the player loads very fast, almost under 5 seconds. The icons are the nicest, but considering it is a Rockchip player, retheming this shouldn’t be the hardest thing to do.

The player does allow for dynamic/kinetic scrolling, like that on the S:Flo, the only problem here is the grip issue with the screen, this can hamper your finger interaction with the scrolling.

Video playback is very much like that on the T12, it supports very high resolution videos and i even tested out some of the MKV that Chimo had posted, some worked perfectly, others played with a little jerkyness, others with a lot and one very high res MKV file wouldn’t even open. AVI high res playback is same as that of CC1600 players and the same for RMVB playback.

One nice feature when viewing a video is that you can pull up an on screen menu (while the video is playing) and scrolling through your other video files and choose to watch another video file from there, so no need to jump back a menu if you want to change vids. Also any videos that you stopped watching halfway will have a little thumbnail image showing where you left off, this image is shown on the on screen menu, i thought this was quite cool. The time bar can also be slid or you can just pick a point on it and the video will jump to that spot (yes i know this isn’t anything new, but many touch screen players sometimes don’t have this feature).

The music player is quite standard, capable of sorting music, showing album art and all your standard EQ that you would expect on a Rockchip player. I did find that after i load quite a few songs on the player, the players update process to read through and sort the ID3 tags was super quick, i hope this wasn’t just a fluke and this is how it should be. There is a type of cover flow, it is nicely implemented, i think the video review would probably best explain this feature.

All the other features are pretty standard, for eBook scrolling through pages is very smooth, in the image viewing you can use your finger to slide to the nest or previous image and this too also have a quick on screen menu to scroll through you image files without having to go back a menu (again this will be better explained with a video review).

Overall its a nice player, its not revolutionary, but it certainly is very fun and doesn’t disappoint. The firmware still has bugs, it is easy to confuse the touch screen at times, but it is a solid, good player that many people will like.

(Via MP4 Nation Blog.)