The Nationite One Series OS-72HR PMP gets put through its paces in this latest review.
See how the 4.3 inch, 800 x 480 player fares after the break.
After ogling the modern delights available at a good price, it was time to cast aside my previous slew of dodgy cheap PMPs and join the ranks of the big boys. Some quick online searching later, I had the Nationite One Series OS-72HR PMP in my grasp. Here’s what I made of it.
The Box
Out the box comes the player, all shiny and new, a pair of ‘decent for free’ headphones, a very handy USB power charger that’s proved useful with a host of other gadgets around the house, a wall charger, a fold-up stand, a remote control and cables for TV-Out, USB and audio.
Build
Considering how relatively light it feels, the tank-like solidity of the player is almost baffling. That’s not to say it’s feather-light, there’s a certain satisfying bulk to the metal casing that sets it apart from the cheap and flimsy players that I’ve been used to. Its nice rounded edges help it slip into pockets easily too - it’s the little things. Most importantly for me though it’s not obtrusive when I’m on the go. I’ve even taking it out and used it as a straightforward MP3 player for running and it was comfortable both in my hand and pocket.
Screen & Video
With a good quality AVI file the image is tremendous. With a regular quality file, it’s still great! The 4.3 inch LTPS, 800 x 480 resolution, 16 million colour screen is a genuine delight on the eye and the brightness is adjustable through a large range of degrees allowing it to adapt to any viewing environment (luckily so too – after a long day out I took it to bed to catch an episode of The Office before I slept and got a full-on retina assault. I was pleased to find out there’s a much more agreeable soft-light mode for night viewing).
The meaty CC1600 chip shows no sign of struggle in playback which is always as smooth as silk on everything from RMVB to .avi.
Viewing Angle
This reviewer and his partner have an addiction to feed and that is addiction is The Wire. Torn away from our couch to a plane journey we loaded the OS-72 up with episodes and got on board. It was in this sharing situation that the viewing angles of the player really shone, from practically any achievable angle the picture’s bright and fully visible. Overall the screen and picture really stands up as a class design.
Audio
The mono speaker somehow manages to avoid the tinny trappings of lesser players, giving out a bold, solid sound when used with video or music. With headphones (in this case SkullCandy GIs boosted by the Nationite E5) the Cirrus Logic chip comes into its own with deep, full bass and crisp but not thin treble, all fine tuned via the extensive EQ and 3D sound options.
TV-OUT
You can see a comparison of the OS-72 TV-OUT function against other players here but rest assured with the right good quality file you’ll get smooth, bold DVD quality video that’s made even sweeter by the handy remote.
Photo Viewer
The aforementioned plane journey led to a holiday that provided a great excuse to check out the photo viewer on the road. Loading the day’s pictures onto the netbook and then onto the OS-72 again showed off the capabilities of this little beast. For high definition and depth the OS-72 won hands-down.
User Interface
With a simple 5 unobtrusive buttons intuitively arranged along the top of the player it only took a few minutes of playing around before the controls became second nature. The on-screen UI is as simple as can be too with bold icons linear navigation making it a walk in the park.
FM Radio
At the click of a button the OS-72 is a fully functioning radio set with auto-tune and save functions.
Another nifty FM trick it has is omitting a signal that broadcasts your music on an FM band that can be picked up by a car stereo or hi-fi.
Accessories
As mentioned before, the USB power charger is gem to have for this and any other gadgets it fits. The remote control guarantees horizontality on the couch and the stand is actually much handier than I first thought it would be and has had a lot of use.
Software
No sooner had I got my player than a firmware was announced making it run even smoother with more features. Besides tweaks here and there, the largest addition with version 5.3 was the appearance of ‘applications’ on the menu. After some digging it turns out that the CC1600 chip is of a netbook running family so there’s some excess power pulsing through its veins opening up possibilities for an already existing pdf viewer, an e-book reader, games and third party applications.
Text Reader
This feature is probably the weakest due to the lack of intelligent wrapping but I’m not too sure how many .txt documents I’m going to urgently be reading any time soon. The text is bright, the size is adjustable and the occasional letter is only cut off every so often so it’s by no means poor, just not great. In addition, the pdf and e-book reader compatibility that came with the new firmware has eradicated any issues this feature may have had anyway.
The Bad
At first I thought there was a connectivity issue with the OS-72 and Vista but lo and behold it was just the dummy TF card in the slot causing trouble, once that was popped out Vista recognised the OS-72 first time, turning a major issue into just an mildly embarrassing mishap on my part.
Other than on a couple of occasions the ‘continue from last time’ feature hasn’t come up on a few videos (but this is probably due to me just switching off rather than exiting the video before powering down) I’ve not come across any gripes.
The Verdict
I’ve had a lot of PMPs pass through my hands of late and I’ve got to say I can whole-heartily recommend the OS-72 based purely on the video quality but as for the rest of the top quality features, they’re a huge bonus to have too. I got the 8GB model but a 16GB is available and TF expansion goes up to a huge 32GB. Highly recommended.
(Via MP4 Nation Blog.)
0 comentários:
Post a Comment