snoopy-u
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- May 26, 2009
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Recently I have seen many sites talking about this portable media player, but none of them has a comprehensive review, so I asked my friend to ship me one to try out.
This thing has been discussed quite a lot in the following, not that i am blowing my own trumpet:
Technorati
Engadget
akihabaranews
I am both an audio and video lover, live in big city and always on the move. Trains and buses. Music is good companion, but occasionally watching great videos on the move is not bad either. Now I have the chance to watch high definition on the move, should be cool.
On my hand now lies the Cube HD (High Definition) MP4 Player, H100 HD, the most raved Portable Media Player (PMP) for the past few weeks. This is probably the first PMP that supports true HD at a very affordable price. Not only amazing video playbacks, the 5 inch crisp and clear screen makes it a good photo viewer and eBook reader.
Video Playback
As a PMP boasting the HD capability, this is the probably the one and only selling point of the player. Cube must not disappoint the consumers. After I watched a few test HD trailers, I conclude that Cube has delivered what it promise, a true HD player. It plays HD movie files without a single lag throughout the test run. The LCD screen is fast enough to deliver that kind of quality movies would need. No motion blur.
The video format supported is very limited nevertheless, I tried playing .mkv movies, the widely available HD format, but it fails to play. I think this is the biggest con of the player itself. perhaps future firmware upgrade will solve the problem.
Sound quality
I definitely wont replace this with my current Kenwood D9 for music listening, it performs rather weak in sound reproduction compared to mainstream music players. The bass is there, not as deep, mid is thin, high is a bit scratchy at times.
The strange thing is when it plays HD video, the sound quality coming out from the headphone jack driving my super.fi 3 is really not bad. The virtual surround effect presents, and the sound is not boring. It is just too bad that this quality only limited to video playback. It might be due to the software i was playing then.
The Packaging
The packaging itself is nothing fantastic, black color paper box, a very typical product packaging. Opening up the box, you will the find the player, a 5V charger (Chinese power plug), a very nice silky smooth grey color pouch, USB cable, infra red remote control, cube earphones, user manual and a RGB/Audio Cable.
The Physical build
The casing is made of metal, I am not sure it is aluminum or steel, but it feels solid in your hand. The edge is rather smooth, and no sharp metal edge exposed. Measuring at 12.9 cm x 8.6 cm x 1.3 cm, weight at about 300g, slightly heavier than PSP, in my opinion, it is more suitable to keep in your bag than pocket.
The screen is huge, 5inch big, covering about 90% of the player. The good thing is of course the screen size, the bad side of it is it lacks of space for grabbing tightly at the side, unlike PSP where the you can hold on to the control at both end. Next thing I notice is the screen surface, it is not as smooth and flat as it should be, definitely not the iPhone kind of screen surface your are expecting. The worse part of it is it attracts dust and finger prints rather efficiently, I think a proper screen protector would really help here.
The player comes with good intuitive control, with volume up and down buttons at the left side, navigation jog-dial kind of button, together with “Play”, “Left” & “Right” buttons at the right side of it. The tactile feel of the buttons is good and responsive. There is also a small tiny reset button hiding beside the USB connector. Oh, I just noticed there is a small microphone hole beside the Mini SD slot. Near the navigation buttons, there is TV-out, Audio-Out (headphone jack) and a 5V DC inlet
The left side: Vol Up & Down buttons and Mini SD expansion
The right side: The navigation buttons
One thing to note is the alignment of connectors is not perfect, but I did not find any problem during the test run.
Powering up the unit
Press and hold the Play button for 3 seconds turns on the unit, the boot up time is fast, almost instantaneously it will go into the start up screen and goes into the main window within 3 seconds. Wow, the first reaction I got, what a crisp and clear display this baby is having, almost as good as iPhone’s. (note: the display is not so suitable for outdoor watching, the screen is not bright enough under bright sunlight, and the screen surface is kinda glossy & reflective. The sun is its greatest enemy)
Connecting to the Computer
The computer recognized the unit quickly as Cube H100, with total storage of 7.56GB. One thing to note is the player comes with FAT32 file system, thus it is unable to take any file bigger than 2GB. To solve this, we format the disk to NTFS system. When done, I dragged and dropped a 700MB movie files to the player. The transfer speed is OK, but not too impressive.
User Interface
This is the cool part, the navigation is pretty simple, just up down left right, it reminds me of PSP, almost the same type of user interface. The selected menu will turn into white color, I am not sure the current firmware allows to change the theme, but for the time being, try to avoid background image with many white spots as the menu will be very difficult to read.
The main window comes with 6 icons, “Setting”, “Video”, “Music”, “Photo”, ”eBook” and “Games”.
The GUI of HD100 HD
This is not ECG!! this is the very interesting feature to check the voltage and current of the internal battery. Something cool but not very practical.
Conclusion
After testing out different aspect of the player, I think that it fits the purpose of being a HD PMP, but 8GB build in memory could be too little to fit big HD movie files. With metal body, nothing much to complain about, just the screen surface needs some improvement, may be a film protector will solve the problem. For the low price of about USD120, I think this is the best value out there for not so fussy buyers. However the function is limited to primarily movies playback, thus I would recommend this product to movie lovers who are always on the go.
Review by isnoopyu.com
This thing has been discussed quite a lot in the following, not that i am blowing my own trumpet:
Technorati
Engadget
akihabaranews
I am both an audio and video lover, live in big city and always on the move. Trains and buses. Music is good companion, but occasionally watching great videos on the move is not bad either. Now I have the chance to watch high definition on the move, should be cool.
On my hand now lies the Cube HD (High Definition) MP4 Player, H100 HD, the most raved Portable Media Player (PMP) for the past few weeks. This is probably the first PMP that supports true HD at a very affordable price. Not only amazing video playbacks, the 5 inch crisp and clear screen makes it a good photo viewer and eBook reader.
Video Playback
As a PMP boasting the HD capability, this is the probably the one and only selling point of the player. Cube must not disappoint the consumers. After I watched a few test HD trailers, I conclude that Cube has delivered what it promise, a true HD player. It plays HD movie files without a single lag throughout the test run. The LCD screen is fast enough to deliver that kind of quality movies would need. No motion blur.
The video format supported is very limited nevertheless, I tried playing .mkv movies, the widely available HD format, but it fails to play. I think this is the biggest con of the player itself. perhaps future firmware upgrade will solve the problem.
Sound quality
I definitely wont replace this with my current Kenwood D9 for music listening, it performs rather weak in sound reproduction compared to mainstream music players. The bass is there, not as deep, mid is thin, high is a bit scratchy at times.
The strange thing is when it plays HD video, the sound quality coming out from the headphone jack driving my super.fi 3 is really not bad. The virtual surround effect presents, and the sound is not boring. It is just too bad that this quality only limited to video playback. It might be due to the software i was playing then.
The Packaging
The packaging itself is nothing fantastic, black color paper box, a very typical product packaging. Opening up the box, you will the find the player, a 5V charger (Chinese power plug), a very nice silky smooth grey color pouch, USB cable, infra red remote control, cube earphones, user manual and a RGB/Audio Cable.
The Physical build
The casing is made of metal, I am not sure it is aluminum or steel, but it feels solid in your hand. The edge is rather smooth, and no sharp metal edge exposed. Measuring at 12.9 cm x 8.6 cm x 1.3 cm, weight at about 300g, slightly heavier than PSP, in my opinion, it is more suitable to keep in your bag than pocket.
The screen is huge, 5inch big, covering about 90% of the player. The good thing is of course the screen size, the bad side of it is it lacks of space for grabbing tightly at the side, unlike PSP where the you can hold on to the control at both end. Next thing I notice is the screen surface, it is not as smooth and flat as it should be, definitely not the iPhone kind of screen surface your are expecting. The worse part of it is it attracts dust and finger prints rather efficiently, I think a proper screen protector would really help here.
The player comes with good intuitive control, with volume up and down buttons at the left side, navigation jog-dial kind of button, together with “Play”, “Left” & “Right” buttons at the right side of it. The tactile feel of the buttons is good and responsive. There is also a small tiny reset button hiding beside the USB connector. Oh, I just noticed there is a small microphone hole beside the Mini SD slot. Near the navigation buttons, there is TV-out, Audio-Out (headphone jack) and a 5V DC inlet
The left side: Vol Up & Down buttons and Mini SD expansion
The right side: The navigation buttons
One thing to note is the alignment of connectors is not perfect, but I did not find any problem during the test run.
Powering up the unit
Press and hold the Play button for 3 seconds turns on the unit, the boot up time is fast, almost instantaneously it will go into the start up screen and goes into the main window within 3 seconds. Wow, the first reaction I got, what a crisp and clear display this baby is having, almost as good as iPhone’s. (note: the display is not so suitable for outdoor watching, the screen is not bright enough under bright sunlight, and the screen surface is kinda glossy & reflective. The sun is its greatest enemy)
Connecting to the Computer
The computer recognized the unit quickly as Cube H100, with total storage of 7.56GB. One thing to note is the player comes with FAT32 file system, thus it is unable to take any file bigger than 2GB. To solve this, we format the disk to NTFS system. When done, I dragged and dropped a 700MB movie files to the player. The transfer speed is OK, but not too impressive.
User Interface
This is the cool part, the navigation is pretty simple, just up down left right, it reminds me of PSP, almost the same type of user interface. The selected menu will turn into white color, I am not sure the current firmware allows to change the theme, but for the time being, try to avoid background image with many white spots as the menu will be very difficult to read.
The main window comes with 6 icons, “Setting”, “Video”, “Music”, “Photo”, ”eBook” and “Games”.
The GUI of HD100 HD
This is not ECG!! this is the very interesting feature to check the voltage and current of the internal battery. Something cool but not very practical.
Conclusion
After testing out different aspect of the player, I think that it fits the purpose of being a HD PMP, but 8GB build in memory could be too little to fit big HD movie files. With metal body, nothing much to complain about, just the screen surface needs some improvement, may be a film protector will solve the problem. For the low price of about USD120, I think this is the best value out there for not so fussy buyers. However the function is limited to primarily movies playback, thus I would recommend this product to movie lovers who are always on the go.
Review by isnoopyu.com
