Asus O!Play Mini

Asus O!Play Mini

Roydon Cerejo, Jan 10, 2011 1150 hrs IST

A no-frills value for money HD media player

Good format support, plays Full HD files easily, card reader built in, compact and durable, affordable, HDMI cable bundled

Menu can get a bit laggy at times, remote buttons aren't very ergonomic

Expert Rating :

Expert Review

Interface and Performance

Asus O!Play Mini interface

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.

Asus O!Play Mini interface

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.