Asus O!Play Air HDP-R3
Conclusion
Published: 26th January 2010 | Source: Asus | Price: £100 |
The O!Play is a mixed kettle of fish. On the one side we have all the great things about the O!Play - it's ability to play HD Content without stalling, HDMI interface, sleek aesthetics and easy to use software interface. Then there's the bad - the choice to exclude an HDMI cable from the bundle seems odd, It's also a shame to see that every time you want to play a media file you have to navigate your way to it. It would have been nice to find all my media displayed in a single location.
Just before going to press Asus informed us of a firmware update for the O!Play air, which should remove the bugs experienced in todays testing, as well as adding a few exciting new features. Although there is no definitive list, the features currently in the pipeline include a web browser, ability to listen to free radio stations and stream live TV.
I do feel however that the positives outweigh the negatives by quite a large degree, and that the O!Play is a solid product. Although it's nothing ground breaking, it doesn't have any significant flaws and performs its' primary tasks very well. Scan offer the older, non-wireless version for a very reasonable £81.26 with the new version set to come in at £100, the price hasn't increased by more than about £20 so the O!Play Air is an excellent purchase - especially if Asus deliver on the firmware update. However, if it pushes above the £100ish mark, then the value for money will suffer, making it a more of a difficult purchase.
The Good: - Able to play HD content without stalling or stuttering
- Compact size and clean aesthetics
- Massive range of media files supported
- Wide range of external media sources supported
- Wireless N Support
- Simple and easy to use
The Mediocre:
- Bugs in current firmware, although this is being sorted - No bundled HDMI lead.
The Bad: - Nothing to report
Overclock3D would like to thank Asus for providing todays review sample. Discuss in our forums.
Most Recent Comments
May slide towards buying the set 
"Preview" can be turned off in the main menu.
Thanks for the review
Everything that the review writer says is true and it is a good media player, but still not perfect. It has a “Music Shuffle” button on the remote which is supposed to play your music on random, (or shuffle for the Americans). Problem is that when you press the Music Shuffle, sometimes it takes so long to process the tracklist that it just fails and restarts or simply just doesn’t do it.
When it does do the shuffle play list it selects 4000 songs from the library of artists in alphabetical order. So I’m hearing lots of Devo, ELO, Bondi Cigars, ACDC and ABBA but none of Pink Floyd, Xavier Rudd or ZZTop. Bugger!
The other little annoyance is that on the currently playing display, there is no artist title. So when a song comes on that I don’t recognise I can’t check who it is. The song name is there but not the artist. Bugger!
So it’s a good media player but still not exactly what I’m looking for.
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