We’ve reviewed quite a few media players here in the past and despite them having a rich feature set, they are priced around Rs.10,000 range, making it somewhat pricey for many consumers. However, with the Asus O!Play mini you can enjoy HD videos without worrying about your budget.
The O!Play mini cannot exactly be termed as a no frills player as it boasts features present in most of high-end players but lacks the Internet connectivity that has somewhat become a norm in media players.
The O!Play mini has a minimalistic design that sports a single USB 2.0 port and a 4-in-1 card reader on the front, whereas the composite AV ports, HDMI, S/PDIF and AC adapter slot are located at the rear.
On the packaging front, the O!Play mini is bundled with a remote control with batteries, CD, quick start guide, AC adapter and composite AV cable.
Using the O!play mini is a no-brainer. Just connect the AC adapter and the AV cable to the player and the HDD or a memory card on the front. Remember, there’s no component-out, so it’s either way – HD via HDMI or SD via Composite. We used our own HDMI cable to enjoy HD movies.
Powering it up, we’re greeted with the logo followed by an easy-to-use user interface. A plugged in storage device is automatically detected, which is then scanned by the O!Play mini to segregate content into videos, pictures or music. Having a storage device with lots of content could take some to index but if you’re impatient like me, O!Play mini also allows you to cancel the process. One issue we encountered was that O!Play mini needs a minimum of 20MB of space on the connected drive for indexing. With less than 20MB free storage, O!Play mini fails to index the content, However, you can then access the content from the file manager.
Despite the initial gripe, the O!Play mini managed to play each and every file we threw at it and that too without showing any signs of stuttering or lag. It boasts an impressive format support including mov, mkv, rmvb for video; ogg, flac for audio; and jpeg, png, bmp and gif for images. The player also supports various subtitle formats including auto detection of RightTxT.
Couple of other noteworthy features include support for 7.1 channel surround sound and HDD format support, which plays from any HDD irrespective if it’s formatted in Windows, Mac or Linux.
To wrap this up, I would say Asus has definitely got a winner in their hands. With an asking price of just around Rs. 4,000, the OPlay mini is packed with features that are comparable to a sub-10k product. Barring the internet connectivity support, of course.
Rating: 
Pros: Easy to use, Small, Affordable
Cons: no HDMI cable bundled
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