Asus O!PLAY Mini Plus

Full Review

The Asus O!Play Mini Plus is a full HD media player that comes in a simple compact design, and is very versatile. It outputs 1080p videos to your HDTV, 5.1 audio to your surround sound speakers, and has Gigabit Ethernet, which is a real bonus given the price, as well as featuring inbuilt Wi-Fi N, which is a very good addition considering the size of this unit - while other media players that we have reviewed earlier have also featured Wi-Fi N, this connectivity option was available only through the use of an external dongle.

The only feature that you could say is missing from this impressive specs list is an internal storage unit, which given the connectivity options that are provided in this unit - Gigabit Ethernet port and Wi-Fi N - Asus could hardly be faulted for.


Design
The Asus O!Play Mini Plus unit comes in one of the smallest form factors we have seen in the media player segment - for comparative purposes, other media players will generally be almost 33 per cent larger than this Asus unit. It would almost be the same size, if not smaller, of a typical internet modem. The media player weighs 175g and comes in the following dimensions: 151.85 x 106.7 x 29.03 mm (WxDxH).


View of the media player from the front.

The entire Asus media player unit comes in black button-less design (the reset button does not protrude to the surface), with a glossy diamond patterned top section - the rest of the unit has a regular matte black finish. The top tapers towards the base, which gives it a rather lunchbox like appearance - one could be forgiven for mistaking this inconspicuously designed media player for an ornament meant on a furniture shelf.

There is a power LED indicator at the front of the unit, along with an infra-red receiver, a conveniently located USB 2.0 port and a multi card reader. At the rear of the unit you will find the power input, a reset button, a Gigabit LAN port, an eSATA/USB 2.0 combo port, HDMI 1.3 port, Analog Composite Audio/Video output and the S/PDIF optical audio output.


View of the rear of the media player.


Features
Included in the packing of this unit are the following components: a remote control, an AC adapter, composite AV cable, an HDMI cable and a software installation and manual CD.

You can play content from a directly connected USB or external drive or stream the content from other computers on the network that you are connected to - you have the advantage of either streaming content through the Gigabit Ethernet port or wirelessly.

The media player unit did detect a DSLR camera when it was connected via USB, allowing us to see the images and files stored on it. Heartened, we tried a phone as well over USB just for kicks, but that did not get detected.


Network Media Streaming
After having installed the O!MediaShare app from the Android Market on to an Android smartphone, we were able to stream content from the smartphone on to the Media Player. We played some audio that was stored on the phone and streamed an internet video as well.

After having installed O!Direct app on a laptop, we could stream multimedia content to the Asus O!Play Mini Plus media device, only over wired Ethernet. For some reason, the media player was not detected by the app over a wireless network.

To stream to the media player, you have to right click on the particular media file and choose the "O!Direct(O!Play Media Player) option - in this instance this file is located on a laptop. Once that option has been clicked, the media player will provide a 'Pin' on the display unit connected to it - this Pin will be provided whenever you start a new connection to the media player. You will be then prompted to enter the PIN in the 'Pin Code' section of the O!Direct pop up window that appears on the laptop screen and you will get to consequently view the media file on the display attached to the media player.


Vital Details At A Glance
The various multimedia formats supported are shown below. Crucial input/output and connectivity details are also included in this section.
Image/Photo - JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF, TIFF
Audio/Music - MP3, WAV, OGG, AAC, FLAC, AIFF, Dolby Digital AC3, PCM/LPCM, DTS Digital Surround, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, ID3 Tag
Video/Movie - MOV, WMV, MKV, AVI, ASF, FLV, RM/RMVB, MPEG-1/2/4, TS, M2TS, TRP, ISO, VOB, DAT, H.264, VC-1, MP4, MPG, MTS
Sub-titles - SMI, SRT, SUB, SSA, TXT
File Systems -  FAT16/32, NTFS, HFS/HFS+, ext3
Output Interfaces - HDMI 1.3, Composite Video And Audio, S/PDIF optical audio
Input Ports - One USB 2.0 port,  One eSATA/USB 2.0 combo port, Multi card reader
Network Connectivity - 1000 Mbps RJ-45 LAN port, 802.11n Wireless


Interface
The Asus O!Play Mini Plus uses a simple interface that you can get around quite intuitively: this interface includes Setup, IMS (Internet services interface), File manager, Photo, Music, and Movies.

You can view the files that are stored on either a directly connected device such as a USB or external hard drive or from a computer connected on the same network - this is done by going into the File Manger section and then individually going into the relevant storage section (USB, HDD Network and so on and so forth) .

The O!Play device was able to play the various formats we tried out - when we viewed a 1080p MKV video over the network, it was streamed at Gigabit speeds. The media player unit was connected to an HDTV via the HDMI port. The overall playback was generally free from jitters.

The Music, Movies and Photo folder provide a collated view of all the related media files in that particular category. Depending on the amount of data that the digital player can access it might take some time for the relevant data to be displayed in each of these individual categories. We would recommend you access the files from the specific device such as USB or network attached computer and so on from the 'File Manager' section.



Remote Control
The remote control is a bit lengthier than that of most other media players. Consequently the keys on this device felt spaced out better. I didn't like the tactile feel of the buttons on the remote - it's neither quite hard nor soft, but this is subjective. The remote control has shortcut keys for accessing Internet media services, for ejecting the directly connected devices (such as USB), for directly accessing the Facebook app, and for sharing videos and photos to Facebook (or "like"-ing Facebook posts).

In tests, the player received signals from the remote control at a distance of at least 16 feet, along a straight line. Signal reception seemed to be an issue when the remote control was facing the O!Play device at an angle.



This remote control doesn't feature a QWERTY keypad, so you will have to type by relying on the onscreen keyboard. Typing on the remote control will require a good level of patience on the user's part: when searching for YouTube videos, logging in to you r Facebook account or any other activity involving typing.


Online Content
TheAsus O!Play also has some internet features which allows you to connect to the following services: Facebook, YouTube-XL (a YouTube version optimized for a large screen), YouTube leanback, MUZEE internet TV, MUZEE Internet Radio, Mediafly, Dailymotion, Acetrax movies (not available in India), Picasa, Flickr, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo weather, RSS News and Podcast. 




EDIT: Thank you readers and Asus India, we regret the mistaken price and have updated it accordingly.

Bottom Line

The Asus O!Play Mini Plus Media Player is great in terms of the connectivity options provided - Gigabit Ethernet and the inbuilt Wi-Fi N are nice to have with modern home networks. Sure it doesn't offer inbuilt storage but this is not a drawback, given its intended usage. Moreover, the ability to stream content from smartphones and laptops (using Asus software) is an added bonus which ties in with the aim of having this unit as an entertainment hub.

This device is easy to use and supports a wide range of audio/video/photo formats and generally provides for jitter-free video playback, not to mention the petite size. Overall, this is a product that you will be glad to connect to your HDTV.