Tuesday, April 26, 2011

My Aluratek Cinepal APMP100F Review

Aluratek Cinepal APMP100F Personal Media Player Review

This is my first tech review on this website! I first saw this product about 2 months ago while I was cruising buy.com. I came across a link that show cased a company, Aluratek's, products(http://www.buy.com/retail/superstore.asp?loc=68614). On that page I came upon the
About 1 month later, it was in my room.

Design





The cinepal features a 8.9 Inch 1024 x 600 LCD screen, with a black entirely plastic back, with a built in plastic kickstand that, although plastic, feels sturdy. At the bottom of the device are 2 speaker grills on the left and right.

There is a silver bezel that travels around all sides of this device, and on the top, going from left to right are the following buttons:

1.Lock switch
2.Power button
3.Mode/Back button
4.Previous/Next
5.Play/Pause
6.Volume +/-

On the right of this device are the following ports:

1.Mini USB port-The device comes with a micro USB to full USB adapter, so you can play videos or music off of a flash drive or even USB hard drive!)

2.Sd Card Slot-takes up to 32gb.

3.Av port-This device also comes with a pair of HD av cables for tv out.

4.Headphone port

5.Dc charging port-I'm disappointed that this device only charges through dc and not USB.


The following items arrived in the package:
Sleeve for the device
Remote
Tv out cables
Mini usb to full Usb adapter
HDTV out cables


Not all the items I listed are in the photo, some are in use.



Video

"Support HD video in AVI, VOB, DAT, MPG, MPEG, DivX, H.264, MKV, and RM / RMVB"

I've tried all of these formats not in HD, and am happy to say all of them have played. The support for all of these formats remind me of French Manufacturer Archos' amazing video support.  I have experienced hiccups when playing certain 720p hd videos downloaded from YouTube. For instance one music video plays very well, but if it's rewound, the video's audio will get off sync, another video simply didn't play, with a message that read:Please wait..., but only played the audio and no video.


My camera takes bad pictures, but trust me, video looks amazing on this device. Here it is running the latest episode of the simpsons in rmvb.

Music

I'll be honest, the music experience isn't very great, the main reason I bought this player was for the video capabilities.   On the now playing screen, there is no album artwork, there is only Id3 tag information(artist, album, sound quality, and the size of the individual song). There is also a choice of 5 eq's, from normal,classic,jazz,pop, and rock. The sound quality of the speakers is good IMO, but they don't get very loud when at their max for movies. It should work fine for music, but if not you can just plug it into some speakers that use a standard 3.5mm jack.

Pictures

Pictures can turn this device into a entirely different experience, just load your photos on the internal memory, or Sd card, choose how you want the transition from pic to pic to look(there are about 5 choices from scroll up/down,page up/down, diagonal.) and set your music to play at the same time, and then you've got a digital photo frame. The picture quality looks stunning.

Conclusion

The Cinepal is an amazing product for the price you'll pay, which is 119.00+shipping on amazon. No, it doesnt run Froyo,Gingerbread or Honeycomb, or have a capacitive touch screen, or run windows 7 or iOS 4.3. Its just a portable media player that runs video's very well. For the price everyone should consider purchasing one.

Rating:7/10

Pro's:
Amazing Video Support
Amazing Screen Quality
Able to play files from usb flash drives and/or usb hard drives.
Very nice transformation to a digital photo frame using slide show with music running in background.
HDTV aux out


Cons:
That its not available from the manufacturer i bought from on amazon for 75 dollars lol
Viewing angles are not great.
Bland Now playing Music Screen.

Link To Buy One:Aluratek Cinepal APMP100F Personal Media Player

Company:http://aluratek.com/

Aluratek makes other products too. E-readers,Digital camera's,iPod docks, and more. Based on the quality of the cinepal, I might be buying another one of their products pretty soon.

Reviews

I also might occasionally post reviews about technology products I own, and music. Im currently working on a review of the Aluratek Cinepal, a very nice pmp with a 8.9 inch screen that can play 720p video,music,and view pictures.