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| Nationite OS-43 Review |
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Rating : 7.7 / 10 Manufacturer : Nationite |
The OS-43 is one of the first MP4 players to use the newer RK2708 media chip made by Rockchip. Although the chip is similar to that of its predecessor, RK2706, the RK2708 adds a little extra punch allowing smoother video playback and handle Slide Navigation System (SNS).
The SNS differs from other button and touch screen systems. The SNS is built around a tactile strip on the side of the player with a heat sensor underneath to detect finger movement. Moving your finger across the strip will interact with the GUI allowing for easy scrolling. The SNS makes it much easier to scroll and browse through your music library, unlike most 4.3? MP4 players which makes browsing quite cumbersome.
Your audio and video isn’t just confined to your player either as the OS-43 has TV out capabilities enabling you to watch any video you have stored on any TV with RCA inputs. It also has a built in FM transmitter which can be used to transmit your audio from your videos or music to a nearby radio, perfect for use within a car on those long trips.
The player comes with 8GB and 16GB of internal memory and a microSD slot (SDHC support) allowing up to 32GB of additional memory to be added to the player.
Specifications
Main Chip: Rockchip RK2708 DSP core + ARM core
Core Speed: 400 mHz
Capacity: 8GB/16GB
Memory Slot: MicroSD 2GB-32GB
Screen Resolution: 4.3”, 480x272, 16:9 aspect ratio
Max resolution: 800x480 (AVI) 720x480 (RMVB)
Video Formats:
AVI
RM
RMVB
FLV
FPS: 30 FPS
Audio Formats:
MP3
WMA
FLAC
AAC
APE
Audio Output: L(10mw) + R(10mw), 32?
SNR and Distortion: S/N ?85dB / ?-60dB
Frequency Response: 20HZ~20KHZ 0dB± 2dB
Image Formats:
JPG
GIF
BMP
Text: Multi-line text display (TXT)
Battery: 3.7v 1800mAh rechargeable Li-On battery
Inputs / Outputs:
USB 2.0
3.5mm
Features:
FM Radio
FM Transmitter
Album Art
Firmware Upgrades
Playlists
Lyrics
Voice Recorder
TV Out
Multiple/Customisable Themes
Languages:
English
Simplified Chinese
Traditional Chinese
French
Spanish
Dutch
German
Operating Systems:
Windows 2000
Windows XP
Windows Vista
Mac OSX
The Nationite OS-43, although large, is an amazing media player when it comes to quality and functionality. The OS-43 allows you to listen to your favourite music and videos, view photos, listen to the radio, record from the radio or just yourself, and even transmit audio via FM transmitter to a nearby radio, such as your car.
A little more on the SMS, swiping your fingers up or down on the strap will scroll through the list of files or options, then tapping on the strap aligned with the option or file will allow you to access it. When in media mode, swiping up and down will increase and decrease volume. Tapping anywhere will bring up the menu, where you can scroll through them. In picture mode, using two things starting from the edges and pulling them together will shrink the image, whilst reverse will enlarge it. Swiping up or down will allow you to change to the next image. General controls work very well but can take a little getting used to. However, whilst in various modes, it isn’t as responsive as it should as the processing power is now focused on doing something else.
Whilst it has an in-built speaker, it isn’t very loud as it can easily get drowned out by noise, and the quality isn’t very good. When the volume is high, it distorts, and there is almost no bass. Not that this will matter as you will probably use headphones more often.
Being a media player, it can play video files for various supported formats. From what I can see, it seems to run on a 16-bit system as there are slight blemishes and smudges between colours of similar tone, rather than defined like you do on the computer. But ignoring these little blemishes, video playback is generally beautiful. It is bright, clear, and displays what it’s supposed to display.
The bigger issue is that you will need to compress your files more for smoother playback. You can play some movies at a regular video bit rate of around the 700 mark, and audio bit rates of around 128, and it won’t go out of sync, but the video will be jumpy. Others will jump out of sync either early on or slowly as it plays on. Resize the resolution to its native 480x272 whatever height ratio to keep the proper screen size at 480, and it will help smoothen out the video playback. Pull the bit rate down to 512, not perfect, but at least over 90% of the time perfect. The only unfortunate part is during fast scenes, you will get the blocky quality as per usual. Reduce the sound a little won’t change audio quality much, but can help with syncing as more processing power can go towards video.
A great feature further added onto this is that TV out is enabled. There are stereo and video cables provided so that you can connect it to any TV with a component input. Everything works the same as if you were watching it on the OS-43; size, quality, syncing. Even when enlarged onto the screen, there isn’t a lot of stretching involved, meaning whatever quality your video file is, you will get 90% of the quality onto your TV. But again, with the syncing issues, and if you want smooth playback, you won’t exactly be going around with high quality formats.
Though I say it all works the same, it isn’t entirely. Watching it via TV can have more chances of having the video and audio go out of sync. If the video is perfect on the player, most likely it’ll be perfect on the TV, though it wouldn’t be as smooth as it would be on the player. But if the player struggled and went out of sync towards the end of the movie, you’ll definitely get that on the TV, and possibly worse, but not always.
I also noticed that the resolution was interlaced also, so you’ll see a lot of zig zags here and there.
What isn’t clear in the instruction manual unfortunately is that to enable TV out, you connect the player to the TV, start the video, and slide the switch to the power side; but don’t hold it there or it will turn off the player. The screen will shut off and the TV will come on. You can switch back to the player by doing the same thing, sliding it to the power side.
Nevertheless, watching videos on the go is great. And audio is only complement to it. You can sort your music files into various categories such as genre and artists, create a small favourites list, or just play them all. What makes this player great however is the quality of the sound; relatively equivalent to a computer. The equaliser has various presets which you can use, and you can tweak your own also, but if you’re looking for the best bass possible, you’ll want to use the PlayFX setting and selecting Bass within that setting. Throw in a pair of nice headphones, and you’ll be amazed with what it can do.
The earphones provided have weak bass, but strong mids and highs. Using the PlayFX setting, bass improves to a mid level, and the mids and highs are toned down to a lower level; almost a little duller. Strong thumping music like Ne-Yo Closer causes a vibration sort of distortion, where it feels like it is getting cut off at the end.
However, getting mine from MP4 Nation, they provide a free pair of Alpha Brainwavz which according to them has the same quality of the Sennheiser CX300. I don’t know how good the CX300 is, but I can tell you that the Brainwavz play all beats perfectly under the PlayFX setting. You gain that strong smooth bass, whilst the mids and highs are well balanced. They are lowered a little, but still very distinguishable. There’s better, but you’ll be satisfied with these, especially since they’re free with the package.
The quality is there; just make sure you have a good pair of headphones to utilise it.
It’s too bad however that you can’t carry the PlayFX equaliser into the radio but nevertheless, with a high quality pair of headphones, it still sounds just as great, minus a weaker bass. The radio is quite standard in terms of signal quality. You will need to make sure your headphones is in a good position for a strong clean signal, which you generally will, and avoid areas with a lot of wireless interference, such as train stations.
The reason why I choose this player over other ones, at the sacrifice of performance capabilities, was mainly due to the FM transmitter which is built into the OS-43. It contained the other functionalities I wanted, which was great, although if only they were a little better, but I wanted to listen to my MP3s while in the car without having to use my previous FM gadgets. Giving the OS-43 a whirl and it worked very well indeed. You use the headphones as an antenna for better signal and positioning it isn’t too much of a problem as it will work the majority of the time whilst under some of the coiling or locations it undergoes. The signal send from what I can figure is mono however, but I could be wrong. Though transmission and playback in my car was smooth, the equalisers in my car had little effect on the sound. When I listen to the radio or CDs, my bass settings work correctly, but using the OS-43, it’s like using the Brainwavz on a normal equaliser setting rather than PlayFX setting.
But aside from radio transmissions, a fun thing you can do is that you can record what is on the radio. So if your station is about to play a song you like, you can record it. Just make sure you have a good signal so that you can get a nice recording, although you may end up with a slight soft hiss in the background whilst you try to achieve a perfect signal. Nevertheless, it records at a beautiful 259kbps, capturing a lot of the quality. There are also low quality settings available at 67kbps. However, when recording from the radio, make sure any equaliser setting you have used during your music is set back to normal because they will affect the recording; most noticeably the PlayFX setting whilst on high quality recording. You may have heard your computer make the soft repetitive noise when it is loading up a program or something while the busy LED light is flashing, that’s what you get in the recording, but with hisses, repetitive hisses. On normal equalizer, it’ll work fine.
As mentioned, you can also record via the little microphone next to the headphone jack also. Low quality records at 45kbps and high quality at 128kbps. You’ll always have a hiss in the recording and the microphone is quite sensitive to various sounds and movement next to it or within it. When speaking, make sure you have a clear loud voice, or whatever you’re trying to record however as the microphone doesn’t pick up external sounds as well as it does internal sounds or vibrations.
There’s one more feature for the OS-43 and that’s the photo viewer. It will shrink images into its window size, causing pixilation in images, and you can shrink the image or enlarge it for viewing. Of all the functionality, I found the photo viewer to be the slowest, mainly while it is loading up the thumbnails. Going from one picture to another has its few seconds of load time which is fair to say given its processing power. However, the annoying part was that while trying to enlarge the image, it is almost impossible to do and I only managed to get it to work 25% of the time. Easier to do was to access the menu, click the enlarge button and it will jump to 100% size, and then shrink to what you want. There isn’t a fully implemented panning ability to look around the image though unfortunately.
Now, the clumsy controls of the image viewer aren’t the only time it fumbles. The SMS is great, but it isn’t always very responsive and you will find yourself having to swipe a couple of times or so for it to do what you want. At other times, it is slow and just a little more difficult to work though. Then at other times, it is sensitive, such as when you’re just holding the player and you palm wraps around the player, the SNS sensor can detect along the edges also of the strip, which gets a little annoying when you accidentally select something you don’t want.
But, as I mentioned, it has nice features, mainly music and some video, but my real reason for getting it was for FM transmission. With this in mind, battery life is important and this won’t disappoint. Here are rough estimates of playback durations under various modes:
Music: Up to 24 hours
Video: Up to 6 hours
TV Out: Up to 10 hours
Radio: Up to 33 hours
FM Transmission: Up to 16 hours
You will see that music and video have a very good standard length of play to other media players, providing you entertainment throughout most the day. The FM transmitter works great for me, and radio is mind blowing.
The Nationite OS-43 is truly the alternative media player for those who are looking for a cheaper option with a good range of functionality. Video isn’t the best of qualities, but it will entertain. Sound however is tops and the battery life meets standards. I could only wish for a faster processor and this would truly replace any other media player available with the same features. A faster processor not only would allow better video quality, but better SNS responsiveness. If you don't like the look and theme of the player, you can customise it with various tools to give it your own kick.
Think what you will about China media players in general, because it’s mostly true, but the Nationite OS-43 is one of the few media players that break out of that issue and shines.
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Comments
Once again, Thank your very much.
David Sterrrett