ASUS O!Play Mini Plus - Mini Review

[Sam__]

ASUS O!Play Mini Plus

This is my mini review of the ASUS O!Play Mini Plus.

To kick things off here’s a .gif of the accessories leaving the box.

For starters, the O!Play Mini Plus looks really sleek. I love the texture on the top; it's shiny with small squares that are angled slightly. The picture shows it a lot better than I can describe. It allows the surface to be shiny but not noticeably a finger print magnet. It's pretty small too. If your screen is on a stand then it's the perfect size to nestle in between the stand and the bottom bezel.

I got it set up really quickly out of the box on my 720p TV, and with some tweaking on my 1680x1050 PC monitor. I just had to buy a mini HDMI to HDMI to HDMI converter and a HDMI to VGA converter. No audio came through though, as expected. There are two audio/video outputs on the device so I used the analogue output to get audio on my speakers, using the cable provided, straight into the amplifier. Instant, cheap home theatre set-up (all dependant on how much you spent on the monitor and speakers of course).

It's got loads of different ways to connect to data sources, like: 2xUSB 2.0, eSATA, 4-in-1 card reader, WIFI, Wired network. Having two USB ports is very useful. You can leave something plugged into the back, such as a USB HDD or similar, then change out the front one. I usually have a USB stick in the front, which I copy things onto. The multi card reader is nice to have, mostly for viewing photos straight from the camera.

What I ended up using the O!Play Mini Plus for most was movies. The movie playback is brilliant. It eats 1080p blu-ray rips for breakfast and FLAC files sound like a symphony has taken up residence in the walls of your room. The other apps didn't really impress me with the facility of use as I found them clunky and hard to use.

Now to O!Direct and O!Mediashare. I wasn't quite sure what these would be like to use at first but once set up they are so very convenient. If you're too lazy to walk over to the O!Play you can stream from your Android phone/tablet (O!Mediashare) or laptop (O!Direct). If you have a movie on your desktop in another room of the house and just cannot find the will to plug in a USB stick and wait for the file to be transferred, just use O!Direct to stream it over the network. You get all the controls through the O!Play just like it's playing it from that USB stick you couldn't be bothered to use.

Overall this is a great device for bringing your TV into the modern era, or using in conjunction with a PC monitor to create a cheap home theatre set up.