6.5 inches of display goodness, a 20 GB hard drive and support for a flurry of formats: Jørgen Sundgot reviews MobiNote's DVX-POD 7010 portable media viewer.
Although the field of portable media viewers is still in its infancy, products in it are benefiting greatly from technologies developed for handhelds and notebooks. One of these is MobiNote's DVX-POD 7010, which currently holds the throne as the most grandiose player on the market with a display measuring a whopping 6.5 inches and support for a number of formats. Unsurprisingly, however, size isn't all that matters.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet the videoPod
More than a tad similar to the visual styling of Apple's iPod line-up of portable audio players, the DVX-POD 7010 bears an aesthetically pleasing and deliciously uncluttered design where white plastic and chrome buttons play key roles. In fact, the front of the player is dedicated entirely to the display, whilst navigational buttons are placed atop and connectivity options on the sides. Despite the clean looks, however, this setup can prove a tad frustrating as it's easy to press the wrong button when feeling ones way; the alternative is to frequently tilt the unit.
Make no mistake; at 192 x 115 x 28 mm and a weight of 600 g, the 7010 is absolutely humongous. The cause? Its 6.5" display, which is simultaneously both the largest benefit and disadvantage of the unit. With a maximum resolution of 854 x 640 pixels, it is absolutely splendid in all of its 16:9 widescreen glory, featuring an anti-glare coating and a superb horizontal viewing angle. Excellent, user-adjustable brightness and good colour saturation heighten the experience further, and the only drawback is a less-than stellar vertical viewing angle.
Coupled with a 20 GB HDD for storage, the functionality of the 7010 spans quite a broad area. Among the more basic features we find voice recording and viewing of JPEG, BMP and GIF images, whereas audio playback supports MP3 and WMA Kbps formats at up to 256 and 160 Kbps, respectively; Secure WMA is not on the slate. As for video, the DVX-POD 7010 is capable of recording a composite video feed in MPEG-4 SP format at 25 FPS and 704 x 240 pixels.
Smooth operator
Furthermore, the 7010 naturally also supports a host of formats for video playback, starting with Windows Media 9 SP and DivX 3.11, both at 352 x 288 pixels and 30 FPS at the bottom end. Moving up, we find Apple QuickTime 6 at 30 FPS and 640 x 480 pixels, and at the very top DivX 4.x, 5.1 and 5.2 at 720 x 480 pixels and 30 FPS; in other words, DVD resolution video. Performance for all of the above formats proved very good, although not excellent as virtually indistinguishable, periodic stutter was visible upon closer examination. Still, we wouldn't have noticed it hadn't we been scrutinizing the unit.
Similarly, video recording performance proved good, although the 704 x 240 pixel format is perhaps somewhat unusual. Unfortunately, users must be present to initiate recording manually, which negates the possibility of setting the 7010 to record a show at home and then leaving the house. That's not the only issue we have with software, however.
Prepare for thumb paralysis
Best described from an aesthetic perspective as 'functional', the interface of the 7010 is a bit of a quagmire. To access media, users rely on the up/down jog wheel placed on the right side of the device to navigate a folder-like interface which has absolutely no intelligence with regard to meta reorganization, ID3 tags or otherwise. Thus, large music collections - and even large video collections, to the degree accomodated by a 20 GB HDD - are an absolute pain to navigate, marring the experience of an otherwise great device.
Fortunately, audio quality is quite good, and MobiNote also took care of including an all-white, ziplocked protective case which will get dirty if you so much as look at it the wrong way and an adjustable - and slightly unwieldy - kickstand. These compliment the anti-slide rubber grips placed on the back of the unit as nice touches, making for a great viewing experience in the vast majority of cases.
As for software, the 7010 comes with a Windows client which does little else than handle file transfers between a PC and the device, which also shows up as a mass storage device courtesy of its snappy USB 2.0 support. It also allows for playing back audio and video in the client, however this is of very limited use; in fact, the included option to defragment the drive of the 7010 is a more useful function.
Lastly, there's the issue of battery life. In our tests, the 7010 eked out between 2.5 and 4 hours depending on the format in use; as expected, the higher resolution, the faster FPS and the higher bit rate, the higher the toll on battery life. Most of all, however, the screen is what impacts battery life - and it's a trade-off that's worth it, in our opinion. Still, the glorious screen does cause what must be described as mediocre battery life.
Availability
The MobiNote DVX-POD 7010 is at the time of press selling in select Asian markets and the U.S. for approximately $600 USD.
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