Update: Seems like there is already a new firmware update which help to improve the processing speed of the chip, will confirm after i try it out.

To my surprise i received a sample of the new Onda VX525 player this morning, i spent most of the day playing around with it. On the whole, the player is very nice, its actually quite different from what we have seen from Onda and other MP4 players that have been coming out.

I really was surprised at the over quality of the touch screen, its not like the S:flo capacitive screen, but its definitely not like a resistive screen, its best comparable to the Newman M-Touch screen, quite sensitive and will allow for a lot of stuff. One down side is that it won’t properly work if you use your entire finger, you have to use the tip of your finger, much like a stylus end.

The UI is very nice, it is a bit slowish here and there, like for instances if you want to scroll through your music, it will scroll but not smoothly, no way near as smooth as the S:Flo. I did refrain in the video from saying that a person could mod the UI, as the UI is made in Flash, there is a good chance people could change or make their own UI, but as i do not know how easy (or hard) it will be to access and change the flash UI, i didn’t really want to comment that on the video. I do hope that it isn’t that hard to go into the firmware and mess about with it, in comparison to players using the RK27xx and JZ47xx chips, this player probably has the most chance of being easily changeable (and i just don’t mean themes).

Music quality is good, i wouldn’t say as good as the RK2706 chip, but its better than the JZ47xx chips. You can’t bookmark particular points while listening to audio files nor is there playlist support (even though there is a folder on the flash memory called Playlists), these two features are present on the Ainol V900 which uses the same chip, but then again this could come with a firmware update. The player can read ID3 tags very well, browsing through Artists, albums, genres etc are very easy and fast. Only let down is that you can’t combine music on internal storage with external storage and the player won’t sort music on external memory.

Video, well this is where the player is a bit of a let down, it seems you must have your videos in 320×240 resolution (for avi) and for RMVB i think the file res can be higher, but anything higher the videos start to get very jerky. AVI videos that are in the correct resolution do actually play very nice, the screen actually was more impressive than i though it would be, viewing angles in particular were better than i expected. Oh and for videos, you can set it to shuffle, so it can play random videos (i know someone was asking if any players could do this, earlier in the week ,on the forum).

The image viewer is quite nice, it does thumbnail, zooming is easy and the panning is very smooth, even on higher resolution images.

Flash games play pretty smooth, well smooth enough that they are playable, there were quite a few preloaded on the player i got, no idea if all players will come with games. With downloading SWF games for this player, it may be hit or miss in this case, but not if they run or not, if the controls will work.

Just to note, if people didn’t pick it up in the video, there will be 4GB and 8GB internal memory versions and it can already support 8GB microSDHC Sandisk (class 4) cards.

Overall this is what i consider an interesting player, there are many more players that have far better audio and video capabilities, but the interactivity factor for this player is much more than any other player we have seen in a long time. I think even with the average audio quality and video resolution limitation, many people will enjoy this player. Due to its nice, large and simple UI i think it would also make a good player for even kids.

Well this player will be cheap anywhere from $75 to $85 for the 8GB when it comes out, but we won’t have it for atleast another 2 - 3 weeks.

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