Hot from the factory comes the latest Onda player, sporting HD playback, 8GB storage and HDMI output.
Read the review after the jump.

(For more images, see the gallery at the bottom of the article)

The Box

The actual packaging design is simple, stark and almost utilitarian, displaying a muted graphic of cinema seats and nothing else but text and logos for the various functions.

Inside you’ll find the player, a package of instructions, warranty card, cleaning cloth etc, a stand, a set of Onda branded standard earphones, a USB charging cable, a standard USB connection cable and a USB adaptor to accomodate the smaller input plug the player uses.

The Player

First impressions

Out of the box the first noticable thing about this 5 inch player is that its plastic shell puts it very much in the light category of players.
It’s by no means flimsy as the construction feels solid but it’s not got the weight of metal players, making it good for portability.

The design is a standard, non-flashy Onda affair with a simple logo on the bottom right of the the front of the player and on the back there’s again minimal branding.

Along the top runs the play/pause button, power connection and headphone socket.
The right side of the player houses the back button and a scroll wheel/slider amalgam which has a satisfying action in its use.

Beneath that is the USB connection which is covered by a removable rubber seal.
The bottom of the player only has an infra-red reciever for a remote.
Finally the left hand side has a regular push button volume control, the on/off switch and the HDMI and MicroSD ports, both again covered in a removable rubber seal.

Switching On & UI

After a short time loading with the Onda logo on display you’re treated to a nice bright UI screen which displays the icons in a line and they are naviagble by the right-hand click wheel which is also used to select options by pushing it in.
The menu is simple and to the point, again very functional, straight forward and unflashy.
The lack of touchscreen is made up for with the simple control method.

Functions

The options on the main menu are as follows:
Video, photo, book, FM, Record, Games, Setting, File Browser and Music.

No surprises there then, let’s take a closer look.

Video

With the SoChip knocking out the HD video the playback is pretty damn sexy.
But, with the Rockchips and the like also effortlessly pushing out HD video at such high quality the bar has been raised of late.
Considering that, the playback is excellent but unfortunately indistinctive against the other players in the new wave of HD.

Photo

A standard picture viewer but the access times between pictures is quick and the transition is smooth.
The colours are nice and blod and the definition on high quality pictures displays detail very clearly.
The features are the standard affair of slideshows, rotate etc.

Book

Far from being a the quality e-book/pdf reader it could easily be, the ‘book’ function is simply a .txt style text display and as such disappointing.

FM

Not much to say about this function other than due to the almost non-functioning autotune option there was only so much fuzz I could take before it was on to the next feature.

Record

This is as basic as it need be, I suppose. Two options, record and ‘qualty’ (sic). Once inside the quality options you can choose between poor, ‘nomal’ (sic, again) and good.
The two errors there are representative of the many translation typos in this early English version of the firmware. Hopefully some corrections will be made for the final release.

Games

The VX575HD comes loaded with three games:

Chinese Chess

This is a pretty functional, controllable game that I’m sure would be fun if you know the rules.
I don’t, so here’s a picture of me losing.

Pic Block

Another simple and functional game, this is a digital version of the classic sliding picture rearranging game. Fun if you’ve the patience.

Russia Block

Ah, a Tetris clone. What could go wrong? A lot, it seems.
One of the world’s simplest games turns into a desperate and confusing button mash of hysteria and panic due to the awful control system offered by the buttons, ending in this.

I’m sure given time the control system could be learned and come as second nature but it’s really not worth the bother.

File Browser

This is a nice, large text based file system.

Music

The music file navigation is pretty solid on the VX575HD.
ID3 tags are used well and the menu is simple.
The playback screen is also suitably non-flashy making it more of a surprise when the excellent audio quality is heard.
Through headphones the sound is up there with the best and even the internal speaker has a certain charm to its sound making it a quality standalone music system if need-be.

The Verdict

The VX575HD has quality video and audio and fair to bog-standard everything else.
Excellent video up to 720P is more than standard across the board, as is HDMI output now so in a sea of players that can push the boat out further to 1080P playback and true HD HDMI output it unfortunately leaves the VX575HD looking decidedly average.
Luckily for the consumer, however, these days average is excellent quality video and audio so while the HD575 isn’t great and flashy, for those two things the no-frills player is very, very good.
Given the purpose of a PMP, it at least ticks the two most important boxes.

See below for the full gallery.

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