My review: Digital Cube's iStation i2

[james.miller]

The Background

After a good solid 8 months use from my iRiver h10 5gb, i started looking for more. Don't get me wrong, the h10 is a damn good mp3 player. Its easy to use, a fair amount of storage and a half decent battery life. Most importantly its pure UMS and the sound is very good indeed (though not up to iAudio standards).

But still, like everything else, i just got bored of it. Im off on holiday again soon so i started looking for something with a lot more storage and video capablilties thrown in. For a week or so it came down to two players - the iaudio x5l 30gb ~£230 or the creative Zen vision:m 30gb ~£199. Sorry nothing from apple here, im not anti-apple but i know my mp3 players, and a video ipod wont cut it for me. Anyway, I knew the pros and cons of both players. The x5l was the clear leader on the audio and battery life side, and the creative had it nailed on the video side.

I was >this< close to pressing the big BUY botton on the creative when i thought id just have a look to see if there were any other players worth concidering. That's when the iStation i2 caught my eye. £239, it plays video and music ect ect blah blah. The first thing that struck me was the the size of the screen. The iStation is a PMP at heart folks, not an mp3 player that handles video.

3 1/2" 262k 320x240 colour screen. pretty nice *thumbs up*. I thought it loooks pretty intersting so i dug a little deeper and boy did it look impressive.

The Specs


The General Model Name i-STATION i2
Color Black / White / Silver
Dimension 123.0mm X 76.8mm X 21.5mm
Type Plug & Play (Portable HDD type)
Weight 246g (including Battery)
Touch Screen Easy to use touch screen with a familiar user interface (MS windows type)
USB / USB Host * Download : 2.0 High Speed , 20 MB / sec
* OTG Host : 2.0 High Speed , 6 MB / sec
HDD Memory 20G/30G
Battery Lithium Polymer (Recharging Time : 4 Hours / Capacity : 2700m) (Recharging Time : 8 Hours / Capacity : 5400m)
Playback Time Video ? 6 Hours (Resolution : 320X240, 30 frames) Audio ? 10 Hours (LCD off, 128kbps mp3 Play, Earphones out)
Subtitles SMI, SRT (all subtitles support)
Operating Temperature 5℃ ~ 45℃

Video Supportable Files - DivX 3.11 ~ 5.XX, Xvid, MPEG1/2/4 (ASF, WMV files are needed to be transcoded)
Display LCD Size - 3.5" 320 X240 pixels
Colours - 260,000 colours
Frames 30 frames per second
Bit rate 8Mbps(720 X 480, 30fps)
Audio Supportable Files MP3, WMA, OGG (upto q10), AC3, AAC
Channel Stereo (AC3 5.1Ch / Stereo Out) , SPDIF output (AC3 , DTS OUT)
Frequency Bandwidth 20Hz ~ 20KHz
Headphone Output 70mW (35mW + 35mW)
Signal to Noise Ratio > -95 dB
Equalizers Normal, Classic, Rock, Jazz, Pop etc.
DRM NetSync
Sound Effects 3D SRS WOW, TruBass , FOCUS
Total Harmonic Distortion < 0.05%
Dictionary Types English-English Dictionary / Native Speaker Pronunciation
Features 230,000 words are included
FM Radio Frequency Bandwidth 76 ~108 MHz
FM Recording Format MP3 /128 kbps

Auto Frequency Search & Select (10 Presets available) World wide Radio Frequency
TV OUT Support Types NTSC / PAL
Form CVBS / S-Video
Photo Album File Type JPEG, BMP, PNG
Size About 12 million pixels (< 4000X3000)
Additional
Functions Calculator (Normal, Scientific) / Text Viewer / Paint / Game / Built-in Speaker
Voice
Recording Voice Recording Format MP3
Maximum Recording Time Up to 250 Hours (20GB based)
Recording Bit-Rate 128Kbps

Now that's quite a feature list but look at the important features - touch screen, usb OTG (plug my camera in and dump all the photos to the iStation), supports damn near every video & audio type,35mw outper PER CHANNEL, tv out AND SPDIF out supporting dd5.1 and DTS. That's an impressive feature set which i couldnt ignore, so i thought what the hell. Ill snap it up, take one for the team and get a review done

more coming.....

 

[james.miller]

The Review

The first thing you notice, obviously, is the box. It's simple, well packaged and presents the player well, its quite a deep box.

*pic coming - charging camera batteries*

Inside it, well....The only reason the kitchen sink isnt included is because Digital Cube didnt have any going spare. This comes with a lot of the extra's that are avaible for the player at cost, and its not mentioned anywhere when you buy the player.

What's in the box:

• pc software cd, incluiding conversion software
• instructions on using the software (instructions for the player on the cd)
• the wired remote control
• cleaning cloth
• carry pouch
• the standard battery 2700mAh
• the player
• usb cable
• s-video output cable
• minijack > rca audio lead
• co-ax spdif output lead
• 2 sets of earphones, one with a straight jack the other with a right-angled jack (why 2 sets....i dont know)
• covers for the earphones
• usb host cable, for plugging in cameras ect
• wireless remote

Oh i forgot to mention that i deceded to buy the extended 5700mAh battery for it also, increasing the life of the player by a far bit. I'm not sure on real world usage yet, but its around 90% longer than the standard battery.

The player itself

 

[james.miller]

It's not a small player by any means, by any means, but i was actually expecting it to be bigger than it is. as you can se ein some of the pictures its standing up - the stylus doubles as a handy stand, nifty that. also the extra blunk on the back is the extended battery, the standard battery is much thinner. as you can see.


Build Quality

Not bad at all! the casing is a mix of plastic end and a metal facia. It feels pretty solid. Still, i wouldnt want to drop it though. i fear it wouldnt take as much punishment a smaller Hdd-based mp3 player, definately not as much as a solid-state.

There's one or two things that let the build down in my opinion, though they are only minor quibbles. The end caps for the tv-out, spdif,usb port and dc-input are made from cheap rubber. they dont seem to fit in with the rest of the player. Secondly, the orientation of the wired remote connector. when plugged in, the connector faces away from the player rather than across the side of it. this may cause some stress on the connector when in a pocket for example, but it should be ok. The weight of the player is good. Its overly-heavy with the extended battery, but that's ok by me honestly. its a pmp, not a 1gb ipod nano lol. The buttons are a little plastic-like, but they have a reasuring click and are fine to use.

 

[james.miller]

The UI and using it

thanks to the touch screen, its actually a doddle to use. As you can see from the pic in the 1st post, everythign is accessed from the main screen. you can use the buttons on the player or the stylus on the screen. Both are very simple. when you move on from the main screen, everything is accessed via a familiar explorer-like interface, again making things very simple.

video

you can choose the file and hight the right arrow on the screen, or just 'double click' it with the stylus.



Picture quality - very very good. i was a little concerned that the bigger screen would hinder the quality compared to other players with smaller screen with the same resolution. I shouldn't have, the video quality is immense. good colours, suprisingly fast screen (faster than my 19" acer tft infact) make for good viewing. its has a decent viewing angle aswell. of course, it isnt very good in direct sunlight, but then there arent many players that are. Also remember this depends greatly on the quality of the source you are watching. I've found that the device is vastly better with divx encoded in its native res rather than the 640x480 -800x600 stuff floating about. Which is good because the file size for a film is then ~450-500mb a film rather than 700-800.

I've also found it directly plays (legal..) vob fils directly. again the quality is suprisingly good, but there's little point in putting vob files on there. if nothing else they are a waste of space.

Sound quality - very good. It puts the 35mw of power available to good use. The only problem is the dynamics. movies with 2 channel audio NEED to have the audio boosted when being encoded otherwise dialogue ends up being far too quite. i found my self listening at full whack with dialogue, then being blown away by a big explosion or a gun shot lol.

overall, its a good thumbs up from me. This player excels with movies, but you should take the time to encode them properly for the best results

Music

Again, the same interface is used to add music to the player. good news for iRiver fans is that everything is accessed by file/folder, and not by id3 tags. Just the way i like it The music player is very play-list orientated. getting an album to play is as easy as selecting the fold, hitting the 'All' button then hitting play.



the player has a very easy to use UI. your usual play buttons, a-b, repeat one/all ect are all there present and correct. it also supports lyrics, for which there is an editor on the software cd but i havent tried that. doubt i will either lol.

Sound quality - coming form the H10, i was initially dissapointed. There's no user-definable eq which is a poor showing for a device with that much power available. the best sound i can get is with the 'rock' preset and SRS WoW off. with srs's trubass on it just distorts which is a shame.

Anyway after a few days im getting used to it. the lack of bass wont be a problem for most people, and id say the detail it reveals far surpasses that of my h10 and is right up there with the iaudio x5's so tbh, im happy with it. It has a warmer midrange and a better, sharper (but not overly bright) top end. If your a basshead, it might not be your cup of tea. While i think about it, the supplied earphones (both pairs lol) are crap. avoid them lol

to summerize, it majors on detail but lacks in the bass department. its very easy to use though thanks to the file/folder explorer interface. Oh, and its sodding loud as well. 24-25 on this device (top is 40) is the equiv. of listening at 34-35 on my de-EU'd h10. it's one loud player, that's for sure.

The other stuff

Loading the player up with files is is a joy. This is a pure UMS device folks. Plug it in, up pops the removable drive folder and away you go. Transfer speed is is good. much faster than my usb2.0 H10 player, which HDTach 3.0 confirms:

just under 3 times as faster across the board and it shows when using the player as well - file loading and general browsing is much quicker with the iStation (my h10 is pure ums as well remember - allready faster than normal h10s). transfering a 637mb file takes a timed 36 seconds (which puts HDTach right on the button), which is more than quick enough for me. It also means you could fill the player up in 28 minutes or so @ 1gb/minute, roughly)

 

[james.miller]

The remote

It's very easy to use. the thumb stick is a little tacky and certainly the casing's cheap plastic doesnt help the feel of the unit, but it comes free with the player. good job too, because i wouldnt pay the £34 - odd they want for it, though it is usefull for when you just cant be bothered to get the player out of your pocket.



its simple enough. backlight and volume buttons are on the bottom. the backlight button doubles as the function button when held down. hold switch on the top and the thumb stick on the front there.

The options, and setting the player up

The player is fairly customisable. You can set the time delays for the led's and screen power off's on the unit and the remote. you can adjust the brightness of the LCD (~60% seems best to me) and set the T.V output type, as well as the spdif out setting (2 channel or 5.1). You can set a custom boot image and calbrate the screen all from the options screen.

each 'mode' (video player, audio player ect) has its own options screen as well. you can set the video contrast and brightness seperate from the lcd brightness, as well as the aspect ratio, 'menu clarity' which is really the opacity of the UI.

Unfortunately, what you can't do is design your own custom skins for the unit. that's a real shame, though it shouldn't be hard because apparently this unit runs on linux, but Digital cube as of yet have not released any source for it.

The Picture viewer



not as easy to use as it should be, but still just a case of double clicking on the picture to display it. it doesnt seem to dsiplay in full screen, rather it seems to leave a boarder all around for some reason unknown. You can zoom and rotate, but that's about it. pictures are nice and clear, with good colour (better than what these photos suggest)

other bits on the player:

a dictionary,
a paint program
some games
radio (non-rds)
scientific calculator

I can't think of anything else right now, so ill try to summerize the player.

PROS

* flexibility in formats
* storage space
* speed of the unit, both in transferring filsm and opening them on the unit
* removable batteries, with long-life batteries available
* connectivity
* touchsceen, and also picture quality
* detailed and open sound quality with great imagining
* so far, battery life

CONS

* no user eq. this unit need a user eq to make use of all that power
* cant design a custom UI
* little/no support from Digital cube now, since they are working on a new player (the v3) they've virtually disowned the i2
* for some its a litle too heavy and bulky. for a feature packed MP4 player, i think its fine
* the build of the wired remote. a little too 'plasticy'
* the radio is weak, it doesnt pick up or lock on to signals very well at all. still, i'm not going to use it so it doesnt bother me.
* doesn't display the current time. seems a bit odd that it's not included, but it doesnt really make much of a difference.

those cons for me are minor, except the support from DC, something which i can live with after owning an iRiver for nearly a year

OVERALL SCORE: 90/100.

This player is all singing and all dancing and for the money, given you can look past the size and weight of the player, there is nothing better in my opinion.

 

[james.miller]

If you guys have any questions, please fire away

 

[james.miller]

thanks guys i think that last picture is a little misleading. ceraintly it does seem to dwarf the h10 it that picture. the i2 sizes up @ 123mm X 76mm X 21mm, while the iRiver h320 20gb for example measures 103mm x 61mm x 22.5mm. the extended battery adds to the depth of the unit 20mm or so, but other that that...its not really that big lol


battery life: well, it seems pretty good. I've been transferring data and watching films......generally abusing the battery and it's held out well.I've charged it twice since it arrived but for the abuse its taken i think its pretty much on par with what they claim. namely 12-14hours watching video. when ive next got a day free i'll test it running vidoes all day long and time it for you guys

 

[james.miller]

1) its my duty, dude
2) ive got 6 or 7, but @ 500mb a movie it'll store 60. I just the divx convertor that comes with the divx6pro codec
3) nope. the quality is really rather good
4) £230 i think for the player on its own, but i also got the extenede battery with it. if you google the players name you'll find it on sale
5) dont worry, its mutual lol


if you dont mind the shortfalls (size, weight, lack of bass) then go for it. otherwise go for the vision:m