ASUS O!Play HD2 HD Media Player Preview

Final Thoughts on the ASUS O!Play HD2

Unless you are just really anal about how you want your files and the associated data displayed, the basic GUI from the O!Play HD2 will be functional enough for anyone who is looking to simply find their files and play them. If you want images of the movie poster or see just how many rotten tomatoes the film received, you will have to look elsewhere. The Opera-based user interfaces simplicity grows on you and you realize that you can easily find any of your media files with very little effort. I have to admit that upon first sight, I really wasnt that in love with it, but after using, the ASUS engineers really did do a masterful job of keeping things simple.

We can actually say that about this latest generation media player by ASUS they kept it simple and it just works. The Realtek 1073DD+ chipset is only slightly newer than its older brother the O!Play Air HDP-R3 which has built-in wireless, but no on-board storage. Besides the GUI, on-board storage, and wireless, the functionality of the two players are essentially identical. For these same reasons my preference is to the new kid on the block. You just cant overstate the importance of a smooth GUI.

We didn’t have a chance to play around with the BitTorrent client as much as we wanted. The iTunes server certainly worked well and showed up in your iTunes program for you to access music files iTunes recognizes on your O!Play HD2. It was like the FLAC and OGG files that we had transferred to our onboard storage never existed. The PC GUI was a simple, but effective means to show you server status and worked in Windows 7 and XP.

Now we did have an issue with the finding the correct hard drive. The first drive that we had was a Seagate 7200.12 (ST31000528AS) 1TB drive and it would not work with the HD2. When we looked at the compatibility list more carefully, we saw that the O!Play could take a 1TB Seagate drive, but it just had to be the right one. The Seagate 7200.12 (ST31000333AS) drive works perfectly fine. If you are interested in adding a hard drive to the O!Play HD2, make sure you check the “Hard Disk Drive Support List”.

For $129.99, the ASUS O!Play HD2 is a solid High Definition media player that comes with a 1-year limited warranty from ASUS. If you need a player that can substitute for a versatile network storage device and dont really care about streaming on-line media or wireless capabilities, then you should seriously consider an O!Play HD2.

Legit Bottom Line:
The ASUS O!Play HD2 HD Media Player is a very good device for those looking for on-board storage and hassle-free playback of all their media files. While not the smallest player on the market, the O!Play HD2 can be equipped with a 3.5″ drive and plays most all multimedia file formats with an intuitive GUI making this a highly recommended player.