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Cube H200 HDS (8GB)

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By Kelvin Low, CNET Asia
Nov 9, 2009

A few months back, we mentioned that "China-branded" players usually break from the norm by offering features you wouldn't normally find in any big-brand vendors like Apple and Sony. Now though, we seem to have come across one that stands out from the crowd with a very unique feature. While the Cube H200 HDS is a "China-branded" player, it was originally designed in Korea.

The H200 HDS comes in 8GB only. You can't get too excited about the basics, but this player features a 1080i output capability via HDMI output.


Design

Compared with the Ramos T11 we reviewed earlier, the H200 comes dressed in black plastic with a white strip that encircles the edges of the player. The material quality is good, feeling nice and solid to touch. The rough texture of the plastic sides makes it feel good in the hands.

At 116 x 76 x 13mm, it's just the right size for a pocket-friendly player. Contrary to appearances, the H200 is not a touchscreen player. On the right side is the microSDHC expansion slot, infrared sensor and microphone. At the top are the play/pause, volume control buttons, and a jog dial to navigate the functions. The controls took some time to get used to: The leftward motion also allows upward scrolling and the inverse is true for right-handed motion. Next to the dial is a back button.

The left is where the power slider and DC power port are located. The busiest end of the player is mainly at the bottom: A mini-HDMI port, mini-USB, earphones and TV-output ports are found here.

Features

We couldn't get any official specifications of the LED backlit 4.3-inch screen, but it offers good performance. Text appears slightly fuzzy at the edges, but the screen was able to produce the full range of hues without any hint of color banding. It was also responsive enough as the ghosting effects were barely noticeable with video playback.

The interface is pretty much well-sorted, but it still has it quirks. The menus are clear and the navigation intuitive enough, and this player offers a media library categorization on top of the standard folder-based navigation. Also, PlayStation Portable owners will find the H200's key click sound strangely familiar. As a portable device though, we were surprised to find that it lacks the function lock feature.

This player has a drag-and-drop USB interface and USB on-the-go (OTG) where you can connect the player to another USB-based memory device, such as USB memory drives or USB card readers via a special USB cable. The player can copy data on the external USB device into its onboard memory. Like the Ramos T11, however, we found that multiformat card readers are not compatible with the H200.

Cube bundles a component TV-output cable, USB cables for connecting the H200 to a PC and OTG support. The HDMI terminal on the H200 uses a mini-HDMI port, which requires the user to purchase an additional converter if he/she wishes to use a standard HDMI cable.

The H200's battery is built-in. It took about 3 hours to fully charge via USB or the provided AC charger. We managed about 15 hours of audio playback time and roughly 3 hours of HD video playback with the screen brightness set to the middle. While the manufacturer did not provide any official figures for battery performance at the time of this review, another odd issue we noticed was that the battery meter was inconsistent, occasionally indicating that it's empty, then suddenly showing a single bar when media playback is stopped.



Tags: Player, U200, Cube, H200 HDS, China
 
Performance And Conclusion »