Zii Egg Review. Not Quite Ready for Prime Time.

That's right. I plunked down my money for the SDK and 32gb Zii Egg, and here are my first impressions. The bottom end is where you'll find the headphone jack, Mini, USB jack, and Zii proprietary connector jack. The top edge shows the power button, and you can see the HD camera lens near the top on the Zii's back. I've left the little plastic protection tab on it until I see an app that can actually make use of this camera.
According to Zii Labs, this is very impressive hardware. However there is no way to demonstrate or evaluate many of the features at this point. No Apps to use the cameras. No apps to use the GPS. Not even a setting to turn bluetooth on. What we did get is a Music app, a Video app, a Photo app, a web browser, a some basic settings to play with.
It's a case of Amazing Potential that is still Undeveloped.

The Photo App is capable. The normal Zoom and Rotate options are there. Photos slide easily from one to the other. It's not really a dynamic momentum slide, but the effect is still impressive. The Zii came with some sample photos up to 1280 x 720 in size, and the photo app doesn't seem challenged at all. You zoom with a slider bar, and can then easily pan around your enlarged photo by dragging your finger around the screen. Easy enough, yet once it can use multi-touch input the photo app will be much improved. You can choose between array or list views for previewing photos.

The Music App handles MP3, M4a, and WAV files so far. Sound quality is great when using decent headphones. I haven't seen the screen display cover art yet. You get all the necessary controls within the music app. There are no preset or user definable equalizer options. You can sort by Album, Artist, Genres, or All Tracks. The now playing screen can cycle between three sets of options including with track position slider, with volume slider, and just album art to view. I'll state again that so far I haven't been able to display any album art in the Music app though.
The Video app is quite capable. I threw AVI, MP4, and WMV movies on the Zii and all played fine. No audio/video sync issues. No frame drops. The Zii came with a sample MP4 video that was 1280 x 720. I tried 540 x 360 WMV and 320 x 180 AVI movies with no difficulty. There is certainly room for improvement in the Video app, but those would only be settings for brightness and perhaps playback speed. This Zii should be able to output HD movies directly to your TV over HDMI. I've got the required HDMI cable coming, so we'll see. I don't know where I'll find any 1920 x 1080 video content, but am confident the Zii's processor is up to that task. Below is a scene from Mulan. You can see a reflection of my Camera lens on the very glossy screen. UI. There is not much to say about the User Interface. You've got app icons. You tap on those icons to open the app. When done with the app you hit the Home button to return to this home menu. Nothing innovative or creative here. Screen response is at times hesitant, as if the Zii is not paying attention. Yet when it wants to the response can be instant. There is NO multitasking yet. Even the Music app stops playing if you return to the Home menu.

So should you invest in the Zii Egg developer's model? No. Not that it's a bad value, but simply because it's not yet ready for retail. Creative has put just enough on it to prove it works. How amazing it can be is yet to be determined. I'm looking forward to seeing Android on mine, and also hoping when clever programmers (I'm not one) get a hold of them we'll see some amazing apps under Plaszma.

4D

Insignia Pilot 8GB Review

BestBuy put their 8gb Insignia Pilot on sale this past week, so I had to take a look. With bluetooth and a slot for a SDHC card up to 8gb, $99 appeared to be literally the best buy for a multimedia player out there. When I found an 8gb SDHC card online for <$30 I knew I had to have this Pilot. My entire music collection totals about 14gb. A 16gb iPod Touch is $399. A 16gb Sony $299. The 16gb Samsung P2 isn't available in the states, and still goes for over $300 in Canada. It looks like 16 gigabytes worth of Insignia was going to cost me $130 plus tax. Does the Pilot perform?

The Features are there:

Music: MP3, WMA, WMA Lossless, WMA DRM, WMA Pro, Audible, OGG, WAV. Formats upgradable.

FM radio: 20 channel presets, RDS, Records to WMA, Saves RDS data. FM also works over Bluetooth headphones.

Video: MPEG4 (30fps), WMV (30fps)

Photos: JPEG. 5 zoom steps into your photo.

SDHC single slot. Reads and automatically adds to it's libraries all supported media on cards up to 8gb.

Windows and Mac compatible.

Rechargeable Lithium-ion battery for up to 25 hours of playback time can be removed and replaced by the owner. This promises the Pilot will last longer than it's original battery.

Five Band Equalizer with 4 presets, with a normal and one custom setting.

USB 2.0 interface, non-propriatory USB cable included.

Built-in Bluetooth wireless audio lets you listen to your music with compatible Bluetooth headphones or speakers (not included). Stereo via Bluetooth, but no volume control to connected speakers or headphones.

2.4" high-resolution 4:3 LCD color display with wide viewing angles. 320 x 240 pixels. 262,000 colors.

Height: 1.6"

Thickness: 0.4"

Depth: 3.3"

Weight: 2.1 oz.

Music-Management Software: Best Buy Digital Music Store

Music Service Compatibility: Best Buy Digital Music Store Rhapsody Rhapsody To Go iTunes Windows Media Player

Included Accessories: Wired ear buds, mini USB 2.0 cable, software CD-ROM

The interface can be flipped to serve for right or left handed users. You can arrange home screen icons in a circle or array. You can choose from Navy Blue, Yellow Green, Deep Magenta, Dark Gray, and Blue Mist background colors. Eight brightness levels. Backlight timeout from 2 seconds to 3 minutes or Always On. Lastly, you can choose between screen OFF or dimmed after timeout.

The Pilot has two 1/8" (3.5mm) stereo jacks on it's short side. You can use them both for headphone outputs, sharing the music with another person. One alternates as a line input which the Pilot can record from. The other alternates as an A/V output to your TV.

Control is via a rocker/spinning wheel that also serves as directional up/down/left/right control, a center Play/Pause button, and a menu button. The top edge of the device has an ON/OFF slider that also serves to lock the Pilot's controls. There is also a small rocker switch for rating songs. Access to functions is nowhere near as easy as the touchscreen players allow, but no worse than any other spin wheel player out there. Volume can be controlled with a spin of the wheel, or a long press on the top or bottom of it.

How does it sound? With it's included earbuds the sound is average at best. Plug in a good pair of headphones and the sound is as good as any other player's sound is. Perfectly enjoyable. There is an A<>B mode for repeating sections of a song or audible book. If you have cover art attached to your music files it will display full screen on the player while the song plays. Pictures look as good as possible on a small LCD screen. They are bright, and easy to see from any angle. You can play them as a slide show, with timing between images from 2 seconds to 1 minute. They can be zoomed and rotated.

Video is also sharp as can be expected on a small screen. The Pilot comes with a version of Arcsoft's video convertor that will convert DVDs and other video formats into video files you can watch on your device. The TV output can be set to 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratios, and NTSC or PAL format.My conclusion? The Insignia Pilot is competent and versatile. It doesn't have the best interface. It doesn't have the biggest screen. For the money, though, it stands out as an amazing bargain. It will play almost any media you throw at it, and can be upgraded to play future formats as well. If you've got a large collection of music, videos, or photos, the Insignia is your most economical way to take them with you. I vote Best Buy.

4D