Cube B33HD Review Part 2: A look at a Chinese Portable Media Player

Note: Please read part 1 if you haven’t.

As I’ve mentioned, Cube is one of the popular Chinese media player brands. Here is a short review of the B33HD. If you are in a hurry, be sure to check the video review (scroll below).

Build, Accessories

The player itself looks very sleek, and more expensive than any $69 player out there for sure. As I read somewhere, this model is definitely ‘inexpensive, but not cheap’. The unit has a nice weight to it, and its dimensions are perfect for holding and operating with one hand. However, both the front and back are absolute fingerprint magnets. The player comes with a protective cover on both sides though.

This is the box the player came in. Garish, to say the least:

The bundled accessories are fairly minimal: USB cable, earphones (better than usual bundled crappy earphones, but not good either, and somewhat uncomfortable) and a Chinese only manual. I also got a very nice free pouch with the player from HouseOfDap.

Interface

This is a button operated player. A wheel-like rocker is the primary navigation key. Move it up/down and press it inside to select a particular item. There are buttons for Volume-Up/Down, Play/Pause on the top. Slots exist for HDMI output, TF card, earphones, DC charger, USB cable (charging and OTG) and microphone input.

Here’s the home screen. Pretty well laid out, with the main items on the left.

Navigation across these items is via a rocker on the right (not visible in this picture).

Playback

All right, the main course. I’ve bought this player for watching movies, and I’m glad to say that this player does not disappoint in this aspect. The screen is ultra sharp (hard to imagine unless you’ve seen 800x480 pixels crammed into a 3.6″ screen) and as a result, videos are a treat to watch on this player. It has played all my standard definition movie rips without any hiccup. However, I must mention here that if most of your videos are 720p or higher, you should not consider this player (take a look at any with the SoChip 9800 processor instead, such as the Ainol V9000HDA or the Cube H900HD). I’ve seen frame drops on 720p WMV files that I’ve tried.

See the video below for more on this.

Music playback is decent on this player. By the way, sound quality itself is pretty good (be it on movies or music clips). However, the music player interface is not jazzy. If you’re used to the iTouch’s interface, you’ll be disappointed. This player does read ID3 tags and organizes your music files accordingly though.

Negatives

All right, no review is honest without a list of negatives. Here’s my list:

• As with most such Chinese players, the UI is fairly basic -- looks outdated beside the iTouch/ZuneHD interface
• The screen is brilliant, but suffers from some backlight bleeding in my piece. If you see the video review or the pic above, you’ll see a slight backlight bleed on the left edge of the screen especially when the scene is dark. Not a deal breaker, but the screen would be a perfect ten without this
• The battery -- would be great if it had juice worth at least 6 hours of video playback (currently around 4 hours)
• Uneven capitalization in menu items’ captions -- little things that leave a bad taste

I’ve uploaded a short video review of the player:

Conclusion

At the end of the day, I’m very satisfied with the player since my primary necessity is video playback. The sheer value for money is also outstanding (costs Rs 15,000 lesser than an iTouch, yet plays movies better). Hence, I’d highly recommend this player to anyone looking for a budget portable video player.

If you’re budget is slightly higher ($100-$150), there are some amazing options. The best place to start researching about them would be the MP4Nation and HouseOfDap forums.

~Raj