After the release of Asus O! Play Air the two months back, the company has come out with a brand new O Play HD2 player with USB 3.0 ports. This new device, which claims to be the first in the world to have USB 3.0 ports, was announced at the ongoing CeBIT 2010 in Hanover, Germany. Bearing the same glossy looks of Asus O Play family, HD2 has a number of connectivity options to offer. However, to our dismay, Asus hasn't released any specifications of this media player.
The asus O Play Air HDP-R1 and HDP-R3, the new HD2 digital media player is capable of full 1080p HD playback. Apart from offering USB 3.0 for connectivity, this new media player is backward compatible so one can hooking old USB 2.0 flash, portable or external hard drives. To experience the blazing fast USB 3.0 speeds, you will need peripherals that have USB 3.0 ports. Other connectivity options include HDMI out, eSATA and three slots for multi-media memory cards.
Since the most recent model O! Play HDP-R3 had Wi-Fi (802.11n), we can expect HD2 to carry on the same legacy. We are expecting more details about this digital media player to be out soon and will update them here as soon as we receive them.
The Remote of O! Play Air is rather big. I mean for a device of its kind it really does not need a big remote and more so because there aren't many buttons as well. Overall, I have to stretch my fingers to reach the playback buttons and so for people with smaller hands it will get a bit tougher. The sizes of the buttons could have been large. Since the remote is huge, large buttons could have made things easier. Apart from all the design faults, it is nice to see a few additional buttons in the functionality side. There is a button for subtitles and another for audio.
The Asus O! Play Air has a great option of File Copy. In this mode you can copy files from either one of the devices or the memory cards, or even the network to any of the devices connected to the player. Among other things, the one that caught my attention is the very quick Fast-Forward. You can scan through an entire 90min movie in no more than a minute with 32x FF.