Video playback is handled beautifully and the image slideshow option can scale images to the full native resolution with excellent image clarity. However, audio playback is disappointing by comparison, mainly due to the poor built-in speakers and a lack of features.

The front of the unit has a piano black bezel with hard edges, making it look boxy. The power button on the lower bezel acts as a control system via its 4-way metallic ring. When the inner button is pressed it opens a settings screen or if held, turns the unit off.  The rear chassis is metal with a diamond cut prism design. The rear panel has HDMI, DVI-D and D-Sub connections as well as a USB port, 4 way card reader (SD/XD, MMC, MC) and audio connections.

To test the unit we connected to a PC and ran DisplayMate Video Edition as well as productivity programs and video files. In default mode, the image was far too bright, to the point where desktop icons and text were too soft and drowned out. By changing the mode to “Sports” and the colour temperature to “cool” we discovered the optimal settings. In DisplayMate, all tests were passed well with the exception of the fine resolution tests which showed a little noise when connected via a D-Sub connection. This was not present in DVI-D. These blemishes occurred only under very specific conditions and didn’t seem to affect overall image quality, even when viewing fine detail line art and spreadsheets. Colour and black levels were excellent, and motion was handled well.  We found no backlight bleeding and colour was uniform across the panel.

The Digital Media Player (DMP) can play images, video and audio via the card reader or from a USB memory stick. The picture viewer handles scaling of images well with exceptional clarity. However, the Image slideshows are fairly poor due to the limited and tacky transitions which are performed at low frame rates. The image files supported are JPG, BMP, GIF and TIFF.