Astone AP-110D Media Player

The market is so flooded with media players at the moment that it's hard to choose the right one that suits all your needs and manages to do so for a reasonable price. Enter the Astone AP-110D. A box with an impressive feature set, including 1080p HDMI output, LAN connectivity and NAS capabilities, the AP-110D seems an obvious choice given its <$80 price on sites like mwave. But if this sounds too good to be true, then it's probably because it is. Read on to see why.

The AP-110D resembles a dial-up modem from the late 70's, and although this utilitarian design choice does in fact appeal to me, I can imagine it will turn away many potential buyers before even giving it a second look. Further inspection however will reveal one of the most bland and unintuitive user interfaces I have ever come across. The text-based menus could have been dumped over a graphical interface like those used by even low-end Western Digital devices. Quick menu navigation and a preview of video files are pluses here, although this is hardly redeeming seeing as it's a standard feature these days. An often unresponsive remote and awfully firm power further complicate interaction with the device.

On that note, I must recommend anyone avoid touching the device during use. This thing runs hot. And I mean hot. I've touched my video card after playing Crysis on max settings and never has it felt so hot. It seems the aluminium housing must act as a heatsink, but it's certainly not doing a good job, considering the manual claims 0-40 C as the operating temperature. I'd wager closer to 60, although I'm not willing to risk cracking my thermometer finding out. I've heard comments from other users regarding this issue, so whether or not its widespread I'm not sure. Either way, I'd say its the cause of the other main problem I have with this device: instability.

While playback is smooth and perfect, with flawless decoding of full HD content, it is quite temperamental, often deciding it would rather not startup properly after being put into standby mode. After properly displaying the Astone startup graphic, I've seen the screen hang for 5 seconds and then go black, or even 30 seconds with the same result. Once it froze completely and remained on the splash screen until I restarted it. I've also had issues losing the LAN connection or forgetting settings forcing me to re-enter them. I might also add that browsing through photos can be a painfully slow as well.

In its defence, the AP-110D has played every single file type I could throw at it, including relatively obscure ones like .mkv, with perfect video and audio and no lag as I've seen with other devices. It has HDMI output, along with standard AV ports and even optical audio output. The device has two front-facing USB ports, and while I would prefer at least one on the back to have it permanently connected to a hard drive to take advantage of the NAS function, I have not had a chance use this feature and I'm not sure I would want to for fear of melting my precious storage devices.

This media player proves that a list of features that satisfy all your needs is sometimes just not enough. Without a fluid user interface the whole affair seems cheap and unpleasant. Add to that the overheating and instability problems and we have a device I simply cannot recommend. If you're considering this device because it suits your needs and your budget, my advice is increase your budget. Personally I'll be saving for the D-Link Boxee Box, so keep an eye out for its review in the coming weeks.