Review: Electro Box Mishake media player

Using what it calls Shocktronix, the Mishake allows you to manipulate certain aspects of media playback, along with the range of specifically designed extras, by shaking or tilting to the left or right. This can be used to skip between tracks, video files or photos.

If you don’t get on with the system, you can disable it and stick with the on-screen controls, which are accessible through the 2.4in touchscreen display. Many of these are small, but the included triangular stylus offers more precision. However, we didn’t find this particularly useful – the touchscreen isn’t responsive and we often had to touch a button repeatedly to get it to work.

Aside from video, audio and photo playback, there’s an FM radio, voice recorder and text reader. A Canvas mode allows you to doodle using the stylus, but it’s little more than a gimmick. The Shocktronix-based applications include a digital spirit level, pedometer and a couple of games. The system works better with these extras than with media control, but we can’t see any of them having lasting appeal.

Music and photos are transferred using drag-and-drop, but the AVI converter application must be used to upload video. We were impressed with the video playback quality, but less so by the audio – quality is far below the standards set by rivals such as Apple and Sony. There’s also a very limited degree of control over media, which needs to be browsed through a folder interface rather than artist, album and genre categories.

We were ultimately disappointed by the usability and performance of a player that seemed to have a lot of potential. This, combined with the limited 4GB of storage (upgradable via Micro SD by an extra 2GB), means there are too many holes in the Mishake’s armour to recommend it.