Review: Aigo E868 MP4/PMP player

Not one to get left behind with anything that involves portable media, Aigo’s new E868 PMP/MP4 player is a portable device for watching video on the move.

It will also hook up to your TV or home entertainment system and act as a multimedia jukebox.

You’ll find a 2.5in LCD built onto a device that’s smaller than a pack of cards and exceedingly light. The white rather cheap looking finish might not appeal to all, but it’s certainly got portability in mind considering the features on offer.

Four folders make it obvious where to drag and drop your content – namely video, audio, text files and photos. At this point you can either use the Aigo as a more conventional mp3/video player or hook it up to your TV.

As the former, we were impressed by the crisp display that did a great job of both video playback and showing off you photos.

Audio was unfortunately not up to the same standard. Despite a number of graphics equalizer presets available through the mp3 player, most made the sound very tinny and you’ll find yourself skipping through the presets at random to try and find one that works best.

It’s easy to browse through the main features of the player, represented by animated icons on a 3D main menu and manipulated using a depressible flick-switch; the type made popular by the old Creative Zen series of mp3 players.

A series of buttons along the top of the device control the rest, and most of the time it’s fairly easy to work out where you are and browse around the various functions and features of the device.

If you want to plug the Aigo into your TV you’ll find it's no problem thanks to the supplied composite cable - this combines both audio and video onto a single plug that goes into the same port as the headphones. You need to change a setting on the video playback mode to send the signal through the cable to the TV rather than show on screen, at which point the E868 display blacks out and you should hopefully see the display on your TV.

From here you can browse the various features of the player as you would usually, either to play back movies, view photos or listen to music. Unfortunately you’re not given a lot of room for manoeuvre; there aren’t many features for controlling video playback on the Aigo and there’s no control over aspect ratio so you’re at the mercy of the encoding settings on the file itself.

Annoyingly, if you unplug the device from your TV you’ll notice, rather belatedly, that you can’t see anything on screen. To remedy, you’ll have to either reattach it to your TV and change the display back to the internal LCD or, to coin a popular IT support phrase, turn if off and on again.

One nice feature of the E868 is the built in SD/MMC card reader. With these cards now available in capacities of 4GB or more for a reasonable price, it’s pretty easy to up the capacity of the player.

The E868 retails at around £219 for the 4GB version, which is a lot to pay when you consider that alternatives such as the excellent Archos 604 with a 30GB hard drive and far larger screen are available for around the same price.

Obviously you’re paying for portability with the Aigo; as we mentioned it’s extremely small and light. However, most will find it too light on features and media controls. And while the sharp LCD and video playback on the device itself is impressive, audio isn’t really up to scratch.

Also consider:
Archos 604
A decent portable media player with a 30GB hard drive

Creative Zen V+
A high-quality flash media player with a good range of features

Sumvision Yumi Pro 2GB
A feature-packed player at a bargain basement price

All portable media player reviews