A.C. Ryan Playon!HD Essential 1TB media player review

by Tarinder Sandhu on 12 January 2011, 08:44 3.5

Tags: AC Ryan

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Final thoughts and rating

A.C. Ryan's Playon!HD Essential provides an effortless way of watching all manner of video formats on a big-screen TV. Sleek in design and now touting the all-new GUI 2.0 for a better navigation and overall user experience, there's little to criticise it from a technical standpoint: it will play practically everything you throw at it.

However, the transition between the regular Playon!HD and Essential models has meant that the newer, cheaper, smaller unit does without a few external outputs and LAN support, and its lack of immediate networked content may well put a few punters off. What's more, the Internet has become so pervasive that, while optional, some form of WiFi should be integrated as standard, we feel.

It doesn't escape our attention that A.C. Ryan is set to release the much-improved Playon!HD2 soon, which eradicates many of the shortcomings we've exposed in our reviews, and we'd recommend folk wait for them before committing funds right now. Looking forward, the company is also planning to release the premium FLUXX player powered by Intel's Atom chip, too.

But, fundamentally, we must not forget that the Playon!HD Essential is designed as a multimedia player first and foremost. In this role it does well, and an online price of £125 for a unit equipped with a 1TB hard drive represents good value if you need a straight-up player that's a cinch to use.

Bottom line: a solid, no-nonsense multimedia player that ships with a much-improved GUI. Worth putting on a shortlist if you can find it at an attractive price.

The Good

Does exactly what it says on the tin
Excellent codec compatibility
Much-improved GUI

The Bad

No immediate networking support
Fan noise can be irksome

HEXUS Rating


A.C. Ryan Playon!HD Essential

HEXUS Where2Buy

The Playon!HD Essential is available from Scan.co.uk.

HEXUS Right2Reply

At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.



HEXUS Forums :: 2 Comments

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Surely an optical drive wouldnt have been a bad idea in these? If it replaced the living room dvd player as well it would be a no brainer in my book
I don't think this will replace a DVD/CD/Blu-ray player for a long long time. They will sit side by side… Or most modern blu-ray players come with network streaming and Online content access.
Plug one of those up to a NAS box with media on it and you have a more customisable system and higher quality when playing back optical media.