Cheap PMPs do not have to look and feel cheap. The Memorex TouchMP is a touchscreen PMP that though not exactly packed with features gives you pretty good video support and a touchreen UI that isn’t exactly a disaster. CNET has a thorough review of the device. Bottomline: the cheapest touchscreen PMP from a reliable manufacturer.

What you should know:

• touchscreen UI does a good job for a PMP with simple features
• up to 50 hours of music and 3 hours of video is amazing battery life for a cheap player
• 2.8-inch 320 x 240 screen may not wow and codec support is choosy
• your hand and pocket will love the form factor

[source]

Well, the Koreans knew it before any of us did. The UMID M1 sucks big time on built quality. UMPCportal was in the mood for a full review of the Mbook M1 and here’s what they have to say:

1. Groundbreakingly portable computer
2. Totally hand usable (no table or lap necessary)
3. Plastic body is of poor quality
4. Thumb keys too deep, FN combination keys for some punctuations… not an entirely usable keyboard for thumb typing
5. No 3.5mm jack
6. Good screen
7. Card slot suffers from poor design
8. Buttons for WiFi and Bluetooth
9. Good multimedia performance
10. Touchscreen interface far from perfect (could be a browser problem)
11. Fast boot up
12. 3.5 to 4 hour battery life
13. No mouse control, strictly touchscreen

Still the Mbook M1 gets a pretty flattering summary from UMPCportal:

We’re impressed with the technology in the UMID Mbook, the processing power, the battery life, the screen and the fast SSD. We’re not impressed with the fiddly micro-SD slot, headphone and USB ports though and these, we’re sure, will be major issues for a lot of people. Build quality could also be better. Despite these issues, the UMID is a device that you keep going back to and keep wanting to take with you, even if you don’t have any ‘computing’ activities planned. It’s a very flexible, and fast, pocket companion. One might say, a pocket microblogging rocket!

[source via engadget]

It’s a stack of post-its says Dapreview, who has published an impression of the Mintpass mintpad. The device is plasticky with a forgettable design. Too bad that besides taking a couple of photos, Dapreview hadn’t really got into the user interface of this mini-PDA. But those two hours is enough for assurance when it comes to the built of the mintpad. It handles very solidly and should be handy for now up until a thinner Apple Media Pad with bigger screen is announced later this year.

[via dapreview]

In terms of build, the Viliv S5 MID (or UMPC, whatever you want to call it) is one of the better buys on its niche, though we were hoping the UMID mbook improves on its current hardware. The Viliv S5 is an Atombased machine with a 4.8-inch WSVGA touchscreen. For $599 it is good value, according to Gizmodo, even in this economy? Very precise touchscreen control, multimedia playback similar to any computer, WiFi and the added GPS, which takes the features cake, gives the slapped price a lot of justification.

We’ve encountered another Viliv Atom device, the X70, this time with a 7-inch screen, but I’m guessing the company is most proud of the S5.

To get an idea on how good the Viliv S5 is, compare it to the same range of devices from Korean rival Maxian.

[via gizmodo, itinside]

Still curious if you are willing to jump Sony’s way in your next touchscreen PMP purchase? CNET Asia has a brief review of Sony’s X1000 Walkman, the first touchscreen Walkman. One major disappointment is the low-rez 320 x 240 screen. When most new players are going to WVGA, Sony’s Walkman range lags behind in the realm of QVGA. For the upside, the battery lasts 33 hours of continuous music and 9 hours of video at only 1.5 hours of charging. The user interface is very responsive, especially the album scrolling and the addition of WiFi is not wasted with the pre-loaded web browser and YouTube support.

[cnet]

Journal du Geek has finished their review of the iRiver E50 Metal. This is a more basic PMP than its plastic big sister the iRiver E100. It has a 1.8-inch screen and plays SMV video format, which means you won’t be playing a lot of movies on the E50. Music support: MP3, FLAC, APE, WMA, WAV.

The E50 is distinguished by its lovely metal hardware and thin design. It feels good in your hand despite hosting basic PMP features. It’s definitely good value as a music player but definitely no the right device for playing movies. Video after the break.

[journaldugeek]

They give us a look of stuff like circuit boards, insulating paint, anti friction pads–stuff we would normally presume do not exist inside a Chinese MP4 player. All the “inside” information hence revealed, we are confident that the G11 Muse the electrostatic standards of 12K volts. It’s no small feat, dissecting a G11, priced at just over $160. As OPPO warns us: G11 full-body work is very sophisticated, can not find a whole body of the screw exposed... and… Mode at electric field, bare hands after direct contact with the machine apart is a very dangerous thing, in order to protect the internal G11 chip, specifically to bring the anti-static gloves.The human body static electricity is likely to directly encounter some static sensitive components such as chips, MOS tube, small resistance and capacitance… etc.

[via zol]

We thought the UMID M1 mbook was a pretty cool device but hi-tech Korea doesn’t think so. While Viliv sold all 1,000 units of the S5 in pre-order, UMID’s 500 M1 mbook has some left overs. Now, we have no idea how competitive the UMPC market is in Korea. Kevin Kang of CNET thinks it’ll only get hotter. As impressed as we were of the M1 mbook’s form factor, one cannot deny that Viliv is ahead in manufacturing efficiency and designing well-built devices, though we are not as impressed by its products aesthetically.

Lesson to UMID: don’t sell poor-quality hardware to Koreans, not ever again (read on to see for yourself).

[via engadget]

Our pals at Journal du Geek finally published their review of the Meizu M8. The phone is only available in India and China for now. The Meizu M8 is not a 3G phone but my hope is that it will be once it gets released in Europe (dubbed Meizu M8 3G or something like that) but it’s no ordinary iPhone clone. The company Meizu was one of the leading Mp4 player manufacturers in China before it went on to focus its limited resources into creating an iPhone rival. It took them a while and after several delays have given us a lot to laugh about but to dismiss the M8 is to be totally unfair to Meizu. The Windows CE 6.0 phone has a pretty good screen, a UI designed by Eico is significantly different from the iPhone UI. That is not to say the Meizu M8 interface is not user-friendly because it is.

What to expect from the Meizu M8: a $400 to $500 price tag is not so bad for this smartphone. The 3.4-inch touchscreen is a crisp 720 x 480 and powered by ARM11 667MHz with 256MB RAM, it’s a speedy hand held. It also compes with a ton of video and audio support, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, speaker and TV Out. Nothing to brag about to iPhone-owning friends but definitely not one of those sorry-looking iPhone clones.

Video review from Journal du Geek after the break.

[journaldugeek]

Journaldugeek has an exclusive on Sony’s touchscreen Walkman, the first of the X series. We were excited when the Sony Walkman NWZ-X1000 was first announce, this being Sony’s first touchscreen PMP. We know as far as design goes, it has ways to go before beating the iPod Touch but performance is another thing altogether. Greg of Journaldugeek gives the X1000’s audio top marks and especially like the Noise Canceling Sytem, which you simply cannot live without. The OLED screen is topnotch. Sony has developed its own CoverFlow, which differs greatly from Apple’s. A video review is coming soon for the WiFi-enabled, 3-inch touchscreen (capacitive) and YouTube-playing Walkman X1000.

[journaldugeek]