Meizu M6 vs Rockchip Player

[iixorbiusii]

ok, this is going to be controversial, but I am about to compare the highly rated Meizu M6 SP with my Rockchip MP4 (unbranded, but is identical to the Optimus Cosmic found at MP4Nation.com - http://www.mp4nation.com/products/index.php?PID=mp8282b). I own both units, and can therefore make a fair comparison, based on experience.

MEIZU M6 SP - 8GB (Firmware S 2.003.2)
What do I like?
Memory capacity of 8GB
MP3 Audio - Outstanding quality with very flexible acoustics tweeks, which can result in a fat deep bass and high treble ensemble. Bit hissy though at low volumes!
Battery Life - seems to run for several hours
Very quick file transfer - 130Mb in 20 secs
I can record off the radio in Stereo at 128kbps
Well supported with forums, firmware updates etc
Fast 'fast forwarding' of movie is quick, and you can return to the place you left off.
Easy to customise the look of the menus using your own image for the background - for example, I like a completely black background with white or green text.


What don't I like?
The screen is good - but only to a point. There is an annoying 'bright blur' at the top right of the LCD, where I can see one of the white backlight LED's shining through. This is common on cheaper LCD's but I wouldn't have expected to have this issue on the M6 with a Samsung display. I have a Blackberry 8700v and the screen on that thing is fantastic (good viewing angle, no 'white spot', superb colours), and it's just a phone!
Movie playing... Hmmm- I'll come onto that in a moment.
Seemingly slow fast forwarding of music (although it gets progressively quicker, the longer FF button is held down for)


Rockchip Player
What do I like?
It cost $50 ! The M6 was $155.
Very smooth video playback, with perfect audio sync when I use Xilisoft's DVD2MP4 converter.. Better than the M6. Sorry!
Good quality sound for both movies and MP3's, with none of that horrible 'digital' ticking you get with cheap nasty AMV players.
I can record off the radio in high quality 256 kbps mode


What don't I like
Poor battery life - only around 80 minutes (Although for $6, I installed a 850mAh battery which gives over 3 hours of movie at full screen brightness).
It's only got 1GB of internal RAM, but I use a 2GB MiniSD as well. I haven't tried a 4GB yet, but I think one would work.
Slow video transfer - 130Mb takes over 2 minutes.
No support disk whatsoever! I bought mine from some anonymous Ebay seller in Hong Kong. I guess you'd get the full package from somewhere like MP4Nation.
It takes ages to fast forward through a movie, and starts back at the beginning if you shut down / leave movie mode.


Build quality - seems to be about the same for both the M6 and the Rockchip. Both are very acceptable. I suppose the M6 would still be working in 3 years time - who knows about the Rockchip?!


I have tried umpteen video converters at various FPS settings, and I just cannot get the M6 to play movies as smoothly as the Rockchip does. Even the demo movie (Chinese man and woman bumping into each other) runs better when converted to play on the Rockchip than it does on the M6!

Don't get me wrong- I am not out to slate the Meizu M6. It is a very good player indeed. If the world it competed in had only Ipods at one end of the scale, and those horrible AMV players at the other end, for the money, the M6 would be great. However, we also have Rockchip players which for the money they are, offer near enough everything I need for portable movie playing at far less than half the price of the M6 - with the added benefit of significantly smoother video playback. I am glad I bought an M6, just to try. If I had never bought one, I'd always be wondering "just how good are these things?" Now having had the chance to compare with my Rockchip player, I am more convinced about the power of Rockchip! The M6 will be Ebayed very soon.... !

[lolita]

Note, Meizu M6 uses a similar processor (Samsung SoC with ARM940T) to iPod (ARM7TDMI).

[razzer001]

The sole reason why i feel the M6 and the M3 have done to well, as opposed to other Chinese companies who release a new product every other week, is that Meizu spent time developing a mobile database system capable of sorting songs by artist, album, genre etc and being able to support playlists - there really are no other Chinese made players capable of doing this and this is why i feel the M6 has been doing so well.

However on a hardware to hardware match up, the M6 is outdated and has been for sometime, the SE release won't make any vast improvements, infact it will reduce the battery life by 25%.

[DaremoS]

It's absolutely unfair, almost silly, to compare a big brand product as it is Meizu M6 with a generic type of chip (Rockchip). In this aspect, there are two choices: or to compare Samsung SA58700X07 chip (with its ARM9 processor) against Rockchip, or to compare Meizu vs. Teclast (or any other known brand the uses this chip in its devices).

Anyway M6 player is not just a Samsung chip: is a bi-processor device it uses a Philips processor for its sound, which indeed is a great sound, as I have proved myself with my M3 device, which uses the same scheme.

Then comparison have to go on image which seems to be what Rockchip and Samsung manage itself. Maybe Samsung deliver a better image than Rockchip, maybe not, but... at the size of a 2.4" screen is really noticeable a big difference in quality?. I really doubt it, in my humble opinion, it's just a matter of preferences. Lets say that Meizu for M6 first started with a Toshiba processor, later changed to Samsung due to its better image.

Concerning sound, unfortunately Rockchip is far from the good sound of Philips processor, thing that engineers of Teclast seems to agreed, as for their product C280 and later they have choose to add a Wolfson processor for the sound of their devices. All the latest products of Teclast have the same bi-processor scheme.

About FM reception Meizu M6 uses too a different processor for the purpose, a Philips too, not sure of the model, I hope as good as the TEA5767 that uses my M3 device. In this point my rockchip C260 have a horrible FM reception, not knowing is uses an integrated chip or other solution.
Anyway both devices deliver s great FM reception compared with that non-existent of the iPod model $$$$.

This is why I believe that comparison among a chip and a good product well polished fully customizable and still in evolution is unfair. Soon will appear the slim M6 that probably will overpass the MiniPlayer M6.

A word for Teclast, they have done a great job with a raw firmware adding lots of functionalities to their first big product as it was (still is) the C260. Somebody might not like the thermal pad of this device, but it's cute and more important... cheap.

[princessanne1026]

Thanks for the review. I agree with all the points you made. I don't have the led "white spot" on my m6, though. Perhaps you got a defective unit? I have a 2.4" rockchip, similar to the "Optimus X" on mp4nation or "Vista" on UXCELL. I prefer the video quality on my rockchip to my m6. The only thing that I hate is the resume function (or should I say lack of it). A poster here, jp, suggested I break the video into smaller pieces using VirtualDub and that will make me have to fast forward less. I'm going to try it.

[lite]

Your screen must of been a defect...You can pickup a M6 for $79 4gb , your rockchip i presume was only 1gb .
The M6 is far superior to rockchip players in processing power. And also the M6SL Razor was talking about has come out already with beta models and is exspected by the end of this month , that is thinner with 25% less battery , whereas the M6SE has vast improvments but wont be out till 2008 it dosnt need converting videos... it contains a 667mhz processor reportedly.... thats 4x that of the ipod video... and has a line out... It will be introduced that the price of the M6 previously on its launch

[iixorbiusii]

Hi guys,

I knew (and perhaps wanted!) this to cause a little 'upset', and to start a debate here...

I am dealing with the cold hard facts of having a Meizu M6 in one hand and the Rockchip in the other.

The Meizu video playback is jerky, and the Rochchip is not - FACT!

Yes, the Meizu has more audio 'tweeks' but....FACT: it is more 'hissy' than my Rockchip (through various headphones ranging up to $500 Sennheisers)

As for FM reception, I live in a strong-ish area and....FACT: the Rockchip unit (I didn't mention this before) actually outperforms the Meizu again, both in terms of how many stations it locks onto and general reception whilst moving around.

Perhaps different people rate different features in order of importance, but for me, the quality in terms of FPS of the movie is no1 and my Meizu M6 is not as good as my 2.4" 320x240 Rockchip. Perhaps someone out there knows the Holy Grail of Meizu video conversion software !!

btw PrincessAnne, I now split my movies into 30 minutes chunks, so Fast Forwarding to the bit I last watched only takes 1 min instead of 3 !!

[knob]

I have been reading this thread with interest.
Before I got my current Rockchip player I nearly bought a Meizu, but I got a cheap Rockchip instead purely by accident.
I Have to say that the music quality on the Rockchip is the best I have ever heard on any pmp, I wasn't that bothered about the video side of things that was just a bonus for me.
I am now convinced that my next player is also gonna be a Rockchip, but maybe a something like a Teclast.

I think the headphones used make quite a lot of difference, I guess the Meizu ones are quite good, whilst the one you get with a no name Rockchip are usually pretty crap. I swopped mine for Sennheisers and it made a load of difference.

[Zaphod]

Originally Posted by iixorbiusii";p=&quot

Yes, the Meizu has more audio 'tweeks' but....FACT: it is more 'hissy' than my Rockchip (through various headphones ranging up to $500 Sennheisers)

If I were to venture a guess, I'd say that's probably because the Rockchip amp is clamped at a lower sensitivity to hide a less than stellar signal-to-noise ratio. This isn't necessarily a good thing.

[iixorbiusii]

Hi Zaphod,

You could be right, but in listening to something with very quiet passages, I am more aware of the hiss on the M6 than any 'clamping' on the Rockchip.

The M6 is however totally silent when the vol is at zero, or when you press stop / pause. It seems to mask it's [possible] inherent hiss-iness by shutting off all audio output in these states. in going from vol=0 to 1 on a quiet piece of music, I notice the hiss immediately - it' not overwhelming, but it is apparent.

I should say that my Rockchip player wasn't perfect 'out-of-the (non existent) box'. It came with no software at all, and initially, I had to use the aviconverter software which came with my first 2" Rockchip player. I remember I was a little disappointed with the results.
However, when I stumbled across the DVD2MP4 converter from Xilisoft, I found a product which works in perfect harmony with my 2.4" Rockchip player and the video results are stunning - and consistently in sync. It might not be ideal for some, as it's quite pricey ($44 I think).
Unfortunately though, the Xilisoft product doesn't work very well with my M6 ! The videos are very jerky and tend to bomb out. I will have to ask them to write an M6 profile!
If someone can advise the perfect solution for creating movies on the M6, I'd be over the moon and won't need to ditch it on Ebay!

As I said earlier, I am not out to destroy the M6's reputation - it IS very good....but there are aspects of it, as already discussed, which don't seem to match the Rockchip. I am going to source another Rockchip soon - perhaps the version I have is uncharacteristically 'brilliant' - but I suspect all 320x240 units with the 'tabs across the bottom of the screen' menu behave the same...???