The first thing that I heard from my friends when they saw this player in my hands was: “Hey, Louis! Are you planning to leave your Metal bands and start a career as a Hip-Hop singer?”
Well, I think they just said that because of the body of this Hacha PC90. In all silver finish, with its metal body, if I were with some silver rings and silver necklaces, and a big sized basketball shirt, I would start to doubt about my own musician’s conviction.
The player will get warm because of that. A bit more than some plastic player, with a larger screen, like the Nationite OS-43. It could be nice during the cold winters, when you can watch your videos and heat your hands at the same time. Sadly, we don’t have those kinds of winters in Brazil.
The only pointless thing in the body construction is a rubber piece to cover the MicroSD slot. That thing is not attached to the player and you will easily lose it because of its size. I just took it off and throw into the box (and not the hotboxx).
About the player itself, as Raz said in his own review, “The PC90 screen it self is a high quality TFT screen capable of displaying 16 million colors and you can certainly make out the quality of the screen and its color capabilities when looking at videos and images, they generally look much sharper on the PC90”. That’s the pure and simple truth. This screen rocks! Sometimes I think it is better than the screen on the OS-43 (and I was amazed by that screen, if you read my review about that player).
The small (and really annoying) vibration unit inside the player can be turned off (thank god and smart Hacha guys for that). You just need to go to Settings -> Control Settings, then choose “Close”. And it’s done! Vibrations no more!
As a button based player is not that easy to choose or scroll through your files, and I knew that all the time. But there is just one thing that made me buy this one (and the forthcomings Ainol V3000 and ONDA VX767): E-books! Believe me, is not that easy to read e-books on touch screen (VX787 and S:flo) or SNS (OS-43). Much more better to read if you just need to press one (1!) button to scroll towards next page. You guys will ask: Did Louis just gets a player for e-books? And the answer is: yes! The e-books I have was the main motivation to buy my first Mp4, a VX747 clone. And I’m still looking for the perfect one. Hacha PC90 may be this one. You only cannot use the small sized font, because its failure to show the whole text. Some words are missed, just like the medium and big sized fonts in S:flo.
The sound quality here is also fantastic. The Delta Sigma DAC gives you powerful sound and good EQ settings. I’m wondering when they will made a player that can play trough directories, letting you listen to all your folder albums straight, and not repeating them… Believe me, my VX747 clone do that, and was cheaper than $30,00 (shipping included).
The ID3 tag has a big issue: It will not change during music play! Lol! The music you choose the first will be displayed correctly and that’s all! The next songs will show the same tag until you go and scroll trough your files to find another song, then, the cycle repeats. Well… I know almost all my songs names (I’m a musician, if you don’t know, and kind of addicted to music, too, so…). This is not a huge problem to me, but may be to others.
I can’t say anything about the Hacha viewing Stand with speakers, because our beloved Admin forgot to send it to me! x) But no problems, guys! I’ve been talking with him and he already sent me together with my VX525 order… Maybe 2 weeks and I will update this review.
I’ve tried a .flac file and it played without any problems. In fact, was easy to scroll trough the file (it was an entire album in just one file). More easy than VX787 and S:flo (did you notice that I’m getting a little out of humor about touch screen? Lol). The .mp3, .wav, .wma, etc. works fine too.
What can I say about the video? Well… I’m not that addicted to watch videos on a PMP. Sometimes is nice to watch your favorite series before fell a sleep, and I tried few times with the Hacha (but I will always prefer to use my 22” wide LCD monitor to watch my videos in bed, because my computer stays at bed’s side). I didn’t find issues playing my .rmvb and .avi files straight from the computer to the player, without re size them. The problem here is if you like to fast forward the big videos and movies with big resolution. Then you will really have sync problems. But if you have software to bring it to the screen size, and a lower quality audio, then you will have no problems! And the screen quality is amazing. Everything that you put in the player will look better than most players I’ve seen before. And being that one a button based player, you will not have fingerprints all over the screen!
The battery life is really good for music (but not 20 hrs like factory advertisement… 14 to 15 hours is the best I can have). I didn’t try the video until it stops with full charge, but I can say it will be more than 4 hours. I left the player dies on the first night to give it a full 12 charge, and the player was showing videos to "my Barbie dolls" for something around 3 hours with the battery starting at 3/4 (lol, as maderin1 said about my players being TVs for my “dolls”… one day you will pay me back that!
). In fact, the player can be fully charged in 4 to 5 hours, I think… It always happens when I’m sleeping, so… :P The clock and date in this player does not work at all. At least I didn’t get the right way to make this one works. I’m hopeful that Hacha guys will release a firmware to fix all this minor problems (clock, ID3, e-book fonts), to made this player even better.
I’ve bought that on
www.mp4nation.net plus Fiio P3 and Fiio PS1110 for 134 bucks. Really a bargain for a 16GB player if you can take away the amount I’ve paid for the accessories and normal shipping!
Now let’s see what button based player will win the e-book war! Hacha PC90, ONDA VX767 or Ainol V3000? Just give to Raz the proper time to send them to me (already ordered) and the lazy Brazilian Post Office do its jobs, and I will made a review for them, too!
Cheers!
Review of Hacha PC90
