Zebronic Zebmate Cinema 1.8 8GB Portable Media Player

**Maq.H** · 09-01-2013

Zebronic Zebmate Cinema 1.8 is a simple media player with 8GB storage can be also used as USB drive. The player features MicroUSB connector through which you can simply transfer music and videos inside it. It is the only budget media player in the market that allow you 8GB internal storage with MicroSD expandable up to 16GB. Though a very basic product, it is an ideal choice for limited music quality and obviously it is overcharged. The market price of this device is around Rs.1600. So that makes it a bit costly if we see the features in detail. Zebmate Cinema 1.8 is one of the latest products by Zebronics. There are three more portable media player models available which are Cinema 4.3, Cinema 3.0+ and Zebmate 75 Unique. Marked as news, the product deals with higher internal storage and basic UI. It has a 1.8” touch screen on the front side which is very small. The forward/backward arrows makes a bit complicated to view more settings. Zebmate has a single button on the entire body. The blue colour below the touch screen. You can see that in the images below. This is screen lock/unlock button and a return key. The key does not offer any other additional support.

The screen size as I had said is just 1.8” which is enough for viewing photos but at a very low quality. The same is application for videos. Zebmate 1.8 is not at all a video player. It works with only one video format which is amv. This is a modified version of avi file and you will need to arrange a convertor to get all your videos in amv format. It is not complicated but it increases your work of converting files and then also fears of degraded video quality. From audio point of view Zebmate is good. The existing headphone that comes with this device is nice enough to deliver an appropriate audio quality. It is a regular 3.5mm headphone jack. The player misses a nice audio amplifier chip which can enhance the audio output. So that is the reason a number of effects are not available. Zebmate is a decent media player who's major point of attraction is 8GB Internal Storage. In comparison to existing 8GB media player in the market, Zebronics Zebmate can be counted as more budget friendly.

Design and Features:

The design of Zebmate 1.8 is small in size. It has a screen on the top and a blue button below. All connectivity options are provided on the sides. It might not reflect a costly device, but it is reasonable enough to be your multimedia companion. With plastic enclosure, and a slow responsive touch screen, there is nothing to much talk about the design. It has a combination of blue and black colour. The body is not durable. You must take care while using it. So a non durable body, a bit outdated interface and simple design might not interest you much. It is a media player that is meant for audio only. It supports mp3, wma and wav format only. Mp3 is the most popular audio format. You can just copy paste as much song as you want in it. Due to high space available inside, there is no need to spend more on buying a MicroSD card. Zebmate features single black colour player only. I thought Zebronics, might have more colours in it, but when I checked on the official website, it was the only single design available. According to me, there must be more navigation keys on the body. As the front 1.8 Touch Screen looks decent, but it is not fast responsive. The most annoying part to use is the arrows keys to see more options. There is no left/right swipe option available. The screen just works on Tap gesture. While when you are inside a menu you can use up/down swipe.

**Maq.H** · 09-01-2013

I will not count this point under flaws. It look Zebronics wants to keep the player as simple as they can. So that anyone can use it easily and enjoy non-stop music. Today when we are in age of iPods, it looks Zebronic is still using a very old hardware in the touch screen. A very poor responsive screen that can easily annoy when you want to change some settings. The image quality copied inside the player is also poor. I will not say it is more vibrant but it is enough to see and no additional option available to zoom in or out the images. A MicroSD card slot in placed on the left side which is convenient while all the connectivity ports lie below. The internal interface has an outdated layout but it is well managed. Like there are icons of Music, Movie, Picture, Radio, etc. So it is easy to find what you want. You can tap on Music to load your favourite songs and play them at once. The media player is not so great. As I had said there are no buttons except the blue button to reduce the volume also you will need to tap on the minus button of touch screen. I was confused with the Play/Pause button in media player. When I tap on the Play icon the song was paused while when I tap on the Pause icon the song started playing. This is a reverse effect. There might number of options like Playlist, Genre, Artist, etc which sort the audio and allow easy choice. The Create Playlist option does not work well.

Multimedia:

Zebronics Zebmate 1.8 is a basic media player. Basic means, it has all the beginning features of media player. Like it is limited to AMV video format only. We copied some audio by converting them first. The quality was already spoiled in that but audio was preserved. Later on while playing it on Zebmate, it was really hard to see faces in the video. It is obvious that a 1.8” screen is not capable of giving optimum resolution. While in terms of audio the media player is far more better. There are some very important features that Zebmate is missing. Like a multi video format support, a good UI, best sound quality, etc. And if combine all this features in a media player, then there are some models which comes in the price range of Rs. 3000 to Rs. 4000. There are media player that offers you 4GB storage at a price range of Rs. 1500 also, but it does not has a video support. So at a price range of Rs.1600, Zebmate delivers you a limited video output also. For multimedia it is necessary that you use good convertor software. I think it is not worth to have that much space inside a media player if you cannot use other video format. At least there must be an mp4 or avi file support. I can try to copy some movies in it.

Music player and Video player features basic functionality only. The pictures are also displayed at minimal quality. I do not think HD pictures will work well on it. The audio recording utility provided in the player offers a poor quality sound output. You have to keep your mouth near to mic and then record. All audio goes in the record folder that you can play in the music players. Zebmate lacks a good control support that makes it easier to use. Due to lack of navigation keys on the body it becomes complicated to reduce the voice and to change songs for to pause it. There is no fast forward audio option available.

Connectivity and Performance:

In some of the images above I had shown you all connectivity option. There is a microusb connector and a 3.5mm audio jack. Let’s talk about the audio jack. The headphone that comes with the device offer reasonable audio and video quality only. The battery life is good. It is capable of delivering 6 to 8 hrs of battery power if fully charged. Due to play and play interface it is easy to transfer songs in it. Just connect it and copy. Or else you can also use it like usb storage. Zebmate 1.8 also features a .txt file support. So that is a beneficial option. You can copy some important numbers or information in a txt file format and access it. Performance point of view the player is good. It offers a decent power support and works smoothly. It is slowing responsive but does not lag when play songs or video. You can use a good 3.5mm headphone on it to get more better sound quality and I think it is going to work well. Because on the existing when you increase the volume the sound breaks. The headphone is not much comfortable.

It looks that Zebmate is missing many things compare to the portable media players available. It offers you an internal FM support. It is very annoying to set FM on Zebmate. The volume is good. There are around 30 levels for music and it is the maximum. You can hear a decent quality @ 12. Increasing to higher you need more better headphone. The media player has on Bluetooth no wifi support. So there is no way to sync them with a wifi speaker. I was expecting that Zebronics has made the headphones more better. The Music player features a simple Equalizer to modify the sound settings. It works on common for all audio files.

Conclusion

Zebronics Zebmate Cinema 1.8 is a device which is good for beginners. There are very few options which are comfortable for those who need a player which can offer them long hours of audio playback and simple procedure to transfer songs. An 8GB internal storage is juts add-on benefit which you can easily achieve in other media players with an sd card slot. Zebronic Zebmate needs more finishing and due to that the media player lands below expectation. It is not at all durable nor having an enough responsive screen that can allow us easily to changes songs. It is a basic product which comes at a price of Rs.1600. It is costly but Zebronics tried to balance the same by adding a video output support. There are no speakers provided on it. Zebmate entirely relies on the headphones to play audio files.

Pros