Ronin M 280

Author's product rating:   

Picture Playback	Excellent
Sound Level	Good
Ease of Use	Very Easy
Durability	Excellent
Value for Money	Excellent

Advantages:	All the features of something twice the price
Disadvantages:	Own speakers could be better

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Looking at going away for some sun, I found myself getting persuaded to go on a coach holiday to Spain by the girlfriend. Being a high mileage driver I get bored and frustrated very easily if I'm in a car and not driving. So spending 24 hours on a coach wasn't exactly a happy thought for me.

So what was I going to do during a day on a coach? Quick look on eBay saw me buying a cheap MP3 player. That was something. But I then thought about a portable DVD player. We had thought of getting one at some point in any case, to keep a 6 year old lad entertained on our yearly drive to a ski resort in the French Alps. But this was a time for a little self indulgence if I was going to survive the coach trip with my sanity intact!

So there I was reading reviews on Ciao, and others, trying to find a decent player at a decent price. I kept seeing Toshibas, Sony's and Panasonics, all of which were too expensive for me. And I kept seeing far cheaper players that had mediocre to scathing reviews on the internet. But every time I had a look at reviews, I kept seeing the name Ronin M280. Then I found a review (not on Ciao) that suggested it was a superb player with all the features of the big fish, but at the price of the minnows and a worthy reason to part with some money. Another search found some places to buy them.

Prices varied dramatically, however. I found places offering them for £180, up to £220. Accessories were all fairly high priced, too. Then I stumbled upon a site called 3 Wise Monkeys. They supplied them for £164. However, not hearing of them before, I rang Ronin and asked if they had heard of them. They had and said they were legitimate. A couple of days later, my order arrived!!!

Out of the Box
First of all, I ordered a player, with a car adapter and 2 extra battery packs for the coach trip. In total it came to £227 including delivery with Royal Mail Special Delivery. Pricing this order up at other sites saw up to a massive £90 increase! I'd gotten a very good deal, it seems.

OK, in the box was a well packed M280 player. It's actually an aesthetically pleasing unit with a gorgeous shimmering silver colour. Open the lid and you see the 7" TFT widescreen and the usual controls to work it. On one side is a headphone/optical socket, an audio out socket, volume control, and other video outputs such as S-video and phono outputs. The other has the power switch with a hold function. Power can come from a Lithium Ion battery pack that slides onto the bottom of the player, or from a mains adapter that doubles as a battery charger.

Also in the box was a battery pack, various video cables to allow you to plug the payer into other audio/video equipment (it can be used as your home dvd player, after all), a remote control, and the mains adapters. Not to mention the usual instruction manual and warranty cards.

It's set up for Region 2 DVD's but the manufacturer themselves give you instructions on how to set it up for any region via the remote control. This is a nice little feature. The menu systems are intuitive and you can set the player up to your personal tastes very easily indeed.

Other buttons on the main panel are for zooming, fast forward and reverse, chapter/scene selection, etc. Even though it is set up for widescreen (I think 16:9, though don't quote me on that) there is a little button on the front that will change it to 4:3 and back again without having to go through the menus.

Also on the side is a switch marked Input and Output. To watch a DVD on the player's screen, you need it to be set to the right one. The wrong one makes it think it's sending it's signal to a television set or something other than it's screen, and so to conserve power (remember, it can be battery powered so even from the mains it's designed to watch the power consumption) it will switch off it's own screen when it's feeding something else.

So what else can it do? Basically, most of the things the DVD player in your living room can do. It'll play DVD's, MP3's, JPEG's, CD's, recorded CD's, the lot. I haven't yet tried it with copied CD's yet, but I will. It will give you on screen details of MP3 folders, plays MPEG-1 and 2, Kodak picture CD's, VCD and SVCD, as well as recorded DVD's. It also has Virtual Sound capabilities and a load of other stuff. You need to visit the manufacturer's site to get it all, as I'm going from memory as I write this.

Let's Go!!
First things first. Powering it up from the mains is easily done. Simply plug the dc jack into the back of it, and plug the adapter into the wall. A little red light comes on to show it's on standby. Lift the lid, switch the unit on and you get a nice blue glow from the control panel and the disc bay. A welcome screen also greets you letting you know it's looking for a disc. Put one in and off you go. Like most DVD players, it'll load automatically and find the main menu, if the DVD has one. Other players I've used have an enter key to select things, but this simply uses the Play key instead. It isn't a problem in any way, merely a difference that you may need to get used to.

First thing I noticed was the screen. It's somewhat difficult, at first, to get used to the 7" screen, particularly if, like me, you have a 28" television at home. But once you get past that, you notice that the TFT screen is amazingly crisp and clear. It also has a decent viewing angle, but like most TFT screens, there is an optimal angle to view it at. Simply adjust how far back you tilt it and there you go. From other reviews I had read, this little player had a reputation for excellent visual clarity, equall or better to it's far more expensive competitors. They were right!!

The sound from the internal speakers, however, was not so good. The quality of speakers on units like this is always difficult, so that isn't necessarily my problem with it. What is is the lack of volume. Even on the highest setting, the volume just is not enough.

However, as this is a portable player, the chances are it's only you who wants to watch it so you're likely to use headphones anyway. And so the sound quality it produces through a pair of headphones is absolutely fantastic!! And I'm willing to bet that using the audio out into a proper surround system, which this player can do, will produce a sound that cannot be bettered by many more expensive systems out there. It seems Ronin sacrificed the quality of the sound from the speakers to make sure there was unsurpassed quality from the headphones. That's fine by me and shows me that this is a well thought out little player.

With these thoughts on sound quality in mind, I've selected Good from the list of options in the drop down box merely beause I cannot see you using the speakers, only the headphones or an external sound system. Based on those alone I'd have said excellent.

Charging the batteries is easy as the battery packs themselves have their own power jack and LED indicator. The batteries last about 2.5 hours, enough for a decent length film, though I believe larger packs are in existence.

Using in Anger
So, now I'm on the coach. I'm bored and everyone else is asleep as it's 5am. I can't sleep, I'm not interested in reading and because it's light, the player's screen isn't going to light up the inside of the coach (the lights were all off by this stage) and wake everybody up. Time for a film, methinks.

Being bored and frustrated, I needed something light-hearted... enter Guy Ritchie, and Snatch!! A superb film and one of my all time favourites. And the Ronin did it justice!! To quote the film, it 's certainly got those minerals!! It didn't seem to mind the movement of the coach. The laptop-style disc bay, with the clip in spindle, never missed a beat despite some serious provocation on some stretches of motorway desperately needing repair. The sound through the headphones was flawless and the clarity of the screen was mind-blowing. With it being my favourite film on what is for me a new type of gadget, I started to watch it with a hyper-critical state of mind. But the player did it's job so well, I forgot about it and got into the film instead. It's the sign of technology doing it's job well when you don't even notice it's there.

A stop in some services, saw the re-awakening of an easily bored 6 year old and all the noises that go with it!?! So, once we were on the road again, I handed over the player to mum... after changing the battery and changing Snatch for a more suitable film, of course... and he sat there for the next couple of hours totally immersed in one of his favourite films, giggling and laughing his way through another hundred or something miles of the journey. Quite a few people were jealously eyeing us as the coach's DVD system had packed up the night before, and the little'un's laughter only made it worse!! No-one begrudged the lad, though.

Conclusion
So all in all, it was a successful outing for the player. The coach trip seemed that little bit shorter because of it, and my credit card bill is far better off because of the lesser known name. This player does have the features of players costing £300 or more yet is less than £200. It just goes to show you can easily pay for the name and not get any more substance.

I'm well pleased with this little player and I have no problems recommending it to anyone else. Iy you travel a lot, it's the portable entertainment system you need!!