Billing itself as the smallest MKV media player in the world, the Sumvision Cyclone Micro 2+ HDMI high definition media player may very well live up to its tag – when I opened the box I couldn’t believe that the device lying inside was literally the same size of my credit card in terms of dimensions!

Anyway, what it is, is a simple high definition media player with upscaling abilities that doesn’t come with any built in storage but is more that capable of accepting anything you bring near it sporting a USB output or SD (plus derivatives) card, like your USB thumb drives, external hard drives or even camera memory cards.

Sporting HDMI output the Cyclone Micro 2+ (there were two versions before this one) is able to play back material in full high definition (720p, 1080i, or 1080p), and thanks to its digital coaxial port, it can push out full 5.1 cinematic digital audio as well when needed. Needless to say, it can also handle photos as well as do MP3 music playback, and as an added bonus, also in its box of tricks is the ability to handle subtitle files and even e-book files! (It also comes with a fall back standard AV output mode for those of you who might not have a HD television set).

In terms of supported video codecs and formats, it turns out that there is very little that this little media player monster can’t handle, with support for all the major video file formats of today, from H.264 through to XVID and even RMVB if for some reason you need it.

Build quality is sturdy enough on what is a pretty lightweight device, and everything clicks nicely into place when you plug it in. The single power state LED isn’t blindingly bright and the remote control works pretty well for the most part, though you do need a good line of sight and be on a close vertical and horizontal level to the device when using the remote.

The user interface is exceedingly simple, basically an initial menu to select source or change the device settings, and from there, just a basic file system browser which lists all your files in alphabetical order, with a small preview window for each file.

Playback options via the remote control includes all manner of nice things, like being able to set the video playback dimensions, the audio source, subtitles and even a nifty little goto function that lets you quickly select a point in time of a video that you want to skip directly to, in amongst all the standard functions like play, stop, pause and of course fast forward/rewind.

Finally, the winning factor of this little Chinese beauty – the price. At only R440 from www.takealot.com, this little HD media player is a steal, making it well worth the effort of grabbing if you don’t already have such a device. Sure it doesn’t have all the nice bells and whistles like built in storage and network streaming capabilities, but it does what it does VERY competently.

(Just a note. The box comes with the device, a power cord, an AV cable, an audio cable and the user manual on a disc. No HDMI cable included, so you’ll have to pick that up yourself. But they are pretty cheap these days, so that shouldn’t be much of a problem.)

Specs grabbed from the official website: (http://www.sumvision.com.cn/searchResults.aspx?ptype=47)

  • Audio File Support — MP3, WMA, OGG, FLAC, APE, AAC and ATRA.
  • Video Resolution — H.264, MKV, RM/RMVB, WMV9 and TS supports up to 1920 x 1080p at 30fps
  • TV system — PAL, NTSC, Auto
  • Video Container — MKV, TS, M2TS, TP, WMV, VOB, AVI, MPG, MP4, M4V, MOV, RM, RMVB, XVID, FLV and PMP.
  • Video Output — Composite Video and HDMI
  • Image output — Support – JPEG, JPG, BMP, PNG and GIF
  • Subtitle Text — Support – SSA, ASS, SUB, ACSII and UTF8
  • Video Codec Support — H.264, H.263, MKV, RM/RMVB, WMV9, MPEG 1/2/4, Xvid and FLV
  • External — external HDD, USB pen drives, portable, via USB Host
  • Audio Output — Stereo, Digital HDMI and Digital Coxial.
  • Languages — English, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese
  • Power Adapter — Universal AC 100 ~ 240V 50/60Hz
  • E-book — TXT, LRC and .C
  • Power — DC 5V, 2A

In summary, a pretty good purchase thus far.