I bought the Mach Speed TCH843 in mid-March, 2009 to fill a technology gap which had dogged me for many years now. I have wanted a small portable device capable of holding and displaying a wide array of "reference" material which I need repeatedly over long periods of time. The types of reference material is often text (now, generally kept more in HTML than in raw text files), pictures (mainly in JPG form, but also PNGs), and just lately, videos. I do not have as much use for sound files, but I can understand people finding them useful too.
Years ago, I expected my Palm devices to fill this role, but in the last 4 years in particular, the only device Palm has that might fill it is the TX. The problem is that the TX is poorly made and I have worn out 3 or 4 of them in the last 4 years. I do not have time to deal with Palm to repair them, so they has accumulated. This being the case, I am trying to keep my material on the Palm minimal to reduce the time wasted moving data to a new unit.
Netbooks? I have them. They are nice, but not as convenient as I would like for this use. The folding keyboard just gets in the way, and battery life is not up to the task, unless you get a very big battery, which adds even more to the clumsiness.
I was starting to use my Nokia N800 in this role, until it got stolen. I have since bought an N810, but before I starting to use it, I realized that I did not really like the Maemo "front end" software. So the Nokia N810 is still in its box awaiting a decision. An Apple iPod touch is similarly not appealing because of its interface limits. The fancy capacitative screen makes it a nice toy, but it limits it to being only that -- a toy. Also, the iPod screens are only now becoming "big enough" to be useful to me in this capacity.
[2009/10/19]
Before I even start this brief "early look" review, I can give you my conclusions, which as stated above, is that the TCH843 is a "borderline product". That is to say, it can be seen as a failing or barely passing product.
[2009/10/25]
My current testing standards follow these basic limits:
[2009/10/19]
1. A product is evaluated against a job or set of jobs. Specification numbers are meaningless without a context and the context is "The Job(s)". A music player must play music. A picture viewer must show pictures. Fine tuning the scores will depend whether these abilities are better or worse than other products in a class, or if there are no products, then against what one should reasonably expect in the class.
2. If a product substantially fails to fulfill its advertised claims of capabilities, I will not allow it a score of higher than "C+". Vapourware (products that do not exist) and buggy devices which fail to deliver on claimed abilities are long standing problems in the computer industry, and have become common in the Consumer Electronics industry again. These are unacceptable business practices.
Stated another way, a product that can fulfill "the general requirements of all jobs" for which it claims to be fit, despite not being capable of fulfilling its claimed specifications, can still "Pass" and be given a score as high as "C+".
3. A product that can fulfill "some job requirements" and thus might be worth buying despite its having some fairly substantial deficiencies can score as high as "D+".
4. A product that substantially is incapable of fulfilling "any job" for which one might reasonably expect it to be suited, is a failure, which is an "F".
The TCH843's primary jobs (in order of programming difficulty) are:
1. Text Reader
2. Music Player
3. Picture Viewer.
4. Video Player
Of the above, I have been focusing on the latter two areas. Regarding the first two capabilities:
The Text Reader works on the most basic level, but but not without bugs. The clearest bug is in the "Font" control menu. If you touch the "Font" control, the menu appears, and one can adjust the colour of the font and the size of the font. There is only one font and there are only 3 sizes to chose from. However, after selecting the size and colour, one cannot exit the font selection function "cleanly". The only way to exit is to turn off the whole device. When the device is re-started and the text reader is selected again, the choice made will take effect. I am no sure if the Bookmarks are working at all. I could not get them to work during my testing, and the "User's Manual" does not say how it is supposed to work.
However, the real limit is the lack of an HTML reader, which would allow linking between points in a document or even between documents.
As for the music player, I can only say that it seems to work acceptably. I do not have a substantial use for it at this time and as such, I did not do substantial testing of the program. I can also say that I doubt if many other people will use this function. If you like to listen to music, you probably already own a much more compact MP3 player. The TCH843 is too large and heavy to bother with for walking around outside, so you will probably just take your smaller lighter device. If you are at home, you probably prefer to listen to a free-standing stereo system.
[2009/10/19]
[Originally, I gave it a "C", but I felt that I had stated that I did not test this function sufficiently to give it any really accurate rating. The "C" was a "benefit of the doubt" score. On further thought, I decided to leave it unrated for this function. Again, because it is clearly not a function I have any need to use.]
[2009/10/25]
The handling of the menu bars in the still picture viewer and the video player are the real problem. The navigation menu bars are located at the bottom of the screen when the device is held horizontally. The are about 43 lines high, which means they covers about 16% of the screen. They overlap the display, so, for example, when you display a picture of a group of men from head to toe, wearing pants and shoes, it will cover the shoes and the bottom part of pants. The menu bars are translucent (partially see-through), so you can see some of the details, but in general, you can consider that part of the picture lost.
This happens when displaying most still pictures manually. Occasionally a picture is displayed without the menu bar showing, which is probably the way it was supposed to work. The menu bar disappears on about 1/20th of the pictures, randomly.
The only time that the menu bar is consistently hidden is during a "slide show", but even then, if you stop the slide show to view a particular picture, the bar comes back and stays visible.
Regardless of this, most of the time, I want to view a picture manually. A slide show mode is something I rarely use at all.
There is also another bug regarding the top two lines of the picture, but I will not elaborate on that problem right now. The menu bar problem is enough to consider the still picture display program as substantially "not working."
This is an error I have only verified when using still pictures. It might also be occuring during videos, but I have not established whether it occurs or not.
Before continuing, I should point out that a true 13:9 screen ratio starting with a 480 wide display is not 272 lines high. It is 270 lines high. I have no idea why the common screen size of 480 x 272 has evolved. As far as I know, this size started with GPS units, but I can see no reason for it.
In order to evaluate image displays for the full screen, I created a test image that was 480 x 272. However, because the screens are advertised as "13:9" ratio displays, I also made a test image that was 480 x 270. The problem I found exists for both size pictures.
It appears that the display is drawn from bottom to top, and then the last 2 lines of the image are put at the top of the screen and then repeated in the next 2 lines. This is wrong for both, and worse on the 480 x 272 pictures since it means that there are 2 lines which are never displayed.
Although I am focusing on software errors, there is a hardware limitation that is often apparent. The documentation and advertising for this device does not disclose the number of supported colours the display can handle.
The TCH-843 display does not seem to be 24-bit colour. It appears to be somewhere around the 15-bit ranges of displays, or less. Depending on the picture, there are losses of both highlight and shadow detail. The only thing that can be done about it is to edit the pictures as necessary. Looking at the Rockchip website a few months ago, I noticed that the claimed specs for the RK2706 said that it supported "27000" colours. When I first saw this, I thought it was a mistake and that the chip probably supported 270,000 colours. I tried to open the TCH843, but ran into difficulties and decided not it was not worth the effort, so I do not know for certain what chip is inside, but it would not surprise me if the apparently small number of colours supported is an actual hardware limit.
Regarding image editing, it would also be possible to edit images especially to get around the menu bar problem, but this would require editing every image intended for use on the device. If you take a half hour average to do all the various edits to, say, 100 images, which is not very much, that would take about 50 hours. How much is your time worth?
The menu bar is not a problem during video playing. When a video is "paused," the bar disappears after about 8 seconds.
To get a score this bad, there would have to be some more significant problems -- and there are. The biggest problem is the limits on the files that are playable. And the problem is, as is typical in this field, that it failures to do all that it claims to do. There are sweeping claims to be able to show AVI, MP4, FLV and other file types. But there is little acknowledgement of the limits. In particular, there is no real disclosure of the lack of CODECs or limitations specific to particular CODECs. According to the manual, the only limit for AVI and MP4 files is that they be under 800 x 480 pixels. I will not try to summarize everything I have learned so far, but I can say this much briefly:
Typically, some people like to "capture" YouTube files. I tried this a few times and none of the files worked. The HQ files from YouTube are usually valid MP4 files.
I have been able to view MP4 files intended for Sony Playstation Portables.
According to the manual, the only limit for Real Media files is that they be under 800 x 480 pixels. I have been able to run an RM file which I downloaded a couple of years ago, but it looked terrible. There was bad macro-blocking throughout the video. The file was less than the 800 x 480 limit.
I have been unable to display any "Motion JPEG" Codec AVI files. This is one of the most common Codecs used by AVI files.
However, I was surprised to find that I could show an MPEG1 file (320 x 240) without problems, which was not listed as supported at all.
Even when files were viewable, there were sometimes occasional glitches where the image would break down into macro-blocking.
An unexpected issue was poor USB 2.0 implimentation. The device had no problem connecting to my Toshiba A210 running Vista 32, but it failed on my IBM S50 running XP Pro. This was an unexpected failure since on the one hand, one expects the older computers to be better supported, and yet the S50 is still fairly widely used technology. In fact, the IBM is the computer I consider my "fail-safe" platform which should work when all else fails. There was also an unexpect anomaly in connecting with a Lenovo S10 netbook. It would only connect if the Machspeed was turned on before plugging it in.
When there are this many problems, fixing only one bug will not be enough to make this a product worth considering. On the other hand, one does not expect all bugs to be addressed in a single upgrade. If I had to pick the most important issues, I would want Machspeed (or whomever is responsible for the programming) to at the very least, get the following done:
1. Fix the Picture Viewing program so that the Menu bar disappears during manual picture selection, either immediately when the picture is rendered or after a few seconds.
2. Fix the USB implimentation so it works with more computers (including some Linux computers).
3. Fix the Font selection in the Text reader.
4. Change the Users Manual by adding instructions on how to use the Bookmarks. Be sure that the Bookmark function works the way described.
5. Also, correct the Manual's specification table to include the supported Codecs, along with applicable limits.
If this much is done, at its current price, I think I would be able to consider it a useful product. With even more improvements, it might even be a recommendable product.
For now, all I can say is that if you are considering one of these, then check Machspeed's Website and look for a firmware upgrade. If there is no such upgrade, then look for some other brand -- and most likely in higher price ranges. Right now, the only device in this general size that I is available to me, and that I would trust, would be the Cowon O2 The iRiver P7 might be available soon, but I have not seen it in local stores yet.
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