Trying to make its mark in the tech-forest, Zebronics has come a long way. Amidst several rulers of the audio-thicket, the company tries crafting a nifty package in an attempt to allure audio lovers. Buckled under the eye-pleasing black-white stripy theme, the company emerges with a mate for those yenning for a digitally entertaining lifestyle in the form of the Zebmate Cinema 3.0. However, to know if it really makes a great companion rather mate, we have branched out its several performance shades in an in-depth review inked for our readers. So, check out to know its whites, blacks and also grays or shall we say greens, blues and browns.
Standing by its name, the packaging of the device is an eye-candy. Zebronics planned to set apart from the rest with a brightly light covering which slides open to reveal a rectangular paper box that looks a part of the Zebra skin striped with black and white. Further, this box opens up just like a book with the device encrusted on one side giving us a gleaming smile while the other side encloses the rest of the bundle. The bundle is inclusive of earphones, charger, USB cable, a cleaning cloth, a neck strap and a pouch. By now, if you are wondering that the device would also be dressed in black-white stripes then one may be disappointed to see the plain Jane looking Zebronics Zebmate Cinema 3.0. An African folk tale says that the Zebra was all white and the black stripes were added during its fight with a baboon. However, here the company decided to drop the white shade completely as the device emerges drenched in black.
At 46 grams, it measures around 91mm x 50.5mm x 12.5mm. However, we wish the company could have popped out the device with a more stylish look or patterned body. Apart from the product and company names sketched in white, the front side shows off a 3-inch 400 x 240 display along with two buttons for navigation and a main button. These three buttons form a well spaced row just below the screen. The power on/off slider, volume controls, play/pause/back buttons run along the right edge while the lower edge houses a mini USB port and 3.5mm audio port. Well, if you are wondering why we haven’t mentioned the lock button that is seen in almost all music players then astonishingly Zebronics hasn’t embedded any.
Though the user interface is maintained simple, it doesn’t seem lively. Surprisingly, one can set a keypad lock which is timed and hit the Back button to unlock the device. Moreover, you won’t get many features to tweak. The display settings let us choose the brightness, light time and light mode. The light time can be picked from 5, 10, 15, 20 and 30 seconds while the light mode includes all dark and penumbra. Desktop comes with four themes, quite simple and nothing distinctive to look for. We could also select from AutoShut time and SleepShut time. The player also has Calendar and Stopwatch functions. The player comes with simple plug and play functionality, so connecting it to the PC for transferring data was simple. As we aren’t great fans of iTunes, we always prefer the simple and hassle-free data transfer process. Needless to say, we loaded the device with our favorite music, videos and photos.
The Zebmate is spacious enough to pack in 4GB of content. We could play several music files and once we entered the music function, the device’s screen displayed various options like Artist, Album, genre and more. We could also tag a particular song as favorite. The audio quality came across pretty satisfactory. The included headphones further add to the woe. We tried using other headphones which again brought in limited sound elevation of sound quality. Moreover, the UI did take some time to get the hang of. However, the dullness doesn’t really bring in a rejuvenated experience. Moving to videos, it was a delight to see the player support varying video formats such as AVI, MOV, DIVX, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, VCD, DVD, RM, RMVB, XVID, Mp3 and WMA. It did reproduce decent video quality but the small screen size and limited screen efficiency came across as a hindrance.
Viewing images wasn’t a great experience but decent enough. The zoom and rotate functions also came in handy. Seemingly, the popularity of eBooks hasn’t left alone the media player segment too. The built-in eBook function failed to impress us as we loaded it with one of favorite short story, yet again the screen to be blamed. The Radio functionality came with the recording feature and a simple interface to search your way through and also set channels.
The device managed to squeeze in about 13 hours of audio while it played video for about 3 hours, which seemed pretty fine to us. Options such as Repeat mode, Play mode, MSEQ, EQ SEL and User EQ Setup have been included in the player. The player is inclusive of a Recording function. What we observed is that whether recording from Radio or an audio clip, the recording ability picked up the background sound. The gaming scene on the device was mediocre with Tetris and Gobang. However, the FM reception was good. The 4GB memory is sufficient to store your everyday music and other files. However, it wouldn’t take longer for users to yearn for a couple of more gigs.
With a price tag of only Rs. 2,999, the Zebronics Zebmate Cinema 3.0 could be called an affordable player. However, one will have to compromise on several aspects. The interface isn’t lively nor is the user experience. The device does come across extremely light to carry but as aforesaid the audio quality is satisfactory. Though the video quality is maintained well, the player does not come across as a complete PMP. With the likes of media players available in the market, Zebronics leaves a large room for improvement. It has managed to get a rating of 7 on a scale of 10 from us.
