We just got this player and I'm going to do a brief review.If there will be some significant update in the future I will try to update it.
First let's see what has Teclast made to make this player "unique" and then later we will discuss if this is good or bad.
Following is a diagram of the player hardware:
As you can see we have the usual Rockchip main unit,followed by 2 Wolfson DAC WM8740,1 for each channel,one Burr Brown(now acquired by Texas Instruments ) OPAMP OPA2604 amplifier and one NXP TDA1308 headphone amplifier.
Now let's analyze the components.
Rockchip RK2806 is a chip of last generation capable to decode HD 720P movies.I don't know much about this as it is quite new.Since it is quite new the software as usual in not rock solid and there are some issues that will be probably fixed with the following firmware.
Next we have Wolfson WM8740.
This is one of the T51 innovations.The DAC in question sports a fantastic 120DB SNR(Signal to Noise Ratio) and 104DB THD (Total Harmonic Distorsion) .Too good to be true?Yes in fact,there is the catch.
What's the problem?This DAC and the OPAMP are made for home appliace,not for portable use, and they use lots of power.
Proof is that the player can last barely 10 hour of audio playback of normal mp3!
Furthermore Teclast engineer in all their smartness used the BurrBrown OPAMP,another power hungry component,to drive the Headphone amplifier,while this component could have been skipped and the Headphone amp drove directly from the DAC with much longer playback time.
The NXP Headphone amp is in fact the only wise choise in my opinion.
Now after having analyzed the hardware let's go on with the review.
SCREEN
The screen is a 3.5'' HVGA LCD with capacitive touchscreen.Being capacitive it's quite responsive,the color reproduction is quite good,but the viewing angle is quite poor(see the video).
Also since it is HVGA (480x320) it mean it is not true 16:9,so wide screen videos will have the black bars.
SOFTWARE
Here start the bad things.The software is quite preliminary,could almost be called "beta".
There are bugs everywhere and the system even hang sometimes.
The UI is a major step back from T50 and I hope it will be changed very soon.The current UI seem done by a kid on the effect of heavy drugs.Please Teclast kill that damn designer and hire someone older than 5 years for your GUI.
VIDEO PLAYBACK
Video playback was very good.It played normal resolution video without problems.
It did have lip sync problem on few video with high bitrate and in some with AC3 audio.But it may be because of the relatively new software.
AUDIO PLAYBACK
The audio playback was tested with a pair of Shure SE530,since it doesn't make sense buy this kind of player with these specifications and use it with budget or even middle priced earphones.
We compared the T51 with one our favorites: MEIZU M6 SP.
HIGHS
Very detailed and warm.Still I prefer the neutral,non colored highs of M6.
MIDS
Rich of details,very good.Better than M6 in this aspect.
BASS
Deep and powerful bass.Here too I prefer the M6 punchy bass,but it's a matter of taste
OVERALL
Good and large sound field,no background noise and good channel separation.
Can't name a real winner between this and the M6,it's a matter of taste and music genre you listen.
VERDICT
Altough the software is in his early stage and it may be soon to judge,knowing Teclast the situation won't change much in the future.They follow always the same pattern(and the current firmware is just proof of it),and they will just remove the major bug and add some minor feature.
I think that from an audiophile point of view,it still lack too many "must have" features,like gapless,id3 tag for FLAC,APE,a serious EQ,etc
And it can't appeal normal users too,because the battery life is really poor.
There isn't a big audio quality difference between this and similar high end audio players,and the enormous difference in software quality and features make it hard to advice the purchase of T51.
If the player had a much lower price,following the chinese market trend it may be an interesting player,but for now it is priced quite high clashing with high end players.
We are selling our sample here .We will stock the player if there is request,but I doubt.
