A.C. Ryan Playon!HD Essential

Playon HD A.C.Ryan Essential – Horrible, I had two HD 3 and after updating the units the update supplied by A.C.Ryan crash both units and they are stuck in safe mode looping in the start up. After months of emails then having to send them both to Singapore I received below - don't ever buy these units Apologized for late reply your email. We’ve received your devices and based on the specs review your device spare parts are no longer available.

I suggest that you avail of the latest model instead. Best Regards, Tech Team Showroom & Service Centre: 1 Rochor Canal Road, Sim Lim Square #04-09 Singapore 188504 Tel: +65 6337 5587 / +65 6338 5721 Operating Hours: Mon – Sat: 11am – 8pm Sunday : 11am – 7pm Closed on every Tuesdays. We are open on public holidays except X’mas, New Year & CNY. Last service call will be 1 hour before closing. You can also drop off your product on weekends/PHs for service, and it'll be ready the following weekend

Playonhd. A regretfull purchase! – It has the User Interface of a World War 2 Tank. Slow, Sticky, Frustrating. The anger factor in owning this unit is high. I regret ever hearing the word ACRyan. I would happily spend four times as much money on a higher quality product. I like quality products, and appreciate the dedication of those technicians who pain stakingly nit out all those dislikes/annoyances/faults before launching a product. It looks to me, that, when ACRYAN saw their name on the screen, they figured "Product ready! Start production. If you like quality products, made by Smart, Disearning, Clever people, who go the extra mile to do the right thing, to bring you a product you will be happy to own and never regret the purchase, then stay away from this. A nice sounding DAC (It Helps, If you have experience in driving a WW 2 Tank)

Stay away from it for now. Too buggy, lack of support – I was astonished with many reviews who said that this product was quite good. I bought it early this year only to find out that I was fooled by these amazing reviews. The unit was buggy, and until now even after firmware update this year (in Feb 2011 exactly) still has a lot of bugs. Despite have been waiting for 8 months in despair, dealing with the buggy unit and all we (myself and essential users from official forum support) got from acryan customer service only a lip service saying that "We're working on it", "It's quite difficult due to different SDK and so on and so on".

However every time one of us ask acryan when will the update release, all of acryan representatives (at forum or on email reply) keep saying "Sorry, there is no timeline"

And every time one of us ask acryan what is the bug/problem out of hundreds of bugs/problems has already been solved and begging acryan for Beta release, all of acryan representatives keep saying nothing.

So unless they fix the bugs which haunted current and latest firmware, save more money to buy playonHD2 mini or playonHD2 instead of Essential if you want to buy acryan product.

Or search other manufacturer if you want player similar with Essential in term of price and playability. Quite cheap, slick GUI, quite easy to navigate Buggy, Lots of sudden freeze, very slow response from acryan support team, no more firmware update (8 months and still waiting), poor remote response, bugs when playing .mp3 with high bitrate, bugs when playing .mov (no sound except from HDMI connection), bugs when playing .m4a