Okay Geek Farm
chumby8 review
Jason Tsay
If you’re a geek then you’ve probably heard of a little gadget called the Chumby. Well, it used to be little but now it’s all grown up! The third iteration of the Chumby features an 8-inch touchscreen and can display all the widgets you’d like. But at a $200 price point, is it a must have gadget?
Features
- 8” 800x600 touchscreen LCD
- 800MHz Marvell ARMADA 166
- 128 MB DDR2 SDRAM
- 802.11 b/g WiFi
- +5V, 2.5A input
- Headphone/line output
- Integrated speakers
- Microphone input
- Access to 1500+ free apps
Our Impressions
What’s in the box
The chumby8 comes in a rather hilarious box marked with phrases such as “it has the Wi-Fi’s” and “it’s like, totally awesome.” Inside, a quick start guide greets you with “So you purchased (or stole) a chumby” and (for those who opposed starting slowly) below “The official Quick Start Guide.” We’d continue listing the jokes made in the manual but you probably want to hear more about the product itself. Either way, it’s this type of attention to detail that makes us wish more companies were like Chumby. Of course, the box contains the Chumby and an AC adapter.
Hardware
The hardware of this Chumby is not quite as whimsical as that of its predecessors (the first Chumby was a bean bag while the second was a white plastic cube) but still looks like a work of contemporary art. From the side, it looks like a lopsided T - the left side contains SD/SDHC/MMC/MS and CF card ports as well as speakers and a power button while the back has the AC adapter jack, 3.5mm headphone jack, and two USB ports. The top of the chumby 8 features a large button which we’ll go into later in the review. The entire chumby8 is finished in matte black plastic while the two sides are glossy. Directly below the 8” touchscreen is a blue Chumby logo. The resistive touchscreen is a bit of a pain to adjust to, especially for our iPhone accustomed selves. We found ourselves using our fingernails rather than actual fingers because input would not properly register with the latter. Aside from the resisitve aspect, the actual display is not too bad at all. The 8 inch size is much much better than the 3.5” of previous Chumby devices and at 800 x 600, it looks pretty sharp from a distance. Viewing angles are not great but the anti-glare surface helps with that.
Set-Up
Setting up the chumby8 was a fairly straightforward process - we plugged it in and it prompted us to type in the credentials to our nearest WiFi access point. From there, it downloaded and update and rebooted to the screen of a Chumby octopus swimming onto the screen. Of course, to access anything, Chumby requires you to activate the devices through the aid of their website (you’ll need a computer for this). After naming your chumby8, the website will give you a pattern to fill into a screen of 16 dots. Then you’re all set! The main homescreen interface is relatively clean. It gives you access to My Channels, chumby Apps, Music, Photos & Video, and Alarms as well as a night mode toggle, settings, and volume control. So what are channels? Basically, they are sets of widgets that cycle ever couple of seconds. You can add and edit channels either from the Chumby website or directly from the device.
Apps
With over a thousand apps, you’ll be able to find everything from a weather widget to a silly interactive Spongebob one. Music can be fetched from Pandora Radio, iheartradio, Napster, SHOUTcast Radio, New York Times Podcasts, CBS Podcasts, Mediafly, blue octy radio, and of course your own music files. Remember that button we mentioned? Well, pressing it while you’re in an app will bring up a bar across the top of the screen allowing you to exit the app, adjust the volume, change the duration of each app, and pin the app. The chumby8 is not the snappiest device we’ve seen and scrolling is painfully laggy but we didn’t interact much with the device much at all after initial setup. The idea is to set up a couple of channels you like and just leave the thing on your desk to cycle through. The onscreen keyboard isn’t great but the keys are decently sized and will certainly serve its purpose without much difficulty. Watching YouTube videos is actually surprisisngly doable. There was minimal lag although videos were pretty low resolution. The speakers were able to reach a respectable volume without distorting much.
Overall
We don’t think the chumby8 is a bad product at all. It’s fun to use and we love the idea of having a dedicated widget viewer at our bedside. However, it feels like Chumby went in both the right and wrong directions with their newest product. On the positive side, they made the screen larger and added some much needed features but they failed in pricing. $200 is really quite a dangerous price point given that Apple’s very own iPod Touch retails for the same amount. Obviously we’re looking at completely different markets and target audiences here but what’s stopping someone from propping up an iPod Touch to display ambient information on? Even within the Chumby market, two Benjamins is a lot. Both the Chumby One and the Sony Dash retail for $100, the latter being the more attractive of the two. What we’re saying is that if Chumby was able to manufacture a similar device in the $50-$100 range, they would sell like hotcakes. But let’s take a step away from everything I just said. If you’re a geek with $200 lying around somewhere, you’re in for a real treat with the chumby8.
Pro’s
- great hardware design
- intriguing concept
- app selection
Con’s
- resisitive touchscreen
- laggy interface
- price point is not compelling enough
Where to Buy
Chumby — MSRP: $199.95
This review was done by Jason Tsay, who was provided the chumby8 by Chumby.
