Saturday, February 8, 2014

Product review: Tronsmart T1000 Mirror2TV Wireless Display HDMI Dongle Support Miracast DLNA EZCAST


Tronsmart allows you to display everything displayed on your mobile device screen on a TV. It can be useful to show photos saved on your phone, play games on a large screen, watch Netflix or Hulu Plus, play music, youTube, or do presentation by displaying slides stored on your device without needing to bring a laptop. It is similar to Chromecast but does more as it is not limited to the specific set of apps that Chromecast supports.

Tronsmart T1000 supports several modes EZCast, DLNA, and EZMirror/Miracast. I tested each mode with Samsung Galaxy 7.7 tablet and Samsung Nexus phone.

I had no problems setting up EZCast mode. The documentation is missing some steps so I took detailed notes on what I did:

➺ 1. I downloaded and installed a free app called EZcast from GooglePlay (Attached video includes an image of how the icon looks so you can tell it apart from other similar named applications)

➺ 2. I connected the Tronsmart dongle to the TV (it can plug in either directly into HDMI port or with HDMI extension cable)

➺ 3. I connected WIFI cable (included in the package) to the dongle

➺ 4. I connected WIFI cable to the power supply (the WIFI cable is short, so I connected it to an external battery pack)

➺ 5. On my mobile device I connected to WIFI Tronsmart-xxxxxxxx. The password I needed was displayed on the screen of my TV

➺ 6. Once WIFI was connected my mobile device became the remote control for the TV.

➺ 7. The first thing I did was to change the password that the dongle came with. The password length is limited to 8 characters, when I specified more than 8 character the tail end of my password was chopped off. Note that the password is displayed on your TV screen in the clear. So don't use a password you want to keep secret. After I changed the password, I was not able to move my cursor - looks like the long password has crashed the software. I disconnected the power to reboot the device and when it came back up the new password was set correctly (using the first 8 characters of the password I specified).

➺ 8. Once I finished set up I hit "Back" button on my device (the arrow at the bottom of my screen). This brought me back to the main menu. This page contains colorful icons for Photo, Camera, Music, Video, Documents, Web, Cloud Video, Comment, Update. In addition to EZCast you also have DLNA and EZMirror (this is Miracast) modes.

➺ 9. EZCast allows you to work with files local to your device, such as photos, documents, spreadsheet stored on your device. They can be mirror on your TV for easy viewing. Through the Web menu you can surf the web and have it displayed on your TV screen.

➺ 10. The apps are displayed only in a landscape mode. This is an issue for some of the games I like which run only in portrait mode.

➺ 11. DLNA mode finds all DLNA DMR (digital media reader) on your mobile device and allows you to display them on your large TV screen.

➺ 12. I could not get EZMirror/Miracast Mode to work because my devices do not support Miracast. When you select EZMirror your will be prompted to turn off you Wi-Fi. Then go the "Display" section of Setttings and if your device is compatible with Miracast you will see an option for "Wireless Display". Select option to turn it on, and that will start Miracast functionality.

I could not get Miracast to work on my Nexus 7.7 Tablet running 4.04 Android and Nexus phone running 4.4 Android. This is not a T1000 problem but rather a limitation of my devices which do not support Miracast. To see if your device supports Miracast check if you have the following option under settings:go to Settings > Device > Display > Cast screen > Menu > there will be an option to "Enable Wireless Display."

I received Tronsmart T1000 from the manufacturer for testing and review. If you like the idea of sharing your screen on a large TV this is an inexpensive and easy to use device to do it.

You can find it on Amazon by following this link.


Ali Julia review ★★★★★

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