I'll start with the basics, obviously this is an mp3 player and USB Storage Device. Very useful for transferring files from computer to computer and for listening to your favourite tracks on the move. With 1 GB of storage you can definitely fit most of what you want onto this little thing.
Black coloured with silver buttons and border. The display screen lights up blue as you turn it off but the light quickly turns itself off which is a bit awkward if it's dark. The design is very nice, really comfortable to have in your hand but it's a shame the buttons aren't reachable in this comfortable position. The headphone socket is, somewhat unusually, on the top of the product which
still now confuses me sometimes. Menu and EQ buttons are on the top.
Menu This takes you into select what you want to be on from a list of: Music, Record, Voice, Navigation, Settings, Delete, About and Exit. Which are all pretty straight forward. The Record setting allows you to record what's around you through the microphone on the bottom of the mp3 player.
EQ This is an equaliser but is not too fancy it just allows you to swap between Normal, XBass, Rock, Jazz, Classical and Pop settings which all add a little something to the track you are listening to if you want to change it a bit.
Next to these two buttons are the volume buttons, + and - which is pretty simple to understand. The mp3 player goes up quite loud if you turn it all the way up but probably not as loud as an iPod. It starts at a quite loud setting every time you turn it on so you may have to readjust the volume if you do not like it at that level. Obviously the louder the music is played, the more battery it takes up.
The battery section is behind a sliding part on the back of the mp3 player as is quite normal and it only requires 1 triple A (AAA) battery. This does last quite a while if you listen at a normal volume. I always listen on full volume and it usually lasts at least a few hours (Maybe 3 or 4) so I guess maybe double that at a sensible volume.
The bottom of the mp3 has only the microphone and the 'Hold' feature which is very handy when it is in your pocket as you cannot accidentally skip the song until the hold button is set to unlock.
On the front of the mp3 player there is obviously the display screen which shows which song and who it is by. This is set by the Tag Settings you have set for the mp3 track on your computer, if you haven't done it then it just shows the name of the file. To the right of the screen are four buttons Back, Play/ Pause, Stop and Forward. You can use the forward and back buttons to skip a track if you just tap them or rewind/ fast forward if you hold them down.
The play/ pause button is used to obviously play a track if you have stopped it or if you have just turned it on. The pause allows a track to be stopped part of the way through and then started again from that point as opposed to stopping it which starts the track from the start. This button is also the on button for the mp3 player. I like it as you don't need to hold it down, click it once and wait a second and it goes on. Unfortunately this means it can turn itself on quite easily when you don't want it to.
The stop button obviously stops a track if you're finished but it is also the off button. This is slightly better designed as you have to hold it to turn it off but it would be better the other way round as if you want it off, it must have been on firat so you could just hold it to stop it going off. Anyway, hold it for a few seconds and watch the bars go across the screen and it's off.
Other than that it has a little clip on the end to attach it to something if you don't want to lose it. The other end is removable to plug into the USB port on the computer.
It is very simple to set up on any computer, the setup documents are stored on the disk so plug it in and it basically installs itself! Very handy if you're at a friend's.
Overall this is a very good mp3 player and unless you want higher storage capacity then i don't see any reason for not getting this. Nice design, simple to use. Perfect for me! I think these are readily available from Argos, well they were in the last catalogue and I think relatively cheap for what it is. Also comes with the first set of headphones I've evre had that lasted more than a month.. 6 months and counting!
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