i'm a web developer living in brighton with my girlfriend, bit of a geek, that's it really.
i'm a web developer living in brighton with my girlfriend, bit of a geek, that's it really.
Member since:22.01.2005
Reviews:3
What I Wanted I spent quite a few months searching for an mp3 player to suit my needs: It had to be at least 20gb Support both mp3, m4a and wma Easy to Use Under £150 (I paid £120 for mine just under a year ago)
Research I read some really good reviews on this player over at amazon, although a couple of people had experienced problems with the player freezing and not being able to get it to work again. This has only happened once to me and I held the 'power off' button for about 30 seconds and it turned off and restarted without a problem.
Most reviews seemed to be saying that if all you want is an mp3 player then get it. I was only unsure because it was 20gb and I thought that wasn't enough - I was completely wrong!
In The Box The Shiny Black MP3 Player Manual/Instructions
(not very indepth) AC Charger (with a UK converter to attach to it)
Capacity/Storage I have yet to fill this player up and I have nearly 200gb of music on my homePC but when your choosing music to actually listen to at work/the gym then you know you dont want everything.
I have used it to copy data files between my home and families pcs. I wasn't able to use it on my work machine though as it seems the player needs to install some drivers (you'll notice it does this everytime you connect it to your machine) so this was a bit annoying.
Sound Quality I have no problems with the sound quality of this player. I do have some good quality KOSS headphones which ensure whatever source I'm using the music sounds good.
Ditch the tiny in-ear headphones that come with the player, they are standard. Invest in some good headphones (koss, sony, seenheiser) - trust me you won't regret it.
I have used my player when I have been working out and it doesn't skip at all. I have done it whilst doing step aerobics and I hold it my hand - no skipping at all.
I have played mp3, m4a and wma files with no problems on this machine.
Ease of Use At first it took a little while to get used to, what with only 3 buttons (including the joystick). The joystick is firm and feels sturdy to use. It takes a while to get used to what the left and right buttons do, for example to turn off the player you have to press and hold the left hand button down but its the right hand button that has the power symbol and is used to turn the player on.
To lock the player then you just have to press and hold the power button for a few seconds and the lock symbol appears in the top left hand corner.
There are a fair few icons at the top of the display when music is playing, most of them fairly obvious (time,status,battery level). It's useful that the screen displays the title, artist and album of the song that is currently playing, it also tells you what it will be playing next which I find useful.
Transferring music is so easy, as the player appears as a drive within windows file explorer, it's a simple task of drag and drop. You can create as many directories as you like. The Player does come with some documentation but I just copied that to my PC and removed it from the player - I've not had to read them yet.
The instructions/manual that comes in the box with the player aren't that great, they tell you the basics and that's it. You need to just have a play around with it.
Playlists The player falls down a little bit on this as it's quite tricky to add things to a playlist as you need to navigate to the directory that contains the tune you want to add then when saving the playlist you have to make sure your in the original location the playlist was. The player will save playlists in the directory you are viewing - annoying for me as I keep my playlists in a seperate folder to all my music.
I tend to create all my playlists using winamp and then saving the playlist to the player (ensure the music you add to the playlist is taken from the player and not from your PC)
Battery This is really good, I listen to it in the car every day (about 2 hours in total everyday), then I am frequently listening to it during the day and I only have to charge it about twice a week.
Automatic turn off - this is only done if you have actually stopped playing the track you were listening to or if you were in the middle of browsing/creating a playlist. If you have paused the track (pressing the joystick down) then the player will not automatically turn off - annoying when you forget you paused your music and come back to find your battery drained a bit more.
Looks Ignore the monochrome skin and what you have is a pocket-size tiny player with a good size screen. I have the black one and it looks very nice, especially with the nice blue led light that shines subtly when the player is on.
Accessories There is only one case available for the player - from archos. Its £25 which is quite alot. It seems any accessories for this player is only available from archos which is annoying as this means there is no competition on the price of accessories.
Advantages: Many easy to use options, small with large capacity, memory stick tendencies. Disadvantages: Monochrome screen, possible weak screen, rubbishy headphones come with it.
Advantages: feats on your pocket , cheap , hard live resistent , lots of storage , plays anything , beautifull color and easy operation Disadvantages: I have not found mayor problems here... it works as a computer
Dec 8th, 2006
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