Meizu M6 Mini Player 2 GB

...to buy it just before Meizu increased the price nationwide by about £10.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS:
I received the M6 in its own personalized bag with some writing in chinese and a picture of it on the front. I got it out of the bag and found, of course, for the packaging to be just like the iPod's, as is alomst everything to do with this player. I turned it on and found that all the menus were in chinese. To fix this I went to a very ...
...the language, the site will be mentioned at the end of the review. When I turned it on and went to look round the menu, I noticed that there were some sample songs, included free! Only two were titled in english and they were, Elmer Bernstein and Rage over a lost penny, the latter being my favourite song title ever. The other two were standard chinese type songs. Also there was a video included, just an advert for the M6. Overall I would say first ... more

INTRODUCTION:
I got my M6 from a friend who visited China. She paid just £29 for it (current conversion rates). She managed to buy it just before Meizu increased the price nationwide by about £10.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS:
I received the M6 in its own personalized bag with some writing in chinese and a picture of it on the front. I got it out of the bag and found, of course, for the packaging to be just like the iPod's, as is alomst everything to do with this player. I turned it on and found that all the menus were in chinese. To fix this I went to a very good fansite where there were instructions on how to change the language, the site will be mentioned at the end of the review. When I turned it on and went to look round the menu, I noticed that there were some sample songs, included free! Only two were titled in english and they were, Elmer Bernstein and Rage over a lost penny, the latter being my favourite song title ever. The other two were standard chinese type songs. Also there was a video included, just an advert for the M6. Overall I would say first impressions were very good and the included songs are a nice feature that possibly Apple could take note of.

FIrst impressions = 7/10

FUNCTIONALITY:
The M6 has a very wide feature set. It has video playback, audio playback, (more about the specifics later), an FM tuner, picture viewer and games among many other nice extras. The FM tuner is very good quality and is even better than my car radio in some places. The screen is very high quality and can be incredibly bright. A great feature is also the built in voice-recorder that can also record radio. The only thing I think is missing is an upgradeable storage card.

Functionality : 9/10

AUDIO:
I believe I am relatively knowledgable about audio matters and the M6 performs very well in my opinion. A great addition is a user-changeable Graphic equaliser. For people who don't know what this is, it basically allows you to accentuate high, low and midrange noises. For example, classical music tends to sound betterif one increase the low and high ends but leaves the middle relatively untouched, for rock music a high bass and higher high frequencies with a reduced mid range makes the music sound better. The audio quality is very good but there is a slight distortion of low frequencies when the volume is turned up too high. Mid range frequencies are excellent and the noise floor is very good in my opinion although some people have had noise problems, but I haven't. The supported formats are wide but annoyingly do not support .m4a which means enhanced podcasts are not supported, full supported formats will be discussed later.

Audio = 7/10

VIDEO:
The video playback is quite simply, stunning. The dot pitch (distance between pixels) is fantastic, brightness is amazing and quality is superb. There is virtually no ghosting and very little pixelation in fast moving sequences. The framerate remains high throughout and long videos do not lag up the player. The software included to convert all of the videos is very good and will be discussed later. It supports .avi with a max bitrate of 384kbps which on this device, is ample. I normally encode at about 250kbps and this is still very good quality.

Video = 10/10

INCLUDED IN THE BOX:
With the package there is everything you need to get started, the manual, a USB2 cable and a CD containing all of the needed software to convert videos, a silicon skin, a soft leather pouch, a hond strap and a pre-applied screen protector and a silk cloth to clean it with. A massive number of included extras, as you can see. The software to convert the video is easy to use and quite quick.

Included in the box = 10/10

SUPPORTED FORMATS:

Audio: MP3 VBR, WMA, OGG, FLAC and WAV (all upto 320kbps)
Video: AVI XVID 20FPS 384/512kbps
Annoyingly, as mentioned before, there is no support for M4A tracks so enhanced podcasts don't work. Apart from this it support almost anything you could ever need.

Supported formats = 9/10

MINOR ANNOYANCES:
1-No M4A playback
2-Some videos just don't play for some reason
3-LONG boot-up time (10 seconds)

Minor Annoyances = -5/10

TOTALS
First impressions: 7/10
Functionality: 9/10
Audio: 7/10
Video: 10/10
Included in the box: 10/10
Supported formats: 9/10

Sub-Total = 52/60

MINUS: 5/10

GRAND TOTAL: 47/60

FINAL COMMENTS:
For a sub £30 MP4 player to have this wide a feature set, such a wide range of supported formats and vast quantities of included extras this MP4 player is the best one I've ever had and surely one of the best out there. I would recommend this to anyone , even over an iPod video, because this has so many more features. The battery life is fantastic, normally reaching about 26 hours for me. I also fel it is important to mention that if one buys an imported model the price can rise exponentially. A 4gB model in China works out at around £45 in the UK if one buys an import, people may charge well above £100!

WEB LINKS:
Manufacturer: en.meizu.com
Amazing fan site: www.meizume.com

Final sentence: Buy one NOW! 

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