itronics IMP-65 WMA/MP3 Player - 1Gb

I recently went to use my personal CD player and to my disappointment it was broken. Anyhow I decided it was time to give up the ghost and buy myself something new. I grabbed the Argos catalogue and had a browse and spotted a cheap little 1 GB MP3 Player and as I have just added all my CD collection onto my hard drive a short while ago I thought this would be ideal.

The MP3 player made by a company called iitronics who have their own ...
...IMP-65 Portable WMA/MP3 player. It can hold up to 1024MB of data and has a built in microphone.

The packaging was very good and it included some basic earphones, a USB cable, an AAA battery and a CD driver disc. There was also Warranty card and a user manual.

The earphones are very basic and struck me as peculiar because near the jack plug there is a round connector with a loop attached; if anyone knows what this loop ... more

I recently went to use my personal CD player and to my disappointment it was broken. Anyhow I decided it was time to give up the ghost and buy myself something new. I grabbed the Argos catalogue and had a browse and spotted a cheap little 1 GB MP3 Player and as I have just added all my CD collection onto my hard drive a short while ago I thought this would be ideal.

The MP3 player made by a company called iitronics who have their own website www.iitronics.com . The model that I purchased was the IMP-65 Portable WMA/MP3 player. It can hold up to 1024MB of data and has a built in microphone.

The packaging was very good and it included some basic earphones, a USB cable, an AAA battery and a CD driver disc. There was also Warranty card and a user manual.

The earphones are very basic and struck me as peculiar because near the jack plug there is a round connector with a loop attached; if anyone knows what this loop might be used for please let me know. I also thought that having a USB cable was pretty pointless but then it occurred to me that some people have there USB port on the back of there PC, making it very useful indeed.

The Actual player is mainly black with a silver buttons and LCD screen surround. The IItronics logo is clearly marked on the front. On the left hand side as your looking at it, it has a removable cap that when removed reveals a USB connector. The play/pause button is on the front and is slightly raised at the top is a key lock and the volume buttons and at the bottom is the record button, the menu button and a FFW/skip button. On the right side is the microphone and earphone socket. On the back is the battery compartment that can only be opened when the USB connector cap has been removed.

To turn it on you have to press the play button. When you do this it lights up, usually green displaying the Iitronics logo. The light changes through a spectrum of colours, pretty as this may be it annoys me, and I just wish I could set them to one colour. But unfortunately this is not an option; however there is an option to turn it of completely so that's what I have done. When the Iitronics logo disappears a set of menu icons will appear. Play music, voice, settings, info, folder and exit. These can be accessed at any time by pressing and holding the menu button on the bottom of the player. To scroll across the icons use the FFW/skip buttons.

Play music
To access this menu and any other menu you have to press the menu button, takes you to your playlist where you can scroll through your collection with the FFW/skip buttons.
Note: it does not come with any preinstalled music or files

Voice
Hear your can record the sound of your own voice just press down record at talk into the microphone. To stop the recordings press the play/pause button and press menu to save it.

Settings
Contains another group of options these are play mode, contrast, backlight, power set, record set, language and exit
Play mode.
You can set the player to shuffle repeat, repeat, repeat all, directory normal, directory all normal, directory shuffle repeat or normal.
Contrast
Defines the brightness of the backlight
Backlight
You can set the backlight to be off at all times to turn of after a 5 second interval or 10 second intervals and you can turn them on permanently. As I said unfortunately there was no option to stop the backlight from changing colours. Having the backlight turned on permanently will run down the battery faster.
Power set
Set the time limit until it times itself out. This can be disabled, be set at 2, 10 or 30 minutes till shut down.
Record set
Set the quality you want to record in this can be either 32 Kps or 44kps
Language
Choose from English, French, Traditional Chinese, Simple Chinese, German, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese.
Exit
…………

Right, now back to the main menu.
Info
Tells you how much storage space you have used and how much you have left over.
Folder
This is another way of accessing your files like you would in your MyDocuments folder on a PC using the FFW/skip and the menu button to navigate.

And finally Exit….

It also has a preset graphic equaliser; the choices are normal, rock, pop, classical, jazz and bass.

These MP3 players are also available as 128 MB, 256 MB, 514 MB and 2 GB

As I mentioned at the top this review I bought this from Argos, it cost £29.99, which considering that it has 1 GB of storage space and a built in microphone I think this is a bargain.

The software provided is only required if you are using Windows 98

As you have probably guessed I am very pleased with MP3 player. I like the look; I like the feel and it is definitely better than my old CD player. It is smaller and able to contain much more music than before. I have filled it today and it stored 154 tracks so I won't need to change my playlist for a while. I am still mystified about the loop on the earphone cable, but hey big deal. It plays music and that's the main thing. I was a little disappointed with the battery time that I got from the factory supplied batteries and I intend on getting some new rechargeable batteries for it.
Well that's enough about that I'm off to listen to some of my favourite tracks.

Thanks for reading.

 

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