iPod alternative

Advantages: Big clear screen, sounds excellent, supports movies, photos, music, text, games
Disadvantages: Unoriginal design

...Meizu Mini Player 1GB The Meizu Mini Player is the latest addition to the flash based mp3 player market. It's competing against offerings from Apple, Creative and Sony but how does the Meizu fair against the competition. Well pretty good infact. The player comes in 4 different sizes, 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 8GB and you can get the player in two different colours, black or white. The design of the play is heavily influenced by the iPod but because of this the player looks very stylish. The player has a very large QVGA TFT LCD screen which is excellent and looks smashing. You can view videos, play music, view photos and also read text documents on the player. The screen is 2.4 inches and takes up most of the players size but this is good because it allows for a large viewing area although if you tilt the player to the side slightly...

sifair 20.05.2007 · Read review
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Review of Meizu M6 Mini Player 1 GB

More features than an iPod for under £30???

Advantages: Long battery life, plays videos, wide range of audio formats, great screen, all for £29
Disadvantages: Doesn't support M4A.

...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...

tazzik 19.05.2007 (20.05.2007) · Read review
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Review of Meizu M6 Mini Player 2 GB

Newest and best iPod killer

Advantages: Slick, beautifully designed & high-performing player, real rival to big brands
Disadvantages: Hard to get hold of, no after-sales service as yet

...This miniplayer was advertised a few months ago, and the first time I saw the pictures and early reviews, I wanted one. Got mine direct from China (good ol' ebay..) and I was bowled over by the reality. It's just - perfect. Smaller than a credit card, though thicker, with a large, vivid bright screen and a touchpad, together with mirror back. The design is slick and modern, unfussy and clean. Currently available just in white, but black is just appearing on shelves in Asia. Most manufacturers should learn from this excellent design. It's simple to use; even though all of the instructions come in Chinese, you can download an english-language version very easily. Perhaps not the ideal player for an MP3 virgin, but persistence pays off with this one. Getting music and video (and indeed photos) on is very easy - it's recognised in...

suffol 06.09.2006 · Read review
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Review of Meizu M6 Mini Player 4 GB

The good old M6 at Christmas

Advantages: few
Disadvantages: cost

...The M6 is a complete nightmare for anyone not just for businesses but for people who want to travel down or up to holiday locations or for even simple things like going to see parents over the Christmas Holidays. The M6 goes through the West Midlands and is one of the busiest motorways in Great Britain. I live in Warrington, Cheshire and we are joined to the M6 here, my parents live in Worcester and grandparents who live in Birmingham, we have to go this route and it is a nightmare of a journey. I hate it when we get near to Birmingham as to be honest it would be much quicker to get out of the car and walk down the hard shoulder. (This is only a comments and not to be advised, just to give you an impression of how slow the traffic is). We also have the infamous Thelwall Viaduct which often gets closed to high winds and there have...

BUBBLES171 15.12.2003 · Read review
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Review of M6 Toll

Now this is a true MINIdisc

Advantages: small-light-compact-great sound quality-MDLP-great batery life
Disadvantages: pricey!

...It was my birthday and to my great surprise and joy I was given a sony MZ-R900.This is a minidisc player.In case you don?t know what a minidisk is, it is a revolutionary invention by Sony.A minidisc is a 2.5" square cartridge with a digital optical disc inside.It is designed for recording music onto and can be recorded over 1 million times without a loss of sounds quality!Most minidiscs can hold 80 minutes of music on them in normal mode. Anyway back to the minidisc player.The Sony MZ-R900 is available in silver or blue (mine is blue) and will fit in the palm of your hand!It is extremely light too!As soon as I received the minidisc player I ,naturally, wanted to try it out.To my horror an extremely thick manual fell from the box!Luckily the minidisc player was extremely simple to use and understand and soon I was enjoying my new gift...

rishibave 16.07.2002 · Read review
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Review of Sony MiniDisc recorder

Never knew Mini Disc was so good

Advantages: Tiny, sounds great, long battery life
Disadvantages: Editing track names fiddly

...tracks to help you compile a custom Minidisk. Minidisks come with around 74 minutes available for recording, but this Sony recorder allows you to double or quadruple this available time. This is a great feature allowing me to put just under 5 hours of near CD quality music onto it. There is no doubt you lose some quality as you expand to 2x and 4x compression but it marginal - I don't know how Sony do it. My wife had a baby this week and she wanted some of hr favourite CD's to listen to whilst in labour. It was so convenient to put about 5 CD's onto one mini disc so the disk never needed to be changed throughout. Sound Quality ------------- As I've said I'm a connoisseur of good quality sound systems so I was very critical when I first listened. I think the key to a good Minidisk recording is to use the supplied Optical cable...

hardmanphil 19.10.2002 · Read review
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Review of Sony MiniDisc recorder

MiniDisc with a difference

Advantages: Pocket sized, sound quality, free case, disc capacity, price
Disadvantages: Poor software, no digital transfer to PC, supplied headphones

...This very portable (easily fits in even the smallest of pockets) MiniDisc player from Sony is in their NetMD range meaning that songs can be transferred quickly and directly from a computer running Windows using the supplied USB cable rather than having to transfer the tracks in realtime using an analog connection to the sound card (although this player can make analog recordings too through its optical/analogue "line in" socket - however only the optical cable is supplied). Songs can also be compressed on the MiniDisc both when transferred from a computer and when recorded normally using the MDLP technology which uses Atrac3 compression. There are two compression settings available, the higher quality setting allows 160 minutes of music per disc and to me sounds as good as a non-compressed MiniDisc and the lower quality setting...

essoft 22.07.2004 · Read review
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Review of Sony MiniDisc recorder

Top of the range MINIDISC Player

Advantages: Looks great, feels great, small, light, feature packed, short but thorough manual, remote, backlight
Disadvantages: Nothing really - Groove headphones would have been nice, not idiot-proof

...This is the latest top of the range MiniDisc player from Sony. Sony, one of the innovators of the MD, are the first place to look if you want a good looking, reliable and feature-packed machine, and they haven’t let me down. MINIDISC What is MD? It helps to think of a MiniDisc as a CD, except that it’s MUCH smaller (approx 7cm x 7cm), has a protective case to prevent scratches and is recordable. It stores 74 mins of music on a standard MD, although in this machine you can get it up to 320 mins (read on). MD’s also store the track/disc titles of the MD so you know what’ what. MD is ideal for those that listen to music on the move, or need to make digital recordings using a microphone. MiniDisc players are more expensive than CD players, although the cheapest Sony currently costs around £60. The cheapest record...

murban 03.07.2001 · Read review
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Review of Sony MiniDisc recorder

My stay at the Holiday Inn, M6 J7

Advantages: Access to gym and pool, good breakfast
Disadvantages: Some noise from neighbours

...I stayed at the Holiday Inn Birmingham M6, Jct. 7 last weekend. I paid £54 for two people bed and breakfast. This was direct from the Holiday Inn website and was the best I could find. It was slightly cheaper because it was advance payment, although as it was on my credit card I've still not actually paid! It was very easy to find, literally 2 mins off the M6. While the exterior did have a slight council flat look to it, the reception area was lovely. Check in was smooth and speedy. We had a room that seemed to be miles away, although we found a slightly quicker route later! The room was clean and tidy. It had a desk and chair along with a small 'dining' table and chair. There was a 'room service' service although it did look rather expensive (to be expected I suppose!). The bathroom was on the compact side, but again it was clean...

lois22 21.01.2008 (06.02.2008) · Read review
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Review of Holiday Inn Birmingham M6, Jct. 7, Birmingham

Sony MZN 710 MiniDisc Player.

Advantages: Small, Compact, Looks great and its a Sony
Disadvantages: Low earphone volume

...I have always been interested in portable music and I have since my first portable cassette player worn out an entire selection of various Walkmans and Discmans (Discmen?). The MP3 format however never managed to appeal to me, as I like to have my music collection stored on some kind of external media instead of as files on my computer. I may be a bit old-fashioned, but I like to be able to grab one of my albums right off the shelf and pop it into my player for instant listening, without having to boot up the computer and download files to some hideously expensive memory card. It didn't take long until I fell in love with the MiniDisc format - mainly for its portability and durability but also for the sound quality that pretty much surpasses everything that MP3 is capable of. And with the recent introduction of the NetMD concept...

dottymardon 11.11.2005 · Read review
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Review of Sony MZN710 Net MD portable MiniDisc recorder