Bargain Mania News

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Overview

These attractive MP3 / MP4 players owe more than a fair shake of their good looks to the designers at Apple inc with their ground-breaking iPod range of portable musical players. While the engineers at Apple have been busy honing design and quality control into the best-selling range the world has ever seen, the crafty Chinese have been busy churning out their equivalent versions at a quarter of the price. All the more surprising then that the Chinese even managed to throw an FM radio into the equation, something the 4th generation nano from Apple sadly lacks. Having said that, Apple have sat up and taken notice of the Chinese vision and have included it within the specification of the 5th generation line.

MP3 : File Format

The industry-standard MP3 format is the industry standard for good reason. It’s cheap to produce, cheap to obtain and supported by virtually every player and computer software under the sun. The Chinese have made sure that their players support this format in the main along with the WMA format and, sometimes, other (less) mainstream sources. Many people try to load iTunes files on to their players because they look like Apple products, only to find that they are not compatible. Any files that don’t have the .mp3 or .wma file extension are likely to be treated as an illegal file by these players and cause spurious issues such as random power downs, buttons working intermittently or even players not switching on at all.

Converting CD to play on the MP3 player

I hear of many people trying to load CDs direct to the player and wonder why they don’t work. HELLO – it’s an MP3 player – NOT a CD player. Any CDs that you wish to play on this device require to be converted to MP3 format first. Thankfully “ripping” a CD is both straightforward and inexpensive (read FREE). My favourite piece of software is available as a free download from FREERIP . It can convert CDs to many formats including the standard MP3 format. This is selectable in the menu before the process commences. All CDs should be ripped to your hard drive first then, the resulting MP3 files should be transferred over to the MP3 player in the usual fashion.

Loading music on to the player

This is, perhaps the most fundamental thing you will have to do when you get your player or any player. Without music, there is no raison d’etre. Here lies the paradox – these devices are so simple to use but so many people struggle with them and I think that their simplicity is the reason for this. Basically, these wonderful MP3 players act like a flash drive or a USB memory stick, if you prefer, which means that, when it is plugged into your PC, it becomes an extension of the computers own storage. Transferring a file from the computer to the player is as simple as navigating to the source directory where the Mp3 file is stored (usually in My Documents/My Music) and copying it or dragging it into the destination directory – the MP3 player folder (typically this is given a unique physical drive letter by your PC, for example E: ). At this stage, the player is under complete control of your PC and you basically use standard windows commands to transfer files, make new folders (perhaps one for Jazz, Heavy Metal, Pop, Soul etc), rename tracks and general re-arrangement of the files on your player. Note – this is ALL done through your computer. The player does nothing at all and there are no instructions for this phase as all you need to know is how to operate a Windows based PC. As with normal files, you can choose to transfer one file, ten files or ALL files at the same time by holding the CTRL or SHIFT keys.
Never ever use software or any device other than your PC to load songs / videos to this player. All will want to “tag” the music to say it belongs to them or create a settings / playlist file and write it to the players root directory. As you will see from our troubleshooting section, this is an illegal file type and can cause all sorts of issues with the players firmware.
Screenshot showing source directory on the left and destination directory on the right with three simultaneous album transfers taking place is available at the end of this review. This is the ONLY way that files should be transferred.

FM Radio

This is where the picture gets fuzzy. Although the device has built in FM radio, it isn’t great! When I say it isn’t great, I mean it isn’t great unless you have a particualrly good reception in your area. These devices do not have an antenna so rely on the earphones to channel the signal to the radio itself. So, while the FM radio is generally very good outside, it offers little in the way of excitement when used indoors. To be fair to the manufacturers, most people already have a radio in the house and these devices are generally marketed as portable players anyway.

MP4 Video

This player supports the playing of videos in one of the two leading formats in the industry – AMV and AVI. Which one it is will depend on the manufacturer of your player as, strictly speaking, there is no single dominant format and either one may be the choice of an individual production factory. Both are excellent in terms of quality of compression and fluidity of playback on this device. If you have videos in any other MP4 format, you can easily download free software online to convert it to the format that the player requires. I say, download your own software because, generally the software supplied is cumbersome and, although it produces satisfactory results, its often accompanied by very poor instructions indeed.

Operating the player

Again, the Chinese have gone for universally recognised symbols on their buttons to control the functions of the player. These symbols for play, pause and skip forward and back have been on tape recorders from 30 years ago and exist on modern day remote controls for Sky / Cable TV boxes. Navigating the menus is a breeze once you realise that the “MENU” button and NOT the centre button are used to select an item in the on-screen menu. The centre button is usually used to bring up the volume control scale with the skip forward and back buttons adjusting the level. Be careful as holding the centre button down for too long is the method by which the player is locked and holding it down for 2 seconds is how to unlock it again. The “MENU” button is probably the most important button on the control wheel as this seems to perform more tasks than any other. It also holds the key to browsing through the directory of music folders. With an 8Gb player holding as much as 2,000 songs, there has to be a way of picking one near the end without having to “SKIP” through each one individually? Thankfully, by pressing the “MENU” button during playback of a song, you will be able to browse the root directory and all the folders within it and navigate to the block of files you wish to play (again pressing the “MENU” button to select the block before pressing “PLAY” otherwise, you will be transported back to the last point the player was at).

Quality

The materials used in the construction of the product seem to do the job admirably and, having had one of these at home for 12 months now, I can testify to the longevity with one proviso : Not all players that LOOK the same ARE the same. There are dozens of factories manufacturing these in China and, whilst there are many reputable companies producing excellent product, there are just as may producing sub-standard cheap TAT. There are stories on the internet of “hacked” players which are shown to have 4gb or more of memory but, in reality, only have 2GB. The connector that came with our sample was the standard 30 pin iPod dock connector and it seemed well made and even charged up my Apple products at home also, so compatability seems good. The earphones, probably let the side down here. The manufacturer has clearly produced this player at an exciting price point and the earphones seem to have been the first casualties of cost-cutting. They are not BAD but, only when you exchange them for a good pair, do you realise the full potential of this player’s sound capabilities. Something like the Creative Labs EP-30 which are available for only a few pounds online provide an excellent accompaniment to this player and is the biggest single thing you can do to improve these players, noticeably improving the bass and the frequency response.

What comes in the box ?

Well, a basic set of earphones – as already mentioned, they aren’t bad but are very easily improved upon for little outlay. A start-up guide which masquerades as an instruction book is included. There are two methods of connecting these devices to a computer or wall charger ; the standard mini-USB connection and the slightly more expensive 30 pin iPod dock connector. The latter, although it makes the player more expensive, is preferable as it allows your player to be used with aftermarket speakers and chargers that have the standard ipod dock connection. One of these two cables will be included with the player and many retailers will include an AC wall charger in case access to a computer is limited.

Troubleshooting problems

Like any modern, mass-produced device, there are going to be a certain number of acceptable faults. But, are they? Here, I have summarised some of the common complaints about the player :

Player won’t switch on – the most obvious reason for this is that the player requires to be charged. However, often the player can be in “SLEEP” mode and holding down the “PLAY” key will wake it from its slumber. Also, illegal file types cause the breakdown of the player’s firmware and can display this symptom. You may have inadvertantly synced the player with Windows Media Player for example which writes a file called WMP.info to the player’s root directory. Any software which writes settings files or playlist files to the root directory is likely to cause problems.

Computer doesn’t recognise player – If the computer doesn’t recognise the player, the first thought would be that there is a faulty cable or, worse, a faulty unit. However, illegal file types (as above)can cause this symptom also.

Files can be seen on the computer screen but NOT on the player – this is always due to an illegal file type. Is the music file extension MP3 or WMA? Is the video file an AMV or AVI file? If not, it won’t be recognised by the player and, even though you see it on your monitor when the device is plugged into your PC, the player won’t be able to identify it at all.

Player switches off randomly or during playback – if the battery is fully charged, this is again due to illegal file types messing with the firmware.

Buttons are not responsive – illegal file types. Very rarely is this caused by a mechanical malfunction of the control wheel.

Conclusion and scores

Overall, there are few better players for the money. Although Apple’s iPod nano scores higher in quality of construction and sound delivered, this device has it beat in almost every other area that matters. Where Apple scores is the support delivered with the product. The instructions with this product are poor at best where you get a well-produced booklet with the iPod and excellent technical support too. Some would argue that, by paying four times as much, you deserve to have that extra support and I would agree. Conversely, this player can be forgiven for skimping on the printing costs to keep the price point so low. There is also the arguement that this device needs little instruction given that, technically, it is so simple to operate. Getting people to realise this, however, is a different matter and, when the general public are used to dealing with more complicated means of loading and playback of music, it is easy to see why this device can be considered to be swimming against the tide.

Appearance 10/10
Build Quality 6/10
Ease of Use 7/10
Sound Quality 6/10
Value for Money 9/10