MP3 Player Review

	Enter your search terms Submit search form
	Web maiil-review.blogspot.com

SanDisk Sansa Fuze Preview

By: Grahm Skee on March 14, 2008 9:13 AM

SanDisk’s latest player the Sansa Fuze fits nicely in the family between the Clip and the View. How does the Fuze stack up? After just a few hours with the Fuze I can easily say that this is the best Sansa to date. The Sansa View was rushed to market and it shows in the details, but on the other hand you can tell that the Fuze got a lot more TLC.

The biggest improvement I have noticed is the snappier interface as you can see from the video below. The screen is also improved over the View and previous Sansas; it is more crisp and doesn’t suffer from that odd “shimmer” that e200 and the View had. Many of you have been curious to know if the sound quality is on par with great sounding Clip. So far I have been hard pressed to tell the difference on my Sennheiser HD650s (the Fuze does drive them to a comfortable listening level). However, I have only spend a few hours with it, so don’t hold me to it till the full review.

source : http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archives/2008/03/sandisk-sansa-fuze-preview.php

http://www.letsgodigital.org/images/artikelen/48/sandisk-sansa-fuze.jpg

Creative Zen Stone Plus Speaker Review

By: Andreas Ødegård on April 8, 2008 6:05 PM

• Quick Look
• Size: 35.7 x 55.6 x 17.5 mm
• Capacities: 2GB, 4GB
• Screen: 64x64 pixel Blue OLED Display
• Audio: MP3, WMA, AAC
• Battery: 20 hours audio

Accessories

Considering Creative left the price tag of the players untouched when they upgraded the features it's impressive to see that they also upgraded the included accessories free of charge. Beside the standard earbuds, USB cable, and instructions, there's a silicon skin and a removable clip for the skin. This is without doubt to put it closer to the Shuffle and Clip and considering the skins for the old models sold for $10-20 it's a very nice addition. The silicon skin is of good quality and fits the player well, with openings for both USB cable and the speaker.

Design

The design is basically the same as the old model, but with some improvements. The player is still as sturdy and well built as it's predecessor, but the glossy surface has been replaced with a matte finish everywhere but the front buttons. Considering how many finger prints and scratches the old model contracted, this is a welcomed change.

The bigger battery and speaker naturally take up some room, so the speaker model is considerably thicker than both it's predecessor and it's competitors. This gives somewhat of a bulky feeling, but the player is still incredibly small considering.

The buttons are the same as the old model, and that's fine seeing they are easy to push and logically placed. However this also means there is still no hold button, so you're still stuck to using the menus if you want to put the player on hold. The buttons don't easily press just from having the player in your pocket, but a hold button would still be preferable.

Transferring Media

The Stone Plus Speaker is MSC, which means it will work on any OS and mount as a removable drive. Music is added by simply copying files and folders onto the device, and you can use it as a storage disk for other files as well. The transfer is incredibly slow with about 1-2MB/s, meaning it will take a while to fill the entire player.

Software

The Creative Media Lite software is included with the Speaker version as it was with the old model, located in a folder called "starter pack" on the root of the player. The software isn't really necessary for normal use, and transferring content is much easier with drag and drop rather than installing a program to do it.

There are however some features that require the software. Volume limiting, transferring protected media and updating the firmware requires using Creative Media Lite. The program will also rip music, but with no quality control or options whatsoever it's a very crude method. It's recommended to use dedicated software for CD ripping, such as the free program EAC.

Interface

One of the biggest drawbacks of the previous Stone Plus was the laggy, hard to use interface. Unfortunately not all of this has been fixed in the new version. The menu is faster and doesn't have the up to 1 second lag that it's predecessor had, but it still isn't as fast as it should be. Moving up and down in the menu - and especially the folder browsing - causes noticeable lag.

The interface itself is the same as the old Stone Plus, with the exception of the now included speaker options. Most of the navigation is handled with the directional pad on the front, along with the center button which works both as select and to open menus.

The interface is everything but intuitive, and even after using the player for a while you'll end up pressing the wrong buttons. One particular annoyance for me is that I keep pressing the middle button to pause. This brings up the menu and to get back to music playback you either have to scroll through the menu to get to "cancel", or press the music icon in the menu - which brings you back to "now playing" but also pauses the music for some reason. The issue of scrolling to "cancel" every time you're in a menu and want to get out gets annoying and a dedicated home buttons like the Sansa Clip has would be a welcomed addition.

Last on the list of annoyances is the shortcut button. Creative didn't find room for a home button or a hold button, but somehow thought that a dedicated programmable shortcut button would be a good idea. The shortcut button can be tied to any of the modes (music, radio, clock etc) to quickly jump to one. This button was in my opinion totally pointless on the previous model of the Stone plus, as you don't switch modes so often that you can't just spend to extra seconds going through the menus. On the speaker model the shortcut button is more useful, as it can be used as an on/off button for the speaker. I would have preferred this to be on the options menu that pops up when you hold down the middle button for second, as the shortcut button is a little too easy to press accidentally.

Audio

Playback

Playback settings are pretty standard and straight forward. You have Repeat Track, Repeat Folder and Repeat All for repeat modes, along with Track Once for playing the song then stopping. Shuffle modes include Shuffle Repeat, Shuffle Once, and Shuffle Folder.

The shuffle modes work by making a shuffled playlist and then playing it, meaning that if you skip tracks you will get the same order of songs and not a newly shuffled one for each time. Some people prefer this, while others prefer randomizing the songs for each time you skip songs - like on the Sansa Clip.

In the playback menu you will also have the option to delete the currently playing song from the player. This works only with single songs at a time, and you cannot delete folders.

Music Browsing

This was one of the biggest annoyances of the previous model, and unfortunately it hasn't been changed with the Speaker model. Browsing music is strictly by folder, meaning you can't browse individual files other than skipping songs while playing. This of course also means there is no id3 browsing, so you can't browse by album/artist etc.

Folder browsing is accessed from the playback menu and only folders containing music is listed. All folders are listed in one list, so sub folders and main folders are treated alike. Folders that don't contain music aren't listed.

Why Creative did this in the first place is one thing, but a better question is why they didn't fix it in the new model - seeing this was such a drawback of the old model. Something as simple as a file browser - or lack there of - brings down the overall usability of the player substantially. Skipping track's isn't the fastest thing on any player, so with that as only method of getting to individual files you can give up having folders with many songs on the Stone Plus Speaker.

Sound Quality

Creative is known to have average to above average sound quality without ever reaching up to the best sounding players out there. This is also the case of the Zen Stone Plus Speaker.

The sound quality is good enough for most people using stock ear buds or cheap/mid level headphones, but won't do the trick for those who require absolute perfection. The sound stage is not as good as many other players and the less than stellar channel separation means that the sound lacks some detail and clarity. This is however something most people won't even be aware of, and without a direct comparison the sound quality is more than satisfactory.

The equalizer is another matter. It sounds hollow and especially the lower frequencies suffer from sounding muddy and bloated. Bad equalizers seem to be a trend with small players like this, as the Sansa Clip suffers from the same problem. Again the effect of this may vary with the headphones you are using and equalizer is better than no equalizer.

Speaker

The speaker is by far the most pleasant surprise with the new model. From seeing how small the Stone Plus Speaker is, it's natural to think the speaker is more of a gimmick than anything else. This is not the case. The speaker is surprisingly loud, enough so that it can be used in many situations. You can easily provide a small room with sound form the little thing and that opens up for using the thing in social situations. Wearing the player in a lanyard is also an option. Since the speaker can be turned on manually even with the headphones in, that means the radio can be played through the speakers. I imagine this would be a nice feature for older people who don't like headphones but would still like a piece of new technology.

Sound quality is what you can expect from a speaker this small. There is no bass whatsoever, but it's still not as bad as many cell phone speakers which sound awfully tinny. If you're looking for a player that will really double as a stereo system the Samsung S5 might be a better choice, but the sound is definitely enough for situations where the point is sound rather than sound quality.

With the speaker being as useful as it is, I'm disappointed Creative didn't make more of it. If they had included features such as an alarm clock and real audio book support with bookmarking etc, the player would have gotten so many new followers. I listened to a few radio casts with the speakers and for such use the speaker is excellent, if only it had supported bookmarks.

Features

FM Radio

The FM radio is pretty basic, and supports auto scan and presets along with manual search. The auto scan was pretty much useless where I live as the stations it saved were pretty much just static and not real channels. Manual search is better, and you should be able to pick up stations. The downside is that the receiver is very weak, and all channels i tuned into had noticeable static. Even the Cowon D2's FM receiver is stronger, and that is known to be weak as well. Sound quality of the radio was a pleasant surprise, as it sounded very nice compared to other players' tuners. This of course doesn't help much if you can't get decent reception, but if you do you can really enjoy it.

Voice Recording

The voice recorder of the old Stone Plus was very weak, and that is true also with that of the Stone Plus Speaker. That is particularly disappointing with the new version seeing that the speaker would make the voice recording feature more useful than on other players. After trying the recorder in a lecture however I found that there is no way it can be used with the speaker (or headphones for that matter) without first going through a volume boost, as the lecturer's voice was very low and difficult to hear even if he wasn't standing that far from the microphone.

Stop Watch

The stopwatch is meant as a nice addition for people who use the player for work outs. On the first Stone Plus the stop watch was totally useless while playing back music because it would lag and not react properly to button pressing, but luckily this has been fixed in the Stone Plus Speaker. Start and stop is handled by the play button, while resetting is done from the menu. A friend of mine who is a semi pro runner pointed out that there is no option for round times which means it's not a proper solution for everyone, but it's still nice to have around.

Conclusion

I had my hopes up when i heard that the Stone Plus was getting an upgrade, especially since I ruled against it in the Stone Plus vs Sansa Clip showdown. I was hoping that Creative would fix all the flaws in the previous model and really make the player a good alternative to the Clip, but unfortunately they did not.

First of all, the music browsing should have been fixed, and it wasn't. There is absolutely no excuse for this as it remains the single biggest flaw of the player. The interface is still sluggish, but at least not as bad as it used to be. I had hoped they would make the interface more user friendly, but instead it's just a faster version of the same interface.

The new matte finish is a nice change, and it really looks very nice. Even if the player is thicker that doesn't limit it in any way and the space is well used. The bigger battery gives the player 20 hours of music playback and that is really noticeable. Even with using the menu a lot and the speaker for tests and listening to radio casts, I got over 10 hours on a charge. The speaker drains a lot of power, so that isn't bad in any way.

The speaker is of course the biggest of the new features and it really isn't only a novelty. If you listen to radio casts or want a extremely portable way of playing music for your friends, by all means go for this player. Despite it's shortcomings, it has a lot of features, excellent battery life, a nice set of included accessories and a speaker that is useful. I would have liked more speaker related features, but i guess you can't get everything.

Pros

• Speaker is both loud and useful
• Excellent battery life
• Nice set of included accessories
• Lots of features for the price
• MSC

Cons

• Menus are still slow and awkward
• Weak radio reception
• Lacks more speaker related features
• Volume scale would be better with more steps
• Equalizer is poor

source : http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archives/2008/04/creative-zen-stone-plus-speaker-review.php

Cowon iAudio 7 Reviewer's Comments

A combination of great features, exceptional battery life and superior sound quality are what made us choose the Cowon iAudio 7 as the “TopTenREVIEWS Silver Award” winner in the flash mp3 category. It may not have come in first, but it is definitely a close second.

The iAudio 7 is a comprehensive package, with everything you need to play music and videos and display photographs. But it also includes a lot of other features that make it handy for listening to FM radio, reading text documents and recording. It comes in 4 or 8 GB versions that can hold thousands of songs and hours of movies.

The thing that really makes the iAudio 7 a great music player is the battery life: the manufacturer says that the little wonder can play audio continuously for 60 hours. While we know that the real battery life in mp3 players rarely lives up to the specs, even if the iAudio 7 only got 40 hours of playback it would still be far longer than any other player we reviewed. If the iAudio 7 had a bigger screen, better video playback and wasn’t so thick, it would have been number one.

Cowon iAudio 7 Screenshots. Click to Enlarge



Features:

The Cowon iAudio 7 isn’t skimpy on features. It includes an FM tuner and a voice recorder, but it’s also capable of recording from the radio or from another digital source, making it possible to get tunes from more than just an online store.

The iAudio 7 also includes a user-customizable EQ and has a respectable signal to noise ratio: 95 dB. In fact, it has some of the best audio quality of any of its competitors. Users can upload photos for viewing or use them to customize the screen background. The iAudio 7 is even capable of displaying text documents (.txt), making it possible to view documents on the run.

One of the best features of this player is that it is compatible with both Windows and Macintosh operating systems, which isn’t common in the world of flash MP3 players. And to top it all off, the iAudio 7 comes with all the little extras like clock, alarm, calendar and sleep timer functions.
Music Formats:

The Cowon iAudio 7 sports an impressive range of compatibility when it comes to playing music. Aside from the common formats, like MP3 and WMA (protected and unprotected), this player also supports OGG, FLAC, WAV and ASF. We believe the iAudio 7 actually has the best music compatibility of any player in this category.

Photo and Video Formats:
The supported video and picture formats on the Cowon iAudio 7 are much more standard. It only displays JPEG photos and MP4, AVI and XviD videos.
Physical Features:

This is the only category where the Cowon iAudio 7 seems to struggle. The iAudio 7 is extremely thick, at .7 inches it is the thickest flash MP3 player we reviewed . But the main drawback of the iAudio 7 is that the screen is so small, again the smallest in this category of players at a measly 1.3 inches. Not ideal for watching videos by any means. However, this player is so chunky partly because of its incredible battery life, rated at 60 hours for audio playback and 23 for video, though tests have shown that more realistic use results in about 45 to 50 hours of audio playback. And it’s unlikely that anybody will be watching that much video on such a small screen.

The iAudio 7 also has a unique interface called the Swing Touch. It is pretty useful and functional, but it has a bit of a learning curve so it might be frustrating at first.
Help/Support:
The Cowon iAudio 7 gets excellent marks in the tech support category because it offers a live chat option online. Customers can ask questions and troubleshoot problems with a real person through an instant message interface. The industry standards of email and phone support are still available, and the Cowon website also has manuals, FAQs, product details and troubleshooting guides.
Summary:
Despite the small screen size and the chunky profile, the Cowon iAudio 7 has an incredible battery life, impressive support and a wide range of features.

source : http://flash-mp3-player-review.toptenreviews.com/u3-review.html

Microsoft Zune Reviewer's Comments

The Microsoft Zune is a great concept that never really lived up to its promises. The second generation has fixed some of the old problems, like offering podcast support, wireless syncing with home computers and better PC software. However, in spite of the improvements it still doesn’t perform as well as the big boys in the flash MP3 crowd.

The Zune has a small screen, 1.8 inches, compared to many other players. The screen is still usable and looks good, though. The menu text is larger, so it’s easier to read, a nice touch because of the small screen size. The Zune does have built-in wireless technology that helps it sync with other Zunes and computers that are operating within a certain distance. And the music format compatibility is pretty good; it can only play protected music from the Zune Marketplace and isn’t compatible with Plays For Sure, but it can play unprotected AAC files. It doesn’t have much else besides that, though, which hurt its ranking considerably. Even though Microsoft offers the same help services that other companies do, somehow the tech support was dismal. It’s difficult to get responses through email and phone support send you in a circle of calling trees and human operators.

The Microsoft Zune is a good alternative to the iPod Nano, but it just doesn’t seem to live up to the standards set by many of the other flash MP3 players.

Microsoft Zune Product Details

CAPACITY

Zune 4GB: 4 gigabytes (GB) Up to 1,000 songs, or 25,000 pictures, or 12 hours of video.

Zune 8GB: 8 gigabytes (GB) Up to 2,000 songs, or 25,000 pictures, or 24 hours of video.

COLORS

Black, Green, Pink, Red

SIZE AND WEIGHT

Size: 41.4 mm x 91.5 mm x 8.5 mm (w x h x d)

Weight: 1.7 ounces (47 grams)

BATTERY

Music playback up to 24 hours (wireless off); video playback up to 4 hours

Charge Time: 3 hours; 2 hours to 90 percent

SCREEN

Size: 1.8-inch color display

Type: Scratch-resistant glass

Orientation: Vertical (music) and horizontal (pictures and videos)

Resolution: 320 pixels x 240 pixels

AUDIO SUPPORT

Windows Media® Audio Standard (WMA) (.wma): Up to 320 Kbps; constant bit rate (CBR) and variable bit rate (VBR) up to 48-kHz sample rate. WMA Pro 2-channel up to 384 Kbps; CBR and VBR up to 48-kHz

WMA Lossless

Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) (.mp4, .m4a, .m4b, .mov) - .m4a and .m4b files without FairPlay DRM up to 320 Kbps; CBR and VBR up to 48-kHz

MP3 (.mp3) – Up to 320 Kbps; CBR and VBR up to 48-kHz

PICTURE SUPPORT

JPEG – (.jpg)

VIDEO SUPPORT

Windows Media Video (WMV) (.wmv) – Main and Simple Profile, CBR or VBR, up to 3.0 Mbps peak video bit rate; 720 pixels x 480 pixels up to 30 frames per second (or 720 pixels x 576 pixels up to 25 frames per second). Zune software will transcode HD WMV files at device sync

MPEG-4 (MP4/M4V) (.mp4) Part 2 video[4] – Simple Profile up to 2.5 Mbps peak video bit rate; 720 pixels x 480 pixels up to 30 frames per second (or 720 pixels x 576 pixels up to 25 frames per second). Zune software will transcode HD MPEG-4 files at device sync

H.264 video[4] – Baseline Profile up to 2.5 Mbps peak video bit rate; 720 pixels x 480 pixels up to 30 frames per second (or 720 pixels x 576 pixels up to 25 frames per second). Zune software will transcode HD H.264 files at device sync

DVR-MS[5] – Zune software will transcode at time of sync

WIRELESS

Connectivity: 802.11b/g compatible

Range: Up to 30 feet

In range, see other Zune users, see their "now playing" status (when enabled on a given Zune), and send and receive songs and pictures

WIRELESS SYNC

Connectivity: 802.11b/g compatible

Authentication modes: Open, WEP, WPA, and WPA2

Encryption modes: WEP 64- and 128-bit, TKIP, and AES

FM RADIO

INCLUDED ACCESSORIES

Headphones

Zune Sync Cable

Three pairs of foam earpiece covers

PORTS

Connector port

Headphone jack / AV output

LANGUAGES

English

French

Spanish

Screenshots:

source : http://flash-mp3-player-review.toptenreviews.com/microsoft-zune-review.html

http://flash-mp3-player-review.toptenreviews.com/microsoft-zune-details.html

Sony Walkman Reviewer's Comments

The Sony Walkman is a great MP3 player with really good audio quality and crisp video playback. It comes in 2, 4 and 8GB capacities and supports several different types of audio files, including protected WMA files. Sony got rid of the old Sonic Stage software making the Walkman compatible with subscription services or playlist programs.

But the Sony Walkman didn’t rank very high on our list of flash MP3 players simply because it skimps on all the features that are common in other brands. The Walkman doesn’t have an FM tuner, voice or radio recording, expandable memory or the ability to act as an external hard drive. Basically, the only thing it does besides play songs is tell the time when most other players at least offer expandable memory, voice recording or Bluetooth to enhance usability.

The Sony Walkman is an excellent music player, but there are many other players that offer more for your money.

Sony Walkman Product Details

MP3 Player: Flash Memory

Display: backlit color 2.0" QVGA TFT display (240 x 320)

Equalizer: 5 Band: Heavy/Pop/Jazz/Unique/Custom 1/Custom 2 & Clear Bass

Formats Supported: MP3, WMA, AAC-LC, Linear PCM10

Frequency Response: 20 - 20,000Hz (when playing back data file, single signal measurement)

Headphone Output(s): 1 (stereo mini jack)

USB Port: 1 (22 pin to high-speed USB 2.0 connector6)

Battery Charging (Approx.): USB based charging; 3 hours (full charge), 1.5 hours (approx. 80%)

Battery Life (Approx.): Up to 33 Hours (Music: Approx. 33H7 Video: Approx. 8H8)

Output Power: 5+5mW

JPEG Playback: Normal/Slide Show/Slide Show Repeat Slide Show Interval(Short/Normal/Long) Compatible with DCF 2.0/Exif 2.2 file format4

Simulated Surround: VPT: Studio/Live/Club/Arena/Matrix/Karaoke

Video Format: MPEG 4, M4V

Playback Mode: Repeat (On/Off), Continuous Playback (On/Off)

Memory Size: 2GB/ 4GB/ 8GB (Built-in)

Operating System: Windows XP, SP2 or newer

Photo Playback

Clock

Accessories Supplied:

USB Cable (22 pin to USB)

MDR-EX082 Headphones and extension cord

CD-ROM with Windows Media Player 11 and MP3 Conversion Tools

Quick Start Guide

Adaptor Plate (for optional 22 pin cradle)

Screenshots:

source : http://flash-mp3-player-review.toptenreviews.com/core-hardware.html
http://flash-mp3-player-review.toptenreviews.com/core-review.html

diposting oleh maiil_absurd @ 21.31