MP3 Reviews

I like the Philips Wearable mp3 player. Its very small and lightweight. So lightweight that on my first use I kept checking to see if it was there. It comes with a neckstrap with controls built into it. It RECHARGES via USB and doesn't need batteries! I usually recharge it every night like my cell phone but I think it runs for at least 6 hours. The drag and drop interface in windows is fine. I haven't yet figured out the order that songs are played in, might have something to do with first song copied=last song played. It also comes with a battery pack for an AAA battery. The headphones also fit very comfortably in the ears and block out outside sounds to the point where its almost dangerous to wear it on the road. The sound quality is great.

The only drawbacks that I saw were the fact that its not upgradeable, but I knew that when I bought it.

Overall its a very nice product, very cool, cute, cool looking, no hassle and easy to use.

I did. Then I read another review that here that talked about its limited remote control functions, and I got worried. Fortunatly, the reviewer was way off base. The neck strap remote is unique and has volume control, skip, and scan modes. The unit does remember the last song played as well. There is a minimum amount of wires to fuss with because the ear phones are plugged into the top of the neck strap. I'm really happy with this MP3 player.

i got this mp3 player for my birthday and it rocks! i love it so much. and how cheap! i got it on sale! it doesnt skip ever or there is nothing ever rong with it. the only problem is that i dont like how there is no screen and all the controls are on the neck strap. but for the person that sayd it was really bad. its not. if its not playing, are you holding the play button down for 2 seconds? is it charged all the way? if your looking for a really good mp3 player at a really good price i recommend this one! trust me!

I like the Philips Wearable mp3 player. Its very small and lightweight. So lightweight that on my first use I kept checking to see if it was there. It comes with a neckstrap with controls built into it. It RECHARGES via USB and doesn't need batteries! I usually recharge it every night like my cell phone but I think it runs for at least 6 hours. The drag and drop interface in windows is fine. I haven't yet figured out the order that songs are played in, might have something to do with first song copied=last song played. It also comes with a battery pack for an AAA battery. The headphones also fit very comfortably in the ears and block out outside sounds to the point where its almost dangerous to wear it on the road. The sound quality is great.

The only drawbacks that I saw were the fact that its not upgradeable, but I knew that when I bought it.

Overall its a very nice product, very cool, cute, cool looking, no hassle and easy to use.

I did. Then I read another review that here that talked about its limited remote control functions, and I got worried. Fortunatly, the reviewer was way off base. The neck strap remote is unique and has volume control, skip, and scan modes. The unit does remember the last song played as well. There is a minimum amount of wires to fuss with because the ear phones are plugged into the top of the neck strap. I'm really happy with this MP3 player.

i got this mp3 player for my birthday and it rocks! i love it so much. and how cheap! i got it on sale! it doesnt skip ever or there is nothing ever rong with it. the only problem is that i dont like how there is no screen and all the controls are on the neck strap. but for the person that sayd it was really bad. its not. if its not playing, are you holding the play button down for 2 seconds? is it charged all the way? if your looking for a really good mp3 player at a really good price i recommend this one! trust me!

I like the Philips Wearable mp3 player. Its very small and lightweight. So lightweight that on my first use I kept checking to see if it was there. It comes with a neckstrap with controls built into it. It RECHARGES via USB and doesn't need batteries! I usually recharge it every night like my cell phone but I think it runs for at least 6 hours. The drag and drop interface in windows is fine. I haven't yet figured out the order that songs are played in, might have something to do with first song copied=last song played. It also comes with a battery pack for an AAA battery. The headphones also fit very comfortably in the ears and block out outside sounds to the point where its almost dangerous to wear it on the road. The sound quality is great.

The only drawbacks that I saw were the fact that its not upgradeable, but I knew that when I bought it.

Overall its a very nice product, very cool, cute, cool looking, no hassle and easy to use.

I did. Then I read another review that here that talked about its limited remote control functions, and I got worried. Fortunatly, the reviewer was way off base. The neck strap remote is unique and has volume control, skip, and scan modes. The unit does remember the last song played as well. There is a minimum amount of wires to fuss with because the ear phones are plugged into the top of the neck strap. I'm really happy with this MP3 player.

i got this mp3 player for my birthday and it rocks! i love it so much. and how cheap! i got it on sale! it doesnt skip ever or there is nothing ever rong with it. the only problem is that i dont like how there is no screen and all the controls are on the neck strap. but for the person that sayd it was really bad. its not. if its not playing, are you holding the play button down for 2 seconds? is it charged all the way? if your looking for a really good mp3 player at a really good price i recommend this one! trust me!

After about a year of owning these, they broke. The earphones fell off the headband, and were dangling there by a tiny cord. Originally I gave these a rating of a 5, but I feel that it is necessary to change that rating to a 3 now that they have broken. I have purchased a new pair of headphones from JVC which look sturdier, but don't have quite as strong of bass. Again, these have incredible sound, but you do have to be very careful with them. I didn't do anything really rough or unusual with them, they just fell apart.

these headphones are very nice with good sound and bass. its also extremely comfortable you can wear this for hours. worth every penny

Great product. I ordered it on Febuary 6th and got it the 12th. But beyond from fast free shipping the actual product is amazing. I'm hearing things in my CD that I haven't heard before. The trebble is increadibly strong. But the base is great I have a CD that goes into a really deep base and usually my speakers start to break up, and Ive blown 3 speakers listening to it. But with this pair of headphones it never breaks up even with the base boost in my machine. absolutly increadible.

First thing I notice when I first used it is that they provided 2 AAA batteries NIMH that last about 5-7 hours of play and you can charge with the wall adapter. You can purchase other NIMH batteries for a low price to have extra power when needed.

Sound: The Ear phones are awesome and the sound of the actual unit is better than average. With another earphone unit with extra base, you can feel the base rip trough your ear drums. I have couple of MP3 players that I own: Pine, Coby, and Jwin and to tell you the truth, the sound of the PM-1 surpasses these others in sound output. Also the 5 different sound options, rock, classical, pop, jazz, and normal give you the power to control the tone.

Play performance:
I use this unit for the gym where I move constantly and harshly. This unit is basically shock proof.(nothing is proof but this come close to it). The CD moves for about 12 seconds until the song is in its memory and will play from that. I have not received a jump since I bought it except when the battery is low. It reads into memory 8 miniutes of music to prevent the jump of music.

Other:
This has a nice clip on display panel where it shows the file name or the ID3 tag. The buttons are in perfect areas for easy reach. The only draw back is that the unit does not have an actual display panel and the clip on display pannel is the only place you can see the names. I guess who cares about that. I bought cheap 8cm CD-R and it work perfectly. Even in one cd that I had a burning error and did not finish the table of contents or TOC, the PM-1 was able still to read the cd-r. My other MP3 players did not even do that.

Not so hot about it:
Have to have a CD-RW to make CD's
no case
Hard plastic package.(This thing took me 5 minutes to open with a blade). Compaq next time put this thing inside a box!!!!
No FM(for $... what do you expect)

Conclusion:
For anyone who is looking for a real portable, super sounding MP3 unit with great features, this is the unit to buy. Unlike smart media card, multimedia card, minidisc, and Dataplay players, the 8cm cd-r is as cheap as regular cd-r's and you can even have many songs for fraction of the cost. We'll it even reads CD-RW so you can buy one for less than a dollar and re-record over and over. Since this unit surpasses many mp3 players, this unit is a fabulous deal for $... 1-25-02...

It's small, light weight, doesn't look cool. The player can charge the included two batteries. The included software is useless to me, as I have more advanced, highly appreciated streambox ripper 2.009 which can encode to the low limit of 8kBps and 8000Hz and high limit of 256Kbps and 44kHz from wav,mp3,ram!. The player can play mp3's of all the range above. The LCD can show file name, song title, and author name. I encoded 15 hours of music on a single CD. Of course they are 16Kbps and 50Kpbs.

The most important part should be sound quality. I have read from amazon reviews that there is buzz background noise, and I did hear it and annoyed by it, and even intended to return it. However I tried to use a cheapist headphone for no reason, and the noise is complete gone. Then I put the original headphone back, and I heard the noise again. So I decided that the headphone must have been cheaper than the cheapist. Before I had threw it away, I plugged it in my computer and listened some music. Supprisingly there was no noise at all, and the sound quality was much better than my cheapist headphone. So I decided to keep it for other use except to use it with the mini CD player.

My concludsion is that both the player and the headphone are of high quality, BUT they don't match!!! What a mistake compaq made!

My personal feeling about it is that it's relatively cheap for its functions---value(5); the sound quality is good except they shipped with a mismatched headphone---performance(4);there is no LCD display on the play, making it unconvienient when not using inline remote---ease of use(4); and the average is rounded to 4. But for the player alone, 5 star.

I got rid of a full sized CD-MP3 player for this and have never looked back. The sound is fantastic and the tracking is excellent. It is also easy on batteries when you forget to charge the two 'AAA' rechargeable that come with the unit. I travel a bunch and the iPAQ produced beautiful sounds on a flight from DC to LA and back on one set of batteries.

I like old radio shows. One disk will hold over 20 hours of radio shows.

Tip #1: Ditch the supplied headphones. They didn't fit and have a limited range. Plus they let in too much outside noise.

Tip #2: If you fly a lot, invest in a pair of noise canceling headphones. I have found that the AIWA or Jensen perform equal or better than the BOSE and cost only a fraction.

Tip #3: Since the software supplied is very pedestrian, replace it with almost any free downloaded ripper and even the CD cutter that came with your CD-RW drive.

Tip #4: Buy the 3.5" disks in bulk. They are much cheaper that way.

Tip #5: Label all of your tracks. There is no ability to go directly to a track or select the sequence that I have found that consistently works. "Next" and "Back" are about all you get.

Tip #6: If you use MUSICMATCH Jukebox do not perform volume leveling on your music before you cut the CD-Rs. For some reason this blocks the iPAQ's ability to read the title and artist data.

Since the player, control unit, and headphones all fit nicely in your briefcase, it is truly a portable unit. Need sound for a group, add a pair of good travel speakers and you are all set.

This is an awesome player for the price it comes! I just got it day-before yesterday! I had a choice between the iMP-150 and a Rio, but I decided I ould buy this as it came with more features at a lower price. The blue backlight, the erogonomic remote control with easy-to-use jog buttons, the colours(Bloac+Silver/Metallic Grey+Silver) just added to the features of the power-packed gadget. It has its own programming functions in which you can change a lot of data on the CD-R from within the player! The sound is crystal clear and the equalizers(you can make your own as well) are amazing. However the Bass Boost didn't make a lot of difference. The anti-skip stays to its word. However the songs are sorted according to filename(if you don't download the playlist as such, that is). The firmware upgrade, where you can upgrade features is the icing on the cake!

I have had this player for about 10 months now and I love it. I use it daily in my car and take it with me on business trips. Battery life is OK with regular CDs and excellent with MP3 CDs. One of the reasons I originally bought this instead of the Slim-X is because I can use AA sized NiMh rechargable batteries. I bring along my recharger and AA batteries for this and my digital camera. You can find a charger and batteries on sale for about $15 - $20 and up depending on the charging time. Although the lid may seem "flimsy", the player has held up well despite many plane and car trips. I take it everywhere.

The sound quality is great, I have yet to find a disc that it won't play and the remote works fine. I love the remote volume control and I use the remote fast forward and reverse for language tapes in the car. I bought my wife the IMP-350 and we both love that as well. It's really a question of how much money you want to spend versus the features.

I was looking for a disc MP3 player that could connect to my home stereo and give me quality sound. One that would play my high bit-rate music files and my old time radio mp3s. The Chromex player also plays regular and "home Burned" cds. In the month I've owned it it has worked perfectly. It was a little hard to understand the instructions. There are many functions and settings to familiarize yourself with. The manual seems like it was translated instead of being written by an English speaking tech writer. But you mastered the computer, you'll get this too. Want a great CD style MP3 player? Look no further.

I just picked up my IJ-100 today. I got It for a discounted price at a clearance sale.It was missing two Sandisk 16Meg MMC cards (that the box said to contain). The MMC card reader plugs into your printer & PS/2 ports, both plugs have passthrough connections to allow you to use your Printer & PS/2 Device as normal. The card reader installation paused up a couple times at first. After I installed The card reader it was assigned a drive letter, wich in my case "g: ", then I just dragged my mp3's to "g:/" .

When I put the songs on one at a time, everything was fine, but trying to put on a whole pile of mp3's at one time paused up my computer(I had to reformat my MMC Card & start over). The maximum card that the I-Jam can read is 32Meg. I had a 64Meg card that I used. I copied about 40Megs (or 14 songs) onto the card and put it into my I-Jam. I skipped through the tracks while playing & once it got to track 13 (out of 14) The LCD Displayed "Stop". So I guess it read up to 32megs on my 64meg card. Lame, but at least I don't have to go out & buy a new card .

The FM Tuner only picks up like three stations were I am, and it just so happens that's haw many stations you can preset into memory. When the reception is crumby moving the headphones around muffles the signal even worse.

The Mp3 player is fairly simple to use, There isn't much for bells & wistles though. It plays upto 160kb bitrate MP3, but with 32megs of storage your best to stick with 96 or 128kb MP3's. You can adjust bass & Treble, The regular Play, Stop, Skip, but no fast foward/reverse. Random play, Intro play, Repeat one/all, & A-B repeat are included funtions. There are only 9 butons & over 16 functions so holding a button for 3seconds is required to do some things. For example tapping the power button once activates the blue backlight on the screen, but holding power down for 3 sec. shuts the unit off.

Overall I am happy with what I paid for it. If it wasn't for the Shotty MMC card reader, & the limit of 32megs, this would be a decent player.

I bought this player last week.... Great deal! Softwares are tricky to install. Tried 3 times before I got them to work. Poor instructions that come with player. You have to go to their web site and download their instruction and FAQ before you know how to download music into the cards. No you cannot delete music in the player. You've to do it with the card reader that comes with the player which works nicely. I can only record 4 to 5 songs into one 16MB cards with medium compression. It would be better if they provide one 32MB card instead of two 16MB cards. The player produce quite nice sound and is close to CD quality. There is a by pass in the parellel cord for hook up to your printer so you don't have to plug and unplug to use the printer. With this low price I really cannot complaint too much. I think it is a very good deal.

This smalll handheld player provides me high quailities more than the price I paid. It came with Card-Reader which let me download files to MMC very fast, just drag and drop I will get my favorite song into small memmory card, very easy to install. Two of 16 Mbyte MMC cards are enough to store 30 minutes of CD quality songs that 's not too bad compared with its prize. Moreover, it has build-in FM stereo tuner that don't have in many others players. Don't have to think much to buy it.

I wanted just a CD player for some extensive lesson material in the new (to me) MP3 format. It was necessary that the player be able to stop and restart ("resume") within any location in that material. This unit would not do it. And the "technical data" info was lacking in this information. This unit still did an acceptable job in playing the data, music too, but not with the level of control that I needed.

Pros: Many features for the money (AM/FM, Plays CDs, MP3s, WMAs, etc). Displays the most information about the MP3 song on the 4x16 character display for a BoomBox I've seen advertised. With the remote it is easy to navigate and pick the songs you want. It appears you can make playlists using MultiAudio Track Lists.

Cons: Onboard buttons feel cheap and you have to steady the unit to push them without moving the unit backwards. Sounds poor without using the various equalizer options (I have to experiment for each environment - loud, soft, far, near, etc). The thump between songs is annoying when playing music softly. Seems to be sensitive to CD-R quality and skips when moved.

MP3 Tech: In File/Folder mode it displays the 1st 15 characters of the file/folder name to allow song selection. When playing a song it displays 32 characters (scrolling) of the filename and 16 characters each of Artist and Album from the ID3V1 tags. Never displays ID3V1 Title tag content just the filename without ".mp3". In "SmartTrax" mode it displays the information the MusicMatch software places in ".mau" playlist files for Artist, Title, Album, and Genre. ...

As a collector of Old time Radio shows in mp3 format, I am always looking for new products that will accomodate the 32kbps mono format that has become the standard for OTR. At that bitrate, we can fit 100+ 30 minute programs on a single CD. I am happy to report that this unit (RCD128) will indeed read and play 32kbps files with no problem. The acceptable range listed in the manual is 32-320 kbps. SOUND QUALITY is quite good for OTR considering the original recordings are not always that great to begin with. Voice reproduction is accurate and well-defined. Music lovers may find the bass thin, but this is a plus for OTR, allowing the actors dialog to come through clearly. For under $50, this is a good economical choice for OTR fans.

I was very apprehensive to buy this based on the reviews of this and similar streaming music products. However, I found it at a local store for $227 and decided to try it, figuring I could return it if necessary. I bought it Saturday and started trying to get it to work Sunday. It wasn't nearly as bad to set up as I imagined. I followed others advice and first connected it via Ethernet to get the latest firmware upgrade (it only took a minute to download and was effortless). The Wireless was a little tricky, but I did get the 128 WEP to work, but only after turning the system off and back on. The only other "issue" was my firewall, but I changed one setting as recommended on Phillips website and I was off and running. The sound is great and the connection is very fast, I can breeze through my 6000+ MP3 collection with no delay. The Internet radio sounds better than I was expecting. The only thing that would make this better is the capability to play WMA file types. Otherwise, I'm very pleased with the purchase and would highly recommend.

got this system couple of days ago. didn't have any problems with setting it up. have to note that for now i'm using wired setup with static ip. everything is working as described (except maybe for that internet clock, or at least i wasn't able to find how to set it up)

as was mentioned in one of the reviews here, they are using MusicMatch Jukebox as a software that allows you to play music files from you computer. but reviewer complained that it's an older version. i went to musicmatch.com got the latest version (8.2) and there is an option to run it as a server for philips streamium. not sure if this was present in the older versions, but my point is that you don't have to use their older version.

so far, i'm very pleased and excited about this product. the idea is great and can't complain much about implementaion. online updates/upgrades is a great feature.

the quality of sound for some online radio stations is not very good, but it has more to do with the stations themselves and not with this unit.

to sum up: for less then 300$ - you're getting a shelf system that does more then you could wish for.

This box is just great. Why didn't they make this
a couple of years ago?

Are you an internet radio fan? Are you sick of your
CD collection? If you answered yes, then you should
buy this.

The box connected up to my wired internet connection
(have not tried wireless yet) with no problem and
I could immediately access hundreds of stations on
live365.com. I had to bootup my computer in the past.
Now I can just do it on my 250 boombox. And listen to
hours of music. This has been the best product I have
bought in years (after my DVD player that i got 7 yrs ago).
I am really jazzed about it.

The product looks slick. The Woomx feature makes a
significant difference to the sound quality.

Also, when you play one of your CDs, it connects
up to the internet and downloads track information!

My only complaints are that it has only a single CD disk
player and doesn't have CD-RW capability (for making
your own MP3 compilations) and it is 100W output capacity.
Otherwise, I love this thing.

Dont ever buy this product. It comes with a packet of junk softwares. Take for example audio player. It can only play files which has a frequency of 44.1KHz and data rate of 96kbps to 128kbps. However there are some awesome products out there, but since sony doesnt provide their API, these products dont work for nz90.
Battery life is terrible. Even when your battery is %80 percent charged, you cannot use flash to take a picture. I think with fully charged battery you can only take 5 ( yes it is 5) pictures. Then your battery is totally gone.
There are so many negatives for this products that I can write 5 paged on that!!!!
Exteremely disappointed user of nz90.
Luckily I saved so many friends of mine to do the same mistake!!!

I finally made the plunge and bought the NZ90. After being a die-hard Palm user (starting from the Palm Professional,III,Vx,M505), I switched to the Sony Clie.

I truly enjoy playing with the NZ90. It has more functionality than the Palm M505. The camera and video features are amazing. The 2mb still camera produces decent quality pictures. One use I make with the camera is to take shots of documents from work. Now I can reveiw my work on my Clie without having to take home hard copies. The video function gives me the opportunity to film short clips on the fly of my baby boy. (I chose to defer purchase of a digital video camera and opted to use the video on the Clie.) The video quality is poor, but serves its purpose until my son begins to walk when I then plan on purchasing a digital camcorder. Also, I purchased the wireless card for the Clie. GREAT. I love this. You can check pop3 email and browse the internet without having to boot-up your laptop or computer. The easy power on/off of the pda makes it quick for me to check email as well as read the daily news.

2 negatives that needle me:
1) Batter life is poor, especially when using the still camera with flash. The flash drains the battery after 10 shots.
2) The size is a hurdle. Unlike the sleek m505 design, I have to carry the bulky NZ90.

I enjoy playing with my NZ90, emphasis on the "playing". As for practicality, I miss the m505 design as I daily use the address book, calendar, memo.

Ignore the mediocre reviews on Brighthand and ZDNET. I own this machine and it kicks serious butt.
Positives
1. The screen is by far the best on the market. Kicks Pocket PC butt and even CLIE earlier models.
2. Camera is awesome. You may say why do I need a camera all the time but believe me, if you have it you will take more spontaneous pictures.
3. Keyboard is much better than previous models.
4. Movies is also a plus..take some heat of the moment clips.
5. Bluetooth Hotsync is convienient. Link up with phone to check email.
6. Wi-Fi means you can surf anywhere

Negatives:

None- you may size but whats the size of carrying a camera and a PDA.

Having used the Sony Ericsson P800 Smartphone which was rubbish- bad operating system, bad voice clarity, useless camera

I'd rather use this machine and a bluetooth phone