MP3 Reviews

For another $50 you can get a mini-iPod. Don't waste your money on this for an mp3 player. It's butt-UGLY, software sucks and it's got the cheapest case. There is no style to it, and you could do a lot better for just a little more money with an Apple mini iPod where you can download your music off the iTunes store, and look cool to boot.

The look and feel of this product next to the iPod is just not even comparable, let alone the packaging and the black cable madness you have to deal with when you get the product out of the undestructible plastic case. The tiny lcd screen that you can hardly read what song you are playing is awful. The buttons to control the thing suck.

Do what I did and harvest the hard drive and use it in a good digital camera (like a Canon 10D, or 1D) and be done with it.

5***'s for the Hitachi removable compact flash drive though. Works great!

The four stars are strictly for the following:
-4Gb hard drive, which alone is a $300 item in bulk;
-WMA and MP3 playback;
-nice LCD interface;
-USB 2.0 speeds for really fast xfer rates;
-instantaneous recognition by WinXP/2k machines.

Those features above make this an outstanding player, and should make this a 5-star item. However:
-the enclosed headphones are earbuds, I don't like 'em;
-it isn't armored enough for decent shock-resistance (would like to see it rubber-skinned like its cousin the Rio Cali);
-no belt-loop holster or anything like an armband, so exercising with it might be a little challenging;
-FM headphone function is extra (boo!);
-controls are dexterity-building exercises in themselves.

This thing has an LCD screen, so why not use a thumb-wheel with pushbutton ability to handle on/off and playback? Granted, it has a four-way pad and a separate button which should be sufficient, but my banana-sized fingers keep jumping selections to "Menu" instead of scrolling left or right through the playlist.

Here's why this is so critical: this player can hold 500-1000 songs, depending on how dense the encoding is. Navigating through a straight list of 500 or 1000 songs takes awhile. Folders become paramount to organizing songs or artists, just so you can find something you like inside of a minute.

But does it play well? Does it do what it should? Oh yes, most definitely. And having a Li-On battery in it that recharges off the USB port is *exactly* what every player should have (if it used my Nokia 3650's battery I'd have given it the fifth star for the serendipitous convergence).

"Would I buy it again?" Sure, if I could find another one.
"Is it better than the Rio Cali?"

Hmmm... the Cali is definitely nice, armored with an armband I really like, better UI (LCD presents info much faster, is square and shows more at a glance), has FM built-in. But 4Gb makes up a lot of ground on 256Mb, even 768Mb if you pony up some cash for a 512Mb SD Card. Nah, the Muvo2 isn't perfect, but it's capacious, and sometimes that's more important.

Fred

Looks like this ended up being a verion 2 unit... too bad, very nice MP3 player though, but not the "original". For my purposes did not matter though. Great player!

I bought the Phillips AZ1155 because it could play MP3 CDs. It was a bonus that it came with a remote control.

The good points first. It has very good sound, can autotune and can be operated by remote control. Thats it. It plays CDs - so does everything else. However, It is supposed to be a MP3 player as well. It is useless. Unless I burn to CD-R at a speed of 16x or lower, I frequently have to unplug and re-plug it in before it will read them. It cannot read any of my CD-RWs, nor can it read any MP3 CDs burnt from Windows Media Player 9. My no-name (Star-media) DVD player has no trouble playing anything I through into it. I am so sick of it that I have given it away - only because I had been seen by a friend when I was throwing it into bulk rubbish. I feel really let down and as though I have been taken for a ride. I have always bought Phillips first. They were always well priced and good quality. allowing me to experience and enjoy until I could afford a top end bit of equipment. This has put me off Phillips products for life. Don't buy it.

There isn't many Boomboxes that even play MP3s (believe me, I've looked). This is the first that I've found that has the quality and features that you need with MP3 playback. It has Nice looks, decent sound, colorful back light, cute little remote, and most important of all it will play your hundreds of MP3s in a Random Order (which for some reason, is every Rare!). If you burn you own CDs than you probably know that you can get about 80 min of music on a regular CD (about 22 songs) and about 10 times that with MP3 format (about 13 hours and well over 200 songs). It not only lets you shuffle you songs but will recognize and let you select different folders of MP3s on you CD. So if you're looking for a nice CD/MP3 player in a Boombox with MP3 Shuffle...this is it!

Yes, there's no headphone jack. Yes, the remote only shuts the unit off, and cannot turn it on. Yes, a real equalizer would be nice. Yes, a "Surround" function would be cool too. BUT -- the bass boost, the remote, and the fact that this baby reads all my MP3 discs (even dirty / scratched ones) without a single skip, and sounds great, makes this product a winner in my book. My discs have MP3's varying from 128-320 Kbps and VBR -- all play with no problems. The sound quality is quite good, (I did not notice any "tinny" sound or anything, mine sounds pretty full and "warm" to me) but there is some room for improvement. There is some mild hiss from the amp once you've got the volume up more than halfway, but you probably won't even notice it if you're sitting across the room. Mine is in my living room so I can listen to nice quiet tunes while I read or visit with friends -- it's totally cool to have that many tunes at your fingertip with this MP3 boombox. The shuffle and repeat functions all work very well, and are all accessible from the remote. The AM/FM tuner pulls in stations that my Sony home system can't, and they sound quite good. Nearly every function is available through the remote (you can't program the radio; and as mentioned elsewhere, you can't turn the unit ON with the remote.) There are other units out there with these features, but none sounded as good to me (I listened to several RCA units, then this one), or had the features that this one does; or if they did, the cost was twice as much or more. If you need a headphone jack, you should probably be looking at RioVolt or something more appropriate. This is also not a home stereo replacement. Realizing these things, and for the price, this little boombox puts out good sound that everyone in the room will enjoy, and gets the job done well! Good job, Philips...

I am a former owner of the original T|T. After a little over a year of T|T use, the power button became much less responsive. After several calls to PalmOne's customer service and speaking to several nice Indian folks (Note: PalmOne customer service is obviously outsourced overseas), I was told that it would be $125 to have the unit repaired. This was too much to invest in old hardware. I enjoyed the small form factor of that device so much, I decided to buy a T2 (depite PalmOne's abysmal customer service).

The appeal of the screen has been mentioned several times. I would agree tremendously! I thought the original screen was pretty good. However, the 320x320 display on this unit makes the original T|T look like someone put window tint on it. I also enjoyed the extra internal memory. The subtle changes with the Palm OS were nice too: like hitting the 5 way button to the right when in your address book to look a name up and the color themes.

One aspect that I just could not bring myselft to do was to adopt Graffiti 2. I have used the original Graffiti for so long that using anything else is heresy. For those that are like me, simply grab your old handheld with Graffiti 1 and get a file manager program. Search the ROM for the following two files: Graffiti Library.prc, and Graffiti Library_enUS.prc. Now beam them to your new handheld. Do a Soft Reset on your new handheld and PRESTO, you now have Graffiti 1 again.

If I had any advice, it would be to buy PalmOne products with a credit card that doubles the manufacture's warranty because their customer service is terrible and they will deny warranty service if your handheld is 1yr and 1day old.

Having owned the original Tungsten T for just over a month, I have to say that the original is a great Palm device. Compact, quick and very useful. The Tungsten T2 primarily refines the great features already present on the original T.

So why buy? Why upgrade? If you are a casual user of a Palm that primarily uses the device for occassional reference, stick with the original T. There is some great pricing available right now. But if you use your Palm frequently, the screen and additional memory are worth the upgrade.

The original screen is fine, and until I compared the two devices side by side, I was completely content with it, but a transflective screen is a lot easier to look at for quick glances or extended work sessions. It requires less time to focus on the information you need and while it is completely subjective, I find that has value for me.

If you like to read, ebooks on this device are absolutely incredible, and totally accessible while the device is in closed position.

The additional memory means you won't have to spend any valuable time trying to shoehorn even more programs into the 16mb memory space. 16 megs is plenty, but 32 megs is better.

There are more refinements, all the Tungsten patches are now incorporated into the OS upgrade, the graffiti input has been upgraded to Graffiti 2, which should be easier for new users. But there are text input utilities to customize character recognition anyway you want.

Hunt for a good bargain and jump in. An additional Tungsten model (the T3) will be available before Christmas with some nice specs reported, but when a Palm is this good, there is no compelling reason to wait. This device will still have a good resale value if you can't resist the new model. Something that can't be said for the original T with it's reflective screen.

My 1 month old orignal Tungsten T? My co-worker was still using a M100, I don't think he'll be disappointed with the replacement.

Somebody's got to test these new units.

I absolubtely love my Tungsten T2. I've had no problems and, unlike a reviewer below, I've never had a 'fatal error' or had to do a hard restart and lose any data. I'v also never run out of batteries or had any other sort annoyance. This is just an all around great palm, and makes life a heck of a lot more organized. Two great uses: 1. I cook a lot and when I find a recipe I want to ty online, I just immediately type in the ingredients onto my desktop software's to do list, do a hotsync, and go to the grocery store w/ everything on a neat checklist. 2. I also travel a lot. When I am preparing for a trip, I can search for restaurant reviews, store locations, museum exhibit details, and then just copy them and paste them onto my memo pad on my desktop software, hotsync, and then I have full articles and reviews at my fingertips. Those are some awesome bonuses to an already highly useful little device.

I purchased the mc3 as a Christmas present for my 12 year old daughter. It didn't take her long to get the hang of taking pictures or video and she had a lot of fun doing so. Downloading them to our PC (uses Windows XP) was pretty easy. But I do have a few complaints so far. The first is that the mc3 is now shutting itself off even though it says the batteries are OK. A change of batteries may remedy this. The biggest complaint is that we cannot download mp3 files to the mc3. The users guide is really poor with regard to this. And the fact that it is on CD makes it hard to flip back & forth. Kodak's website says to look at the users guide (big help!) The guide says to use Real Jukebox(included) to download but Real Jukebox doesn't offer the mc3 as a storage device. Very frustrating!! Somebody more familiar with mp3's may know what to do but the mc3 is supposed to be a toy, not a job. My last complaint makes me wonder how much thought went into the design and did Kodak even try it out. You cannot close the flash card door - it causes the card to pop out of the connector!! 9/25/02 Just found out from a friend that you need to push the lever up to get it out of the way so you can close the door. He found out by accident. How hard would it have been for Kodak to let me know? BTW, anyone else notice how badly AMC has gone downhill lately?

The emphasis here is that the MC3 is a toy - it's a lot of fun to play with, but it's not the sort of tool to use if you're planning on doing any serious publishing (online or on paper) or video work.

That said, this camera is fine for taking lots of fair quality VGA-resolution photos for e-mailing or sticking on your webpage (for what it's worth, the photo quality is notably better than other bottom-of-the-line dedicated digital cameras). The quality of the videos is at least comparable (if not slightly better) than the first generation Sony Cybershot cameras, although the MC3 doesn't limit the length of the video clips to 15 seconds like the Sony (a definite plus). The MP3 player component seems to handle various CBR-encoded MP3 files (I've tried 64, 128, 160, and 192Kbps with success), although it doesn't seem to support WMA. Finally, the USB cable allows for surprisingly fast file transfer, slightly slower than a dedicated card reader.

For $200 (which is how much this camera costs if you supply your own CF card), the MC3 is a fine gadget. If you want a good digital camera, video camera, or digital music player, you'll probably have to resort to getting three separate devices.

I have had this for over 2 years now and I still love it. The camera part is great fun, though low resolution is noticable in prints, prints look good. I upgraded to a 128 mb card which holds about 1.5 hours of music or 900 photos or 45 minutes of video. The best thing about this is it's TOUGH. I have dropped it numerous times, it has gone flying off of my desk. Sometimes the card pops out and the batteries always scatter, but it is always fine. It works just like the day I got it. Although there is one thing that I did not like. When Realplayer updated Jukebox, they did not upgrade the drivers for MC3. I eventually was not able to transfer files to the unit, so I bought a CF card reader. It works amazingly fast and lets me transfer my files through Windows Media Player. It now works like a charm, I would recommend this for anyone who uses Windows XP. If you can get a card reader, don't install the included software!

I thought that this is a great MP3 player. I went to a media store, knowing that it was small, but when I first saw it, it amazed me. It was really tiny. Once I got home, I downloaded the software onto my computer, and started downloading songs on it. It has worked great ever since. The batteries last long, up to 15 hours. The software was easy to use. The only problems I had with it were that it didn't have very much memory, I couldn't pause, and some of the songs would't go onto it. I wish it either had more memory, or it had an expansion slot. When I stopped it, it turned off unlike a CD player. The worst problem was trying to download some of the songs. When I tried from My Computer, the songs wouldn't play. I found that I could use Windows Media Player. The songs played and most of the songs took up less memory than they should have. I would recomend this MP3 player to anyone who wants something small and easy.

I bought this item used, and it didn't include the software... so the first thing I did was download the software free from the samsung website, which is way better than what comes in the box (my roommate has the same model). The headphones that came with it aren't good, but I have some cool back-band headphones from philips. A really cool thing is that this player can play variable bit rate MP3s, so I've got 28 full songs on my 64MB model, and it sounds the same as 96K mp3s. Battery life is good on alkalines, alright on the NiMHs that I use with my PDA. Oh yeah, it is very customizable, Samsung has a program you can download to make your own (even animated) logo to replace the YEPP logo that shows when you turn it on. Also it has a feature that is a necessity for me, Shuffle play, I can't stand hearing music in order, and it also can show the time remaining on songs, which is pretty cool. So the player is about as customizable (if not more so) than a full-size music player. Incredibly light (1-2 Oz.) and a little larger than a Zippo lighter. Which is pretty amazing!

This little thing is truly amazing ! As I read through all the reviews of users having problems, I can not help but wonder, if they might lack a bit of technical expertise. First of all, I have used this player on both, a Mac and a PC and if you handle the unit as you should any USB device, there are no hang-ups or any other technical issues. Never just disconnect a USB device from your PC or Mac or you are just asking for trouble (and that has nothing to do with the Yepp). Samsung has released a software addition for iTunes and if you are using a Mac, this unit fully integrates into this application and makes managing your mp3s on the Yepp a breeze ! The sound quality is outstanding and the unit is so small and light, it is no problem taking it with you anywhere you want to go. The perfect little companion if you are a runner or if you just want to take some of your music with you.

I purchased the Koss QZ-5 Headphones.
THESE ARE NOT ACTIVE NOISE CANCELLING HEADPHONES!!!
I was duped. I believed these were active noise cancelling headphones, but they reduce noise by adding a ton of padding. These headphones are HUGE. The picture displayed is very decieving, only showing you the profile of the headphones. If you wear it and look in a mirror, you will look like a geeky mickey mouse. They stick out of the sides of your head making you look like a weirdo.

In addition to that, the sound quality is extremely poor. At the moment I am listening to the Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack, and any bass makes the headphones crackle. Bass performance is absolutely poor. Do not get these headphones, they are a waste of money. Do not get these headphones!

The Koss QZ-99 is a very nice product, for certain things. I would never recommend this type of product, without knowing the context. I use it for listening to books on tape, on the street or in a gym, on an old portable tape player. Since I am just listening to narration, I care much more about outside sound being blocked out than I care about sound quality. If you use Bose headphones in this context, you are going to get much better sound, but that is a drawback: you will hear the crackles and rattles and pops on the your 8 year old Walkman and the 5 year old library book-on-tape. Noise reducing headphones can be too good. If I were listening to classical music on a CD player, in an airplane, a higher quality, and/or active noise reducing product would be better. But for my situation the Koss is very nice. I did not realize, until recently, that I could swivel the ear pads as well a lengthen and shorten the band between the pads. It works very well.

Overall I enjoy these headphones. I love the way the look and feel, the weight of them and the comfort factor. I have only a few complaints; One, they are not as sound proof as I was hoping they would be. Random noises still manage to creep in and disturb the your listening. Two, Although they don't hurt at all to wear for long periods of time, if by chance, someone knocks on the ear piece your in for a world of hurt my friend. Three, I bought a [less expensive] pair of headphones for [a few] dollars and noticed the bass and treble are slightly better than in the KOSS pair. At times I wondered if too much bass would blow them out or if they were really designed for music at all.

I'm not saying KOSS isn't a great headphone maker, but if your looking for something soundproof avoid these headphones. If your looking to block out ambient noise and the majority of sounds then these are definitley yours all the way. Very comfortable and well made, KOSS is an amazing company I was looking for total soundproof protection though. In the end I kept them and still use them for my music. I very much enjoyed this product and highly recommend it to anyone out there.

Once upon a time, a boy bought a Nomad II MG player and he was rightly happy. He had just obtained a piece of technology that would hopefully give him countless hours of crystal clear music and many excellent features.

Then one day things started to go wrong...

After purchasing the docking station to accompany this cool MP3 player (which took several weeks to order in as the boy lived in the Middle East where it wasn't in stock) he quickly took it home to try it out. It didn't work. So he took it back to the shop where, thus was the staff's confidence in the product, they proceeded to plug it into every power outlet available (into which their own devices were plugged and working perfectly) to ensure that it wasn't the fault of the socket - alas to no avail.

Finally they conceded there was a problem so the docking station COMPLETE WITH THE PLAYER had to be sent to Singapore for a 3 month warranty draining vacation during which the boy had no use of the player.
It came back apparently working fine.
A while later the unfortunate boy noticed some annoying background noise during operation and so the player had to be handed in for repair again. This time they managed to fix it without sending it to Singapore and for that the boy was grateful.

HOWEVER

Not long after THAT the docking station again stopped functioning correctly and the boy was informed that it would again have to be sent to Singapore this time at his own expense!

---

I have written to Creative America, Asia and Europe and the management here in Dubai. NOTHING positive or helpful has been done. During the player's globetrotting I had no use of it and whilst it was working I NEVER used it in any strenuous situation. It was never mistreated and yet it still broke. How can this be called, "Music on the Go"? I propose a change to the more honest, "Fuzzy noise on the Go" as anything else is basically false advertising.

Yes the warranty has expired but only because it spent three months of its warranty period in Singapore. I have not been shown any kind of empathy and I recommend that people rethink before purchasing. Companies like IRiver offer SUPERB MP3 players (Several of my friends have purchased them).
I do not expect to pay the kind of money I paid and be told that I'll have to dish out more money in order to get it fixed. If Creative had their way, my MP3 player would soon rack up more air miles than I have.
On principle I'd rather throw it away and buy a new device from another company even if it cost more than the proposed repairs.

Though this is only one person's tale of woe, my point is this:

With a big company like Creative, some products will inevitably have problems. Some customers such as myself may even be unfortunate enough to experience several problems. I can deal with that. What I can't deal with is the complete lack of customer care and the non-existent technical support I have been offered. Creative America and Europe wrote back immediately saying I was not under their jurisdiction. Creative Asia have not written back 3 weeks down the line.

They like to waste your time at Creative.

HIT THE BACK BUTTON AND BUY SOMETHING ELSE!

My first portable MP3 and I am not disappointed. Positives: sounds great, small, lightweight, reasonably well-made, built-in memory, fast downloads, docking station with rechargeable batteries. Negatives: FM radio weak (does not compare to Sony FM Sports Walkman). Docking station quirky - lacks the reassuring 'click' a la Palm Pilot. Creative software awful - grab MS Windows Media Player instead (but to use it, you'll need the firmware update available on Creative's web page). Plan on replacing the headphones (unless you like being uncomfortable). And in general, requires careful handling (cannot take abuse like a sports walkman... forget about taking it out in the rain). In-line remote would have been nice. Arm or belt clip even nicer. But trust me, if you like to exercise to music you'll never go back!

I was looking forward to the blue product and paid for expedited shipping, but was informed by the seller that only silver was available until the middle of next week. I would be cautious about this seller because inventory needs to be more accurate.

This cd-player is ok, it has live, bass and regular sound, but the volume cant go so loud. I would recomend a iriver mp3 player or a sony cd player.

Panasonic has done it again with another great product. This MP3/CD player is a great one. It has a cool look to it and fits nice in my hands. It is also really light. The LCD is amazing, it is big and writes everything clearly. The MP3 playback is a great feature, you can catagorize your MP3's into different albums, and this player will play them all very well with no problem. You can search through your songs really easily. This player is really easy to use. I haven't tried it long enough to see whether it really plays 48 hours of music as its battery life, but if thats true, thats awesome.

Pros:
Cool Look
ID3 tag is clear
Easy to use
Battery life
MADE IN JAPAN

Cons:
cheap headphones come with it
can't search druing MP3 playback

For a nicely designed CD/MP3 player look no further than the Panasonic SL-MP70. Its design is award-winning, and there are a lot of things you can play on this thin player. Head phones are basic stereo type but better than most included head phones from other companies. If only they made the packaging better and more environment friendly, i'd give them 10 stars!

As my title states, this thing REALLY sucks. I tried every channel, and pressed scan..and everything..and it wouldn't lock on to the signal. Even when it was 5 feet away in the same room. The only thing it would pick up was a bunch of junk, and other peoples phone conversations.

And what did come through was all distorted...

Summary: NEVER buy this...in fact..call up US Robotics and ask them why they made such a horrible product. I bought this because i've had good experiences with USR before....oh well.
Piece of junk.

I recently decided to convert my 300+ CDs to Windows Media format files so I could play them at work through my headphones. As I was recording them at home, I thought about how nice it would be if I could play my music through my home stereo. I then came across this product, which pretty much does the trick.

It comes with two receiver type things that look like fat walkie-talkies. One of them plugs into your computer's audio-out jack. It also has an audio out jack so you can plug your existing computer speakers into it, which is nice. The other receiver goes next to your stereo receiver. You can then either plug it in using patch cords to an audio-in on your receiver, or tune your receiver to 88.1 or 88.3 and flip a switch to broadcast through FM. I personally, for some reason, get better sound in FM mode than through a direct connection, which I can't figure out. I would've thought it would've been the other way around.

I have found that I have to switch the radio station it transmits on periodically for some reason. I have also found that when I first turn it on, sometimes the receivers have a hard time getting in sync with one another, so I just leave them on all the time.

You have to adjust the volume knob on the receiver near your computer. If you have it too high, you will get distortion. Since these music files seem to record at different levels based on the source CD, I just leave it at a middle setting and use the volume on my receiver to make any necessary volume adjustments.

I also am not thrilled that both receivers need to be plugged in. You can use batteries, but since it is all but necessary to leave them on all the time, batteries would be a waste. And they are those stupid big fat plugs that take up valuable space on your power strips. But what can you do. I guess this is the cost of listening to music from your computer.

In summary, I think this audio system does well, and I would recommend it to others.

I bought the usr 6003 ..., a bargain, and it works very well. The sound is good (FM quality) and the level of noise quite low (in fact lower than that of my sound card and FM radio). You probably won't notice any difference when listening to internet radios. Best results are obtained by carefully adjusting the volume of the audio source just below saturation and fine tuning the FM radio (88.1 or 88.3 MHz are not accurate values). A very good buy.

I've had my Yepp for about a year now, and the headphone jack is just about worn out (you have to constantly manipulate the headphones to make it sound normal) and the battery case needs to be held on with a rubber band because an important piece of plastic snapped off. I don't know if this reflects on product quality or my treatment of it, but either way, it's no good.
Transfer times are painfully slow, and even worse when transferring to the Smart Media card (which you must buy separately, I paid about 100 bucks for mine). The Yepp comes with a version of RealJukebox you can't get anywhere else, and mine is constantly crashing and needing to be re-installed. Searching through tracks can be tedious, especially when you've got two hours of music to go through. On the upside, battery life isn't too bad, and the Yepp is very compact, lightweight and portable. But it's expensive, and for [a little more] more, you can get an MP3 player with a capacity in gigabytes, not megabytes.

THIS MP3 PLAYER IS NOT REALLY THAT BAD. ALTHOUGH THE DOWNLOADS ARE PRETTY SLOW AND GRUELING.

MY BEEF? HERE IT IS... I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW THE GOOFBALL WHO DESIGNED THE BATTER DOOR THAT KEEPS THE BATTERY IN PLACE. TOTALLY BAD CONCEPT AND DESIGN. FUNNY THING IS, THEY GIVE YOU AN EXTRA BATTER DOOR BUT THIS IS NOT WHERE THE PROBLEM OCCURS.
THE SMALL "TOOTH" THAT THE BATTER DOOR CLOSED ONTO, BROKE OFF AND A NEW DOOR MEANS NOTHING WITHOUT THAT SMALL "TOOTH" TO CLING TO. I REALLY DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO... I FEEL LIKE I HAVE WASTED A LOT OF MONEY HERE!...

I've had my Yepp for a few months now, and I've found it to be wonderful, overall. It has good sound quality, it's small and light to the point you can have it in your pocket while jogging and not be annoyed by it, and it's got a sleek design. There are a few points where the Yepp could use some improvement, however. First, it's too dependant on the remote control: the shuffle and repeate functions, the battery life indicator, and the song indicator are all on the remote, the only display on the player itself is a green or red LED. That's not a problem if you plan to use the remote a lot, but for me it's just one more thing to carry. Second, it takes a lot of power to record files onto the player. If you plan on adding and removing songs often, plan to buy a lot of batteries. Additionally, be aware that you can't insert new songs between old songs in the memory card. Finally, the player doesn't have upgradeable firmware. There's a new file format that ought to be out this fall sometime that'll have files half the size of current MP3s, and this player won't be able to play them. Sure, you can get a converter if you want, but it'd be better to get an upgradeable player that'll be able to hold twice the music in a few months. Still, overall, it's a great player and I'm glad I bought mine. You could do far worse than the Yepp.