MP3 Reviews

I've had nothing but problems with my minijam. First it wouldn't work when I put it in my Visor. It's supposed to just power up but it wouldn't. When it finally did, I encountered one problem after another. Numerous times I've had to reset my visor, Re-install the palm desktop software, reformat the MM Card because all the songs mysteriously disappear and the card is suddenly unformatted, and I've had plenty of fatal errors which required re-booting my computer. The customer support is okay but now I'm supposed to pay shipping charges to send back the faulty product to Innogear. So if you do buy it don't purchase it directly from them! When it works it's fantastic but overall it's a major disappointment.

The concept is great...the end result leaves a lot to be desired. For starters there is no installation info. Insert the disk and print out the Adobe instructions...CHEAP! Easy to install but you have to disable Hotsync on some...which was mine and it's only a year old. Then I would insert it in the back and it would play but when I set it down and I don't mean drop...set it down it would reset everything and give me a fatal error and reset my palm. Then I would have to turn my hotsync back on, sync up and try again. As for online help it's ok but nothing special. I don't recommend this product. If it's not built in already...don't add it.

OK, at the beginning you don't receive many clear instructions about how to handle your mini jam; some problems to realize how it's the better way to use it, but finally when you get through you got a very cool little tool which is much fun than others (and comparatively much cheaper too -you don't use any battery at all!)The only handicap: it takes you about 30 minutes to load your music on it.

when i first gt my rio i thought i was able to put as much song as i can. and im a snowboarder so i was going to bring it with me next time i go bt then i found out that it isnt worth it because i want albe to pt alot of songs on it. ive been lookin on the internet ad found that i can upgrade by buying a memory backpack or whatevr it is but the only hard prt is where am i supposed to find these so called memory backpacks it seems to me they dont even exist ive been having the hardest time trying to find them. ...

hello,is there anyone know how to update the rio 600 player that could play the files with .rm?

If you're like me, half the fun of having electronic gadgets is showing them off--and being just a *little* different from the crowd. That's why I dropped the guts of my Palm IIIxe into a clear blue plastic case, and that's why I bought this simple but stylish set of color faceplates for my Rio 600.

Easy to change with a quick snap-on/snap-off, these three faceplaces (teal, white, and pink) give your 600 a dramatically different look. No, of course they don't make your player sound better or work better, but they *do* make it look cool, and face it, isn't at least *part* of the reason you got the Rio 600 is that it's stylish and sleek? You can even spray-paint them if you don't like the colors.

(Now, if only Apple would design iMacs on which you could instantly change the color of the case...)

I have owned my Ipod for 18 months. It is the fantastic, but I am now on my 3rd remote which is not so fantastic. No matter how careful I am about twisting the wires,it seems that after a period of time they loose connection with the Ipod. I also do not like the fact that Apple bundles the earphones with the remote. I am forced to buy new earphones just to get the remote.

A decent pair of headphones that at least matches (in Apple white) the iPod's color(less) scheme. However if looks are not your primary consideration in choosing headphones for your iPod, you should probably look elsewhere. The cord is way too long and the remote (though nifty) adds even more length, sound quality is only average for the price.

I bought this about 2 months after I bought my 10GB iPod. I thought it would be nice, but nothing big. I was wrong. It totaly changed my iPod experience. You don't know how much the ability to play/pause, skip/repeat songs, and adjust the volume without having to touch your iPod is really like until you try it. Of the three main accesories, the dock, wired remote, and carryeng case, this is the best one by far. If you own an iPod that doesn't already come with this than add this to your cart right away. You wont regret it!

save your money and don't buy this piece of ...soft ware doesn't work under xp mmc is not recognized by player total disaster

This product is just alright. It is not too good or too bad, it is just there. But I must warn you that if you do buy it you should have some knowledge on mp3 players because the instructions could be better, and you should get another set of headphones to go with it because the ones they give you are'nt good. Unless you only want to have a few songs at a time, dont get this.

I bought this because it was ... on sale. Software loaded easily. I'm not sure why people are complaining about the loudness because it's quite good at a 50 rating for me and I mainly use it when I'm driving a convertible with a lot of wind noise. It eats batteries but no worse than my CD player. It's pretty much what I expected for the price. Oh, get a memory card. 16 meg just isn't enough for any serious listening. ...

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The Philips EXP313 is one of the latest MP3 CD players available today from Philips, and appears to be an upgraded version of their prior 301/303 models from a few years back, models which didn't have ID3 text display but only numerical track/folder display.

...

Although the added ID3 tag support is appreciated, the problems introduced in this latest EXP313 model makes it less friendly than the prior 301/303 models - such as complete hangups when the car ignition is turned off when used with the DC adapter, inability to FF/RW to the next/prior song when the end of the current song is reached, title scrolling on the LCD panel stops after 3 rounds, display settings don't stick, etc.

Here's one time where I would say the EXP301/303 series is the better buy. Less annoying even though it only has numerical track/folder display. Keep in mind the latest MP3 CD Portables from Sony and Panasonic are worth investigating - they'll probably be better, and they all have ID3 tag displays.

Philips Expanium EXP313
-------------------------------------
+ Takes everything. CBR, VBR, various bitrates.
+ Fast startup times. Under 3
seconds for all discs, usually faster. Just like a regular CD player. Keep in mind that discs that have been burned but have not been fully closed will take longer to read (eg. open multi-session/track discs). Closing the disc immediately removes the read delay. Read delay can be up to 5-10 seconds for open session/track discs.
+ Controls are fast and responsive - just like you'd expect and know from any regular
Philips audio CD portable. Song to song & folder to folder navigation
is quick, press FF/RW and it'll skip to the next song in under a second or two, and can be done blind. FF/RW within
a song has a momentary <1 second pause before the song FF/RWs so you can easily review audio books and language lessons. Not as quick to respond as the EXP301 series I had reviewed earlier.
+ Navigation of the files & folders is quick and easy. Just press the Next/Prior Folder or Next/Prior Song (FF/RW) buttons to navigate all the folders and songs on your CD. At most, a 1-2 second delay between songs, but usually almost always ~1 second or less to skip from song to song. Quick response here.
+ Solid battery door latch.
+ Analog audio level dial! Perfect adjustment of audio levels quickly
and easily w/o any trouble at all.
+ Large LCD display. Easy to understand, scrolls title, author, album names. Can be difficult to view off angle from a distance - eg. when used in a car (then again, the other MP3 CD players out today with the exception of the Panasonic models have even smaller LCD displays by far!), but easier to read when driving than the other players.
+ Beep when any button is pressed can be turned on/off. Beep on is softer than the 301 series and can be left on without much annoyance vs. the louder 301 beeps.
+ ESP can be turned off to lengthen battery life. 15/23 hours for MP3 playback with ESP on/off.
+ Even better shock support than prior 45 sec. Philips CD
portables - now up to 100 seconds. Shake and bake, this baby won't skip.
+ Belt Clip to attach player to belt included.
+ Visible battery meter to let you guage remaining life of the 2 AAs used.
+ Metallic red top cover, dark gray bottom. Same design body as prior 301 series.
+ Battery door on outside.
+ A complete printed manual.
+ ID3 tag supported.
+ Headphones decent for the cheap price.

- LCD Only scrolls the title, author, album title three times, then stops scrolling. You have to push the DISPLAY button to skip to the next choice to get it to scroll for 3x before it stops again.
- Does not automatically scroll through all three - title, author, album title. You must press the DISPLAY button to see each one.
- Does not remember the prior track's display setting when playing the next song. Automatically defaults back to displaying the FILENAME. Annoying! especially if you want to display just the TRACK TIME, eg., at all times. No way to fix/set the LCD display to a specific item at all times.
- Does not properly shut off when plugged into car DC adapter. When you shut off the car, you can often get this unit to hang completely - ie. totally non-responsive to the buttons until you completely remove power by unplugging the DC adapter and removing the batteries!!!! BAD!
You must press the STOP button twice to make sure the unit is completely off before turning off the car ignition to prevent this from occuring.
- No backlight.
- Keeping the FF/RW buttons pressed to the end/beginning of a song does not let you skip to the next/prior song! (EXP 301 does allow this as do almost all other CD players) Very annoying if you're trying to FF/RW through mutiple passages of an audio book.
- FF/RW is slow. Seems like it's only 2-3x FF/RW speed.
- Resume doesn't work just like prior 301/303 series. You can set it like the manual says, but sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Appears they haven't fully updated the firmware inside to fix this bug. And no, you can update the firmware at all.
- Buttons are placed far apart on opposite sides of the LCD panel, and not as textured/easily distinguished during blind navigation to activate. Fine if you're looking at the unit however. Buttons are placed towards the top back of the unit, so if you've placed this in a slot of a car cubicle, you can't easily reach the buttons.

I am happy with this player, in general. I think the sound is great. The anti skip protection is also great. I wear the player on my belt using the belt clip while I jog and it hasn't skip once yet. By the way, the belt clip is a fantastic thing to have. I hate the fact that not a lot of portable players have this feature. For me sound and good anti-skip protection are the determing factors in getting a player (as well as a belt clip).

However I have some of the same complains as a previous reviewer.

This player could afford a redesign. As is, the volume button is definitely too close to the open/close button. I keep opening the player when all I want to do is adjust the volume. This problem got to be so aggravating that I put a rubber band around the player. On my player it takes between 9 to 30 seconds before the player starts to play MP3s, depending curiously enough on which burning program I use to burn the disc. The resume feature is useless with mp3s.

I lost my old panasonic CD player and I bought this MP3 player. I am really satisfied with this product. It is so convenient that I carry all my songs in one cd (MP3 format) and play them.
Worth the price.

If you are rich as hell, go ahead and buy it. But for the price your paying for this, you could get a great Mini Disk player, and even plenty of discs for over 2,000 minutes of recording time. Dont believe me? Goto the Mini Disc section and do the math! Even better, you can record mp3's onto the MiniDisk players, you can also record your voice, your playstation/N64/Dreamcast, VCR, TV, Radio, Tape, everything! I almost bought an mp3 player, and im glad i didn't. MP3's are too expensive compared to Mini-Disks, and if you look at the Mini Disk trend right now, its exactly like the CD trend 10 years ago. They are already making Mini Disk drives fro computers to store info. Just check out the Mini Disks before you buy this, trust me, you'll thank me. If you have any questions, email me, Ill answer them asap!

Just a few points. You get 2 16 meg cards but only one slot so you have to keep swapping cards. It's not like the Diamond Rio that can store 2 cards at once. FM feature is a plus. The instructions are very skimpy and poor. The software will crash Explorer if you pull the card out while Explorer is open. For about $30 net of rebate, it's a good buy but not a great one. You get what you pay for.

I recieved the player yesterday after getting it as a gift from someone who bought it during the promo. I have to say, this is a fantastic player! The volume is good and loud and crisp without distortion when it needs to be, and the softs are still crystal! The I-Jam technology even makes mp3's encoded at 64 Kbps sound much better than they do in Winamp. What a great deal! 30 bux for this little sucker! The promo made it possible to spend that extra money on a 64 meg MMCard :)

The only disadvantages (if you have to purchase it full price, this would probably matter): Two 16 meg MMCards, not a 32 meg card. The display only uses "TR-01, TR-02, etc..." Titles from the ID3 tag would be nice, but it's not neccessary. Also, there's no way to put them in the order you want besides copying the songs in that order.

Other than those little setbacks, this is a GREAT player.

While the DMP-120 has an attractive pricetag, the unit itself
leaves a lot to be desired. The generous 64MB flash capacity
yields a lot of room for your favorite MP3 songs, but it suffers
from memory initialization problems resulting in loss of data.
Roughly 10 percent of the power-downs that were tested on two
separate units resulted in the unit locking up, requiring the
user to remove the batteries to "hard" reset the unit. While
this is not only inconvenient, data is lost or corrupted during
the hard reset most of the time, requiring the user to reformat
the flash and reload the memory. In addition to initialization
problems the unit exhibits what is most likely memory formatting
problems in the form of data loss or corruption. The symptoms of
this problem are that the first few hundred KB or so of every
song are either not present or cannot be interpreted by the
processor; in other words the first 1/2 second or so of every song
is not there and the song starts in what would appear to be
mid-stream. While this is not a major problem, it is perpetually
annoying and would be considered "unacceptable" by serious audio
enthusiast. In the defense of the poor engineering of the unit,
the customer service at D-Link was very helpful in replacing the
original unit (that was suspected to be faulty), but the supposedly
"tested" replacement unit exhibited the same faults.

Bugs with this unit. Not recommended for recording lectures. It loops your recording over and over, even though loop is not on. High static noise during mp3 playback. Not worth the hassle.

This player has been out for a while now ...and it has worked great. The sound quality is great and the features that come with this player is good. There are a few important features that comes with this player: lock for buttons (so you won't accidently push the buttons), external slot for SmartMedia card, rudimentary but effective equalizer, selective modes for different types of play options (single track repeat, all tracks repeat, etc..) and a sturdy belt clip which works when I run!

The only thing that I miss the most is a FM tuner. Also an optional arm band would be great for running. But for the price I got it at, I am not complaining. This little player is not flashy like the newer ones out there but it is truly worth getting if you want it for functionality and reliability.

This is truely a piece of junk. I see that the product is either 'not in stock or discontinued'. If it has been discontinued, great. No one should ever have to suffer through the ownership of this junk. If it is simply out of stock, do not purchase it when it is back in stock. It skips, the battery stays charged for about 10 minutes instead of 10 hours, the sound comes through one earphone only, etc, etc, etc. And I am talking about one that was sent back to the company and 'repaired', TWICE.

I have one thing to say and that is there are up's and down's to this player. I've had some trouble but mostly it was my fault. I've read some of the other reviews that say don't buy this product. Well i'm at a loss of words for them because i have no trouble with my treo 15. Most of the problems that i do see are on my own accord like not draining the battery because if u don't do that the battery loses its life and becomes obsolete. So my advice to any buyers is be careful with this piece of technology. It is fragile so don't be mad if u dropped it and it doesn't work anymore or something i suggest buying this item its very good

The treo 15 by e.digital is pretty good mp3 player. It small enough to be hidden, but large enough to look like an compact player. Storage for this model is nice, 15gig adequate, adequate for me. Down side is it's not easily accessible to download music or organize selections. And since E.digital is not in to these small hand held machine the support base isn't as good.

I've purchased this product in January. Since then, I've had some problems with the sound quality. I got this replaced a month after, and I still had the exact same problem, which means that the problem would be evident in every product. I cannot recommend this product to anyone. When it's playing MP3 discs, it would frequently make this weird and loud hissing noise in the middle, which I found extremely frustrating and annoying. Furthermore, this product is fragile unlike other 'skip-proof' products. This product is a battery drainer. A fresh, newly-charged NI-MH battery would only last about 3 hours on this product. So I don't know if this will be a choice for anyone. From using this product, I vow myself to never buy any Panasonic product again.

you can actually find this player running around [$$] other places. this player came out with the big audio company players came out, so it was rivaling mainly sony and aiwa. riovolt already had a substantial stand in the marketplace, though its sound technology wasn't as advanced as the competitors. b/c of the time it came out, its battery life was pretty standard, 12/mp3 35/wav. sony's mp3 products are way behind in this category. as for sound quality, it packs a punch, and can be complemented by a good pair of headphones. the con to mp3 cds is the amount of mp3s you can stuff into a cd. average mp3 size is 3mb, while a average cd size is 700mb, which equates to 233 songs! that is about 12 hours of music! anyways, another con is the fact that there are no id3 identification on this player, though it is implemented on higher models. id3 identification is nice to know what song to skip to, but since an mp3 cd is just copied as data cd, it's organized alphabetically anyways. i've dropped this player many times, and it's still held up. also, the buttons are easy to figure out. you're able to categorize mp3s into folders, which you can organize any way you please, ie. genres, decades. you are able to skim by folder, or by tracks, and you're able to randomize in folders, or tracks. overall, i've been pleased with this player for over a year.

I recieved this Mp3/CD player for Christmas as a gift from my mom. When opened it, I thought it was cool looking. But when I held it, it had a not so sturdy feel. But after taking it to school everyday for 5 months now, its taken a beating. I have dropped it onto concrete floor, carpet, and tile. All on accident of coarse. The CD player still works just fine. The Mp3 feature works great to my amaze. The only real complaint that I have about this product is the LCD screen. It could really use a backlit LCD screen, and one that has the ability to have the names of the songs on the screen. Other than that the Mp3/CD player is a great product that I'd recommend to anyone looking for this type of product.

This... broke down the first month I had it. The most strain I placed on this thing was opening and closing the lid. It sat on my desk and worked okay for about a week. Pretty soon, I noticed the playback beginning to deminish on longer CD's. The next thing I know, everything is skipping....

This mojo has an amazing sound and the remote is a very nice touch. It is very easy to navigate. (This is my second MP3/CD player). However, it died after only 3 months of use. So, purchase it with the extended warranty or you will be [cheated].

I was attracted to this player beacuse of the rave reviews for it's NaviTrack technology, which allows you to make playlists on the fly by Artist, Genre or Title. It delivers this, but some issues with MP3 CD's in general keep it from being a perfect implementation.

First off, the MOJO uses a proprietary FIF format (Field In Filename) to rename your MP3 files to match the ID3 Tags. One problem: It only gives you the option of Artist-Song or Artist-Song-Genre format. If you have a list of songs in Song-Artist format, you're out of luck: FIF will interpret the song name as the Artist. If you don't use the TDK software to get your MP3's FIF-compliant, it's unknown how the file will be tagged on the CD. The MOJO Player has an option on displaying the FIF or ID3 tag info, but it seems to always dispaly the FIF-detected tags (correct or not).

As for Playlists: Mojo does not support .m3u or other playlist files. It plays everything in the order it was burned on the CD-R. If you use NERO or some other popular burning software, this means alphabetic order by filename. The only way I can think of around this is to manually add a track number on all of the files, but I'm not sure what this would to to the display, and updating would get tedious for around 200 files per disc. You CAN select or deselect tracks by Artist, Title or Genre to make a Playlist on-the-fly... but it only plays these tracks --you guessed it- - in alphabetical order. Given that the disc can hold around 10 hours of music, the "A to Z" theme can get old very quickly. The Repeat-Random mode gets around the Alphabetical playlist problem to my satisfaction, but I still wish for playlist compatibility.

The hardware seems pretty solid, except for the plastic hinges on the CD door. The LCD is jam-packed with as much information as you'll ever need (EQ Presets, Title, Artist, Play Time, Tracks Played/Total Tracks, Bit Rate, and many more), and it's all on a large, easy to read display. The Remote is handy, but the cord could be longer and the headphone jack on it is tricky to get connected fully.

With a Jensen Cassette Adapter, or the included headphones, the sound output was excellent. It's wonderful to have the ability to play around 10 hours of music on one CD and one set of AA Batteries. I drove roundtrip from Atlanta to Orlando on one CD-RW of music and the batteries lasted around 9 hours. It seems a good, solid player, and I don't think you'll find a better one for [the price].