MP3 Reviews

Purchased for the sole purpose of playing MP3 CD format Old Time Radio shows. Great looking unit, nice visual display, radio works fine and sounds good, but cut off the ending of ALL shows (5-minute show, cut off 30+ seconds; 30 minute shows, cut off last 5-7 minutes).

It skips the last 30 seconds of all mp3 tracks. That is rather disgusting. Plus, inability to play the lower bit rates without garbling it beyond recognition makes this product a loser. The analog FM tuner is a pain. sound quality is so and so. I bought an iRiver SlimX 350 following this fiasco. That product rocks.. Check that out instead.

I ordered this item through Radio Shack to play my MP3 radio shows. At first, I was impressed with the sound. I had been warned that the controls were a little clunky, and it was a little difficult to get the cds in and out because of the way the "hood" opens, but I could put up with that. What I hated was the way, as the other folks have said, it cuts off the end of each program as it goes on to the next. I would think that Memorex would be well aware of the problem. It does, however, seem to play regular cds just fine.

MP3 CD Experience: TDK Mojo Owner, Used Sony MP3 Boom Box
Overall Rating:Very Poor (A Lemon) Going Back to the Store!

Features:
Power: Very Good 10 Watts (5 Watts Per channel)
Clock/Timer
Digital Bass Boost
EQ Controls
MP3 Options:Program, File/Folder Mode,Repeat,Intro
18 Page Manual (English)
Appearance (Weird Shape) No On/Off Light, No way to even tell if it's on or off, No MP3 LEDs at all
Sound:Very Good
Speakers:Very Good, Two Way (5Watts per channel)
Interface/Navigation: Very Poor - Buttons and Names Don't make any sense at all, Definitely Not User Friendly
AC Plug didn't want to stay in, very hard to get in
The Remote is pretty Good but controls are strange
MP3 Information:Excellent - MP3 Bit Rate, Name, Artist,Album No Back Lighting

MP3 Playback:Very Poor
Too Many Skips, Searching Delays, and problems reading
Very long delays between songs and directories
This Unit spends more time searching then playing
Extremely long time spent searching, even for the next song
Unit gets very Hot, CD's come out very hot like pancakes
Display:Hard to read
No MP3 Shuffle

Comments:
It Read my 320 Bit MP3's although the manual says only up to 256
The manual says it has problems reading multi-session CD's but It seems to have problems reading the MP3's on most CD's

I can't believe how long this unit takes searching an MP3 CD, even for the next song!
Many times it seems to just freeze while searching
I still can't tell when this thing is off (how about an On/Off LED)
It actually spends more time searching then playing
I wasn't able to play even one CD without any skips or delays

My experience with the Sony Boombox was a much more favorable one.
Problems with Sony:
Very Low power (Less than 2 Watts per Channel) and small One Way speakers. Display of MP3 Info is limited.
The Remote controls nothing on the tape player,which only takes Type 1 tapes.
Too Expensive

Pros:Has a Backlight, Pretty good Cassette Player, Shuffle Mode, Jog Dial, And Much Better MP3 Reading

Pros: Solidly Built, Has great folder, subfolder, file aqusition. Can select a folder and it will only play the songs in that particular folder. (set to file mode and it plays the whole disc) Sound is very good for a portable...has punch and plenty of power for playing outside at picnic or bar-b-que. The remote control is easy to use, as is the buttons on the machine itself.
Cons: Poor radio reception, even in large metropolitan area. Putting discs in is awkward..potential to scratch them if not done carefully...don't let the kids do it. MP3 tracking is fair to poor at best. If your discs aren't burned and finalized at 8x's speed or less expect skips. The display, while great, lacks a backlight..even though most ad's picturing this item appear to have a backlit display. For some reason this unit runs very hot...your discs are quite "warm" when you remove them.
The technology is out there to play mp3's without skipping...why rca didn't put more into their tracking lens with this unit baffles me, since they spared no expense in the materials for the cabinetry.

MP3s are tricky under the best of circumstances and with the most expensive of equipment. I concur wholeheartedly about what has been said here recently about reading directions before putting the knock on an otherwise excellent product like the RCD118. Besides, most people (me included) who buy a portable because it has MP3 do so "just in case" - not unlike how 95% of the people who buy four-wheel drive vehicles end up never taking their vehicle offroad.

The quality is there with this unit in terms of great portable sound - MP3 is a bonus to that, as is the remote control. I haven't heard another unit in its class that sounds better, and many more of the other big brand names that sound (and look!) decidedly inferior.

In August 2001, I bought a Samsung Digimax 35 MP3, the first Samsung product I bought, and I feel very disappointed about it. It certainly possesses a number of features making it attractive, such as a fancy design, portability, easiness of operation, easy-to-use software etc. But when it comes to performance, it's very disappointing for the following reasons:
(1) EXTREMELY poor image quality, in what concerns range of colors. The images all look very much alike: brown-gray. No sharp colors, nor any vivid colors. It's hard to accept that a digital camera of these days performs so poorly in this respect. Right from the start, I was willing to accept a limited image size in exchange for the camera's price, but I never, ever could imagine that its color performance could be so bad.
(2) EXTREMELY limited luminosity range. Again, I can't accept that a digital camera could be so limited in this respect. It looks like I'm trying to use a ISO 25 film to take night shots, but I'm using a digital camera to photograph in a room with reasonable lighting, or even at open air at dawn or dusk. How can a digital camera have such a limited lux range?
(3) EXTREMELY poor image sharpness. All it takes is just a little less than full Sun light and we get fuzzy edges and, more frequently than not, blurred images. It's just unbelievable!
(4) The camera shuts itself down after a very short time, so whenever I'm about to take a snapshot, I almost always miss the opportunity. And it takes an incredibly long time to start-up again.
(5) Very high battery consumption, or, if one prefers to put it reversibly, very low energy storage capacity. I just can't fill-up the camera's memory chip before having to change the batteries. Such a strange (=poor) engineering design. For all the reasons above, I'm convinced that the Digimax 35 mp3 is not worth at all the US$ 200.00 I paid for it.
Digimax 35 MP3 is sold as a camera that also records MP3. Since I didn't buy the camera because of MP3, I have never used its MP3 features. So, giving you the benefit of doubt to say its a good MP3 device, this thing should be sold as an MP3 recorder that, by the way, can be used marginally to shoot some low resolution, blue-and-brown photos once in a while.
My wife keeps telling me to sell the camera to get the money back, but I don't feel comfortable charging anything to anyone just ofr getting rid of this such low-performance equipment. And what I do want to do is having a camera worth the price I paid for it.
I tried to send this review/complaint to Samsung many many many times through their "contact us" e-mail address, but all I get are error messages.

I recieved one of these things free from iwin.com. Although a cool idea, this thing is poor at everything it does. The pictures are blurry, the performance from the webcam is probably terrible, and the mp3 player is a joke. Here are my complaints:

1. Driver intstallation was a failure on the pc I intended to use this device on. It worked on a second PC no problem, but even downloading the latest drivers from samsung was no help on pc #1.

2. 8MB compact flash is way too little. You'll want to shell out $40-$100 for a much more storage. Unless you want to listen to the same song over and over again, or only have the ability to take a few pictures.

3. Earphone plug is tiny (I think 1/16" plug) so forget about using your own earphones or car adapter. The included earphones are low quality.

4. MP3 controls are terrible on the device. You have to press mode several times to do anything.

5. Flash offers 2 modes "auto" and off. Using auto, the camera decides if it's going to use the flash. If it's not using it, the picture is taken on the first press of the button. If it is, you have to press the button once to charge the flash, and a second time to take the picture. This means when you press the button, you have to be ready for the picture to be taken right then, but the possibility remains that it may have to charge for awhile. Very annoying!!

6. The video capture feature crashed my computer. Generally USB capture devices are low quality anyway, so don't expect anything special from this assuming you can get it to work.

So to sum up, this device attempts to perform 3 cool functions, but comes up short in all categories. Trust me.. I love gadgets, but not this one. DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT!! You have been warned.

this product is very nice for beginners to digital imaging.It has all capabilities of playing mp3,taking photos and sending videos. Compare to other products I would say that the photos are sharp enough but it is slow to make videos.By 16mb memory card you can take your favorite mp3s to listen.If you want to get sharp images with high quality this product is not for you but considering price it is the one of the best price/quality product.I have used this to send my photos to my family and they liked the images.

I wanted an FM tuner that I could use to schedule and record shows on my local Jazz stations and NPR. Car Talk, This American Life, etc. You know, time shift the radio like a VCR does for the TV. This product _should_ have done the trick. But no, the software is minimal and has no capabilities to record more than one timed show. This product can be replaced with a simple FM receiver from Radio Shack.

I sent email to D-Link offering to code this up for them. How hard can it be? If I had the protocol spec I could certainly do it in no time. No response. This thing is sitting on the shelf along with all the other failed products that _should_ have worked.

I had this thing for 2 weeks - and it actually did what it was advertised to do - receive and play FM radio through your pc. However, the way the Antenna connects to it's base absolutely stinks!!! They use an RCA plug connected to the extendable antenna via a very, very thin piece of steel. I move the antenna around a few times and that steel snapped, and there's no way to fix it.

If you buy this - it will work, but don't move it too much.

This is a great product, if you wanna listen to FM @ work.
The software worked fine on both XP and 2000.The software is bit confusing, but if you are a tech junkie you shouldn't have any problem.A bit advice for future buyers, make sure that you always select "line in" under volume control settings of options menu.

this mp3 player is ok - sound quality is good, clear screen, small, and lightweight. however, the battery case cover doesn't close all the way anymore (although still usable) - so it is somewhat fragile. i have windows 98, so audio manager software works - but it crashes my computer every so often. the internal memory only holds about 13 mp3/CD songs - not enough! plus, the internal memory cards seem much more expensive than the player itself. also, can one only use the 64MB SD memory card or can you use the 128 MB card, too? i would actually recommend getting a different mp3 player like the iPod since it holds 5GB or 10GB of music....

the product is great... especially with the battery attachment which lasts pretty long..

but i do not have the driver for win98 anymore cuz i reformatted my comp.

can someone PLEASE e-mail me the driver to spy5680@yahoo.com

I bought this player 2 years ago ...in Japan and thought it was a bargin then. I still haven't changed my mind. With SD cards (Sun Disc) making 512MB and soon 1GB memory cards I can listen to my player for hours and hours. My only wish is that it was rechargabe like a cell phone as the hook that holds the battery door closed snapped off. Also, I can only get 5 hours of play time with 2 AAA batteries. Other than that, one of the best buys I ever made!!
At (this price) it would be stupid not to consider this player.

I bought one of these cute little players because of the recommendations off another MP3 site. When it arrived, the first thing I found out was that it wasn't that little or that cute. it looked more like a pager from 1982. After 6 attempt at installing the software on my desktop computer I gave up and managed to install it on the laptop instead. That didn't help much in downloading songs to the player, it hung on the second song download every time. I had to buy an adapter for the CF card so that I could download songs directly to the card. Once I did get a few songs on the player its sound was OK, but no better than he Genoa MP3 CD I bought laster year. The last straw happened a few days later. I had attached the eGo to my belt while out running errands. I tuned the player off while I picking up a few items in a drugstore. On leaving the store I went to start the eGo but it wouldn't play. Due to a moronic design flaw, the Ego's card slot is open and on the bottom of the player so when it was attached to the belt clip the CF card had fallen out and was lost. I gave the player one last shot and tried 2 of the 128mb cards I use for my digital camera but neither would play in the eGo. Apparently, the devise only support a very limited number of cards on the market. The only help I got from the company in response to several email about the software problems was, "Did you read our web site?"

My advise to you is find a player with a little more thought behind it.

I got my little gadget three days ago. I had no problem at first. However I did question their manual, which was absolutely no help when trying to figure i2GO out. Every page referred to their website for direction. The first thing I noticed about the website...it wasn't there. Yesterday while I was messing with some speaker cords to plug in for better sound (the speaker is pathetic) my i2GO fell about two feet onto the floor. Since then it has been shutting itself off. I replaced the batteries, and it has been touch and go since.
I would not recommend this to anyone because of the bad tech support, and the durability is exaggerated.

Don't know what the others are complaining about, My eGo worked perfectly. When I realized that my hardware was outdated (even though the unit worked well) the I2go people offered to send me a new updated one free...they even paid the shipping. Unit worked as it should from the beginning, customer support has been excellent for me...all Emails answered quickly, all questions answered...it is a full featured unit and so some questions do arise. Great features are..built in speaker, sturdy (I've dropped it dozens of times), great sound level, great car set up, text to voice conversion for Emails, text files, etc. I could go on and on but in short, its a great player.

This item does not contain the correct drivers for Windows XP. Tried to locate the drivers from the company but the website is not accessable. Tried digital research technologies home page - page not found. The company was bought out by IOM holdings of Nevada but that was not help either. You would think someone would check their product before sending it out to market.

I bought this unit, compact, 32mb internal memory, great deal, right! Well, maybe not. (I wouldn't pay a penny more).

Although what looks like a nifty compact design this mp3 player has some SERIOUS PROBLEMS:

1) HEADPHONES. VERY POOR SOUND QUALITY. At first I thought the unit itself delivered poor sound quality. Turned out to be the headphones. A child MIGHT not notice, but you will. Non-standard jack size, 3/32" or 2.5mm, compared to the standard 1/8" or 3.5mm. This size plug is used for cell phone and hearing aid headphones (if you are half deaf this one is for you). I cannot find high quality replacements (I have searched DESPARATELY on the web - NOTHING).With good headphones and the adapter the unit sounded good, but already poor battery life suffers when using quality standard mini headphones.

2) NO CLIP. This unit is small and lightweight, but unless you put it in a pocket that closes or snaps or is deep the unit will fall out. Or you can hold it. That gets old REAL fast.

3) PC Interface. At 1st looks great. Drag and drop from your mp3 folder to a standard portable drive folder. But my PC locked up each time. And if you disconnect the unit for a moment, the drive interface disappears and I had to reboot my computer just to continue adding songs. Also the USB cable on the unit end is NOT USB and is proprietary. Lose this cord and you are out of luck.

4) BATTERY LIFE. One AAA battery. This unit needs to "get a life". Stock up or get rechargeables. If you plan to listen for more than an hour or two you will have to carry replacements.

5) NO EXPANDABLE MEMORY. What do you want for the price? At the regular price this would be unacceptable.

SUMMARY:
Wait 'till this one goes on clearance and buy it as a stocking stuffer for the kids at Christmas. I think it is marginally worth that, but wouldn't touch it for one penny more. Or let Santa take it to the land of misfit toys where it belongs.

I bought one of these around Christmas time. I have Windows XP and on the back of the MP3 package there is a sticker that says "it is not necessary to format the MP3 player with Windows XP". Well in the instructions they tell you to format it for all other versions so I went ahead and formated. What they meant when they put that sticker ont he package was "DO NOT FORMAT THE MP3 PLAYER IF YOU HAVE WINDOWS XP OR YOU WILL RUIN THE MP3 PLAYER".

I returned the original player and waited an entire MONTH. I now have tried it out and it's great!!! Very easy to use and to transfer files to. The sound is really good and as it claims there is no skipping. A great deal for the money. Earphones fit MY ears fine.

Again, just be careful about formating.

Oh, one final thing- IOMagic and Digital Research tech support is probably the worst I have ever dealt with so beware. I give the packaging/instructions 1 star, tech support a negative 1, and the product itself 5 stars.

The yo fun is a piece of junk.
The UI for the downloading software is terrible.
It eats batteries.

Wanted to use it to record voice and then transfer it to my computer. Recording seemed to work OK, but couldn't get the drivers to install on Windows 2000 nor Windows XP. The manual is the worst translated Chinese to English I've seen in quite a while, making it incomprehensible.

The Kaser Corp web site is awful and doesn't seem to provide any updated drivers. Tried to contact them, but never heard back.

Purchased the player and it worked fine for two months of low use. Then it stopped playing music. Can move files back and forth just fine. FAQ's at their site are pitiful so I wrote tech support- no answer in a month. I just wrote again. If you want to roll dice and hope it works then go ahead but if it doesn't you are up the creek with no paddle and no place to turn for help.

When i first bought this player, i thought it was pretty good. I already knew it wasn't the best i'd had, but all my cd players break eventually...within a couple years or so. This one however, was by far the quickest one to break. The volume buttons were always a bit funky, they eventually started sticking, and the volume only went up to 30 anyway. Now 30 doesn't sound bad, considering most go up to 10 or 15, but on here, 30 can barely be heard. The radio volume was much louder for some reason, I wish the cd volume was so that i could have enjoyed this for the time it worked. Another thing is that the cds skipped A LOT! I've never seen a cd player that skipped worse than this. My cds are all in good condition and there were at least 10 skips in every song. I do have a couple cds that are old and scratched a bit, and they wouldn't play at all in this player!!! Eventually one day, about 3 months after i bought the player, the cd player quit working. I still have the player today, and the radio does still work, but if you put in a cd it doesn't read it at all. I know that all cd players have problems, and the one i bought to replace this one this winter is already starting to malfunction as well, but please do yourself a favor and do not buy this cd player.

Aight, this is the deal. I just bought this CD player today and its great, except for one thing...every time I try to play a CD, the songs keep crackin. It's not skipping, its just cracking, and ALOT! I tried playing different CDs too but its the same for all of them. I'm goin to try callin these people up in the morning and see what's up.

My dad and I share this player alot and when i have used it which is a heck of a alot with mp3's and normal cd's i have found that this player is above average.

First off i have used the mp3 feature and the esp is awesome. it never skips a beat. the menu feature when you are using the mp3 feature is awesome. overall it is pretty good. the only thing that keeps me from giving it a full five stars is because, the screen is small and it is not backlit. overall it is a very good player and i think that you will be happy with your purchase.

I bought this item new at the store when it first came out. I also bought my girlfriend one and bought upgraded memory while I was there. Figuring out exactly how to get this unit to work and run properly in itself takes at least an hour unless your very computer literate, then trying to figure out how to put songs into the MP3 player is atleast another few hours. The instructions "are bad", the set up is very complicated and the overall unit is very UN user friendly. The unit constantly gives errors and is about the most frustrating thing I have ever worked with ever. I DO NOT recommend this to anyone and if you just must have one...I will gladly send you mine cuz thats how little I think of it. Oh and try and look up any number you can call for support on this product or ask questions about it...you will never get anyone. Save your money and buy ANYTHING else. I would take a tape player over this ... .

I am one of the apparent few who is very happy with this player. I got it for Christmas and was a little weary after reading all the other reviews here. However, my player works wonderfully. I can get 10 songs on the internal memory and they all play great. The Smart Media Card Slot is nice. It does use its own format and WILL make the card unusable to other devices such as cameras. However, contrary to popular belief, the cards CAN be restored to their original state and universal functionality. All you need is a card reader with its formatting program. I have a SanDisk ImageMate USB reader. It comes with a formatting utility called "SMPREP.EXE" I successfully used this program to restore my 8MB Smart Media Card to work properly with my camera and reader. Bottom line is that this is a solid player, and I would recommend it especially if you are on a budget. If you have a CD Burner, think about and MP3/CD Discman since you get 650-700MB of MP3's (150+ songs) per disc.

(The drivers for this player reportedly don't work with COMPAQ machines so be aware of that if you own a COMPAQ) Hope this review is helpful!

This MP3 player works great. I bought a 128MB smart media card for this and it can hold so much music now. I can get about 40 to 50 songs on here. The sound is perfect for what I need (mainly in class) and the batteries last fairly long. I personally bought rechargable batteries so I wouldn't have to worry about buying more all the time. I recharge the batteries while I sleep, just to be safe for the next long day at school. I would have opted for the DMP-120 with more memory, but i couldn't afford it. And since I got a 128MB smart media card for my birthday, I didn't miss the extra 32MB. Another great thing about this is voice recording. I occasionally make notes to myself, or record parts of my professors lecture, or just the homework they assign. In any case I recommend this MP3 player for students like myself who are on a budget.