This player SUCKS! OK, it does have a voice recorder and fm recorder (which record in the large, but non-propietary .WAV format) and an fm radio (who's reception is spotty at best), but aside from those "features" this thing is absolutely horrible. Oh yeah - It doesn't require any software. Windows sees it as a removable drive, which is good (and bad - see below). Also, it is very small and cute, which was a selling point for me, but that's not nearly enough to make up for it's shortcomings.The first one I bought broke right away while I was transferring files (granted, I didn't read the manual first, but you really shouldn't need to - you should be able to plug in and go, especially considering there is no software to install). I had no problem with Win XP recognizing it as a removable drive, but I think what happened was that I tried dragging over a folder with-in another folder (the player only supports 1 level of folders, and I had mine set up //artist/album/file.mp3). Windows sees this as a drive, so as far as Windows is concerned there should be no problem in creating multiple folders. But, instead of giving an error, the transfer just crashed and the unit would not respond. Even after multiple attempts at removing the battery to reset it, it still would not respond. Not a good start.
So I returned it and got another. This time I made sure that my files were only one folder deep (aside: since this player does not "see" folders really, it treats them as playlists. for a unit that proudly displays it's drag-and-drop capabilities on it's package, it seems odd that it doesn't support a folder view. i haven't tried non-music files, given how easily it killed the system by just trying to create a third level of folders. also, just like first generation mp3 players, if you want your songs to play in a particular order, you had better name them that way, as the manual suggests, by add "001","002", etc to the begining of the file/folder.)
Figuring out how the navigation works was a chore. Much of my time was spent in trial-and-error trying to figure out how to navigate around this thing (again, should you really need to read a manual just to figure out how to play a song? this is ridiculous!) Which brings us to my biggest complaint:
THE SCREEN IS UPSIDE-DOWN!!!
Seriously. What I imagine happened was that they put it all together, and some tester said that the buttons should be on top of the unit instead of the bottom, so instead of redesigning it, they just flipped the screen. This is apparent because the buttons are BACKWARDS!! That doesn't make sense? OK, let me explain. Normally, being from an an engligh speaking/reading country, you assume that, given two buttons, the one one the left would be "back" and the one on the right would be "forward" (picture the navigation buttons on any vcr, tape player, dvd, cd... ok, pretty much anything that has navigation buttons). This is not the case with this unit. I constantly find myself going back when i want to go forward, lowering the volume when i want to raise it, etc. It's extremely frustrating and annoying. Another hint that they just flipped the screen is that the writing on the back of the unit is upside-down compared to the screen (but, if you turn the unit over, at least the buttons make sense. you just can't see what's going on on the screen).
Speaking of the screen. It's easy enough to read, but holds hardly any info on it. 4 lines with a max of 12 characters each (and that's one line for the name of the song, one line for the folder/playlist, one line for the timeframe, and the last line for system settings, like battery level, etc. so really it's just two lines with a max of twelve chars). It's also very low res compared to other current generation mp3 players i've used.
The voice recorder seemed to work well enough, but given how poorly designed everything on this unit is, I'm not even going to test that or any other feature any further. This is definitly not worth it, even at the fairly low price. iRiver, iRock, Rio, and a few others have similarly priced units that, although not perfect, are worlds ahead of this thing.
if this would have come out 4 years ago it would have been pretty good. but given it's current competition, this is about as bad as it gets.
