Egomaniacs
Written: Mar 01 '01
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Good sound quality, very durable, lots of extras, very expandable, USB connection
Cons: Poor quality earphones, a little pricey and a little bulky
The Bottom Line: Overall, the eGo player gives a strong showing with its expandability, easy-to-use software, and many options that other players don't have. Price could be lower, headphones could be better.
|
|
|
| SAMIAM779's Full Review: i2Go MP3 64MB Player |
Despite a few flaws, the eGo mp3 player makes a pretty strong showing against the many players out there today.
The first, and most important, aspect to consider about any mp3 player is sound quality. The promise of mp3, and thus the whole draw of an mp3 player, is cd quality sound without the skipping and size of cd players. In this respect, the eGo comes through with flying colors. The sound quality is excellent and, indeed, there is absolutely no skipping to worry about.
The unit itself is, admittedly, somewhat bulky compared to other mp3 players on the market. The trade-off for this size is expandability. As you may have noticed, all the eGo players seem to look exactly alike. The reason for this similarity is that they ARE the same. The player has no true internal memory. Instead, memory for the unit comes from either a compact flash card or a Sony mini-drive. (you read that right, this player supports mini-drives, but I'll get to that in a minute). So, basically, all eGo players are the same except for the amount of memory that is shipped with them. While this method may seem a little strange, consider the advantage. What if, in a few years, compact flash cards drop in price (which is very likely) and you decide you want more memory for your mp3 player? With the eGo, the solution is as easy as popping out one card and sticking in another. Also, as far as I know, the eGo is the ONLY player on the market that supports Sony mini-drives. These drives are currently capable of storing 300 or so megs of memory. While the drives are rather expensive now, naturally they should drop in price as technology develops. So, basically, the great advantage of the eGo player is the potential to easily boost its memory for years to come.
Speaking of years to come, you can expect the eGo player to last for quite a while. The unit is encased in a quite solid plastic case which, for me, has endured plenty of jostling with no problem. Of course, as with any piece of electronic equipment, you should try to take care of it as well as possible. However, an mp3 player is the kind of thing that needs to take some wear-and-tear because it is supposed to be mobile in the first place. I am currently a college student, and so I use my player a lot for just walking around on campus (life is so much easier to deal with when you have your own soundtrack:). Because of this, I have to store the player in my backpack (which gets tossed around on a regular basis). In six months of use, the eGo player has endured everything without showing a scratch or any problems in operation.
Though the physical design of the player is important, the unit is nothing without good software to support it. The eGo software is, in a word, excellent. First of all, as soon as you attach the eGo player to your computer (via an included USB cable) the player automatically turns on, drawing its power from the computer to save battery life. Also, the clock function of the player is immediately synchronized with your computer's clock (and that's just neat). But, the strongest aspect of the eGo software is how intuitive it is to use. The software's window looks basically like a Windows Explorer window (Start-Programs-Windows Explorer). However, in addition to the usual icons for each of your computer's drives in the left frame, you also have an icon for your mp3 player. So, to add a new song you simply find the file and drag it to the eGo icon in the software window. Overall, the software is very simple to use and even beginners will have it down in no time. Also, the software supports a couple of cool options that most other players don't have. First, the software can be programmed to download e-mail from most services, transfer the mail to voice, and add the mail to your player. Also, the eGo website provides downloadable news and weather reports that can also be downloaded to the player.
While the eGo player comes with several "goodies," they are not all of the best quality. The player comes with: a USB cable, a car tape adapter, a cigarette lighter power adapter, a windshield mount, and a set of ear phones. I must say, the windshield mount (which fits into a slot on the back of the player) is very cool. However, the earphones are really, really bad. If you buy this player, I would strongly recommend investing a little money in some higher quality headphones (Sony, in particular, makes an impressive line of light-weight, high-quality headphones for digital media).
Another thing of note about eGo is the company's product support. They provide regular updates to not only the computer software, but also to the software for the player itself.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
SAMIAM779
|
|
Member: Sam Cook
Reviews written: 11
Trusted by: 5 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.