The Insignia Sport NS-2V17B MP3/Video Player with Bluetooth: Another Well-Designed Insignia Product
Written: Jan 21 '08 (Updated Jan 27 '08)
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Pros: Excellent design, very good sound quality, Bluetooth, easy to use, inexpensive
Cons: I haven't found any yet.
The Bottom Line: See Overall Below.
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| symbiosis's Full Review: Insignia Sport 2GB Video MP3 Player NS-2V17B |
Introduction
Insignia is Best Buy’s house brand of electronics. I was initially skeptical when I tried out an Insignia product for the first time. Since then, I have owned and thoroughly tested a portable DVD player and a flash-based MP3 player from the Insignia line. I have liked both of the Insignia products that I have tried, and still use them on a fairly regular basis. So this time around, I was excited when I saw the Insignia package inside a recently delivered box.
The NS-2V17B is a small, flash memory based MP3 and video player. The category that this MP3 player resides in also includes the SanDisk Sansa, iPod nano, and Microsoft Zune. (Note: The iPod nano and Microsoft Zune have 4GB of memory, but also cost about twice as much as this Insignia.)
Flash based players are better for activities such as exercising, and are likely to be more reliable over the long term than hard drive memory players. They make excellent gifts.
Design
The NS-2V17B that I received is similar in appearance to the first Insignia player that I tested. The front of the player has a super smooth, blue metallic finish. The sides and back have a durable rubberized finish that provides good grip. This helps to keep the player stationary on surfaces, and also keeps it from sliding out of your pocket or hand.
The display is a 1.7 inch color screen on the left hand side of the player. There is a headphone jack and mini-USB hookup on the right hand side of the device. Navigation is menu-based and accomplished using a wheel and/or four way directional pad to the right of the display screen. Power, hold, and a star rating slider are located on the top side. A micro-SD card slot can be found on the bottom side of the player. This allows the memory to be expanded by adding a larger memory card.
I like the overall design. Everything seems to be placed in a location that makes sense.
Design 90/100
Included Accessories
The cheap included earbuds are, well, cheap included earbuds. They are a blue color which matches the MP3 player. They are made from hard plastic, without a cushion, which makes them rather uncomfortable in the ear. Should you have a high enough pain threshold to properly insert them, you will find that the sound is decent. The earbuds do an acceptable job with the mid and high range frequencies, but are very lacking in the low bass frequencies. I would recommend that you replace them with a decent pair of canalphones or headphones as soon as possible. Upgrading headphones is a quick and easy way to improve the sound of your MP3 music. Here are some ideas:
AKG K 26 P Headphones
Highly portable closed design headphones with good full range sound, excellent low bass, for around $40
Sennheiser HD 280 Pro
Over-the-ear, closed design headphones with excellent detail and accurate full-range sound, for less than $100
Sennheiser HD580
Over-the-ear, open design headphones with excellent detail, superb comfort, and accurate full-range sound, for less than $200
The package also includes a mini-USB to USB cable.
Accessories 60/100
Ease of Use
The player is recognized by either XP or Vista as soon as it is hooked up, and the drivers are automatically installed. All you need to do is plug it in, the computer will do the rest.
The mini-USB cable provides easy hookup to virtually any modern computer. This connection is also used to charge the player. I transferred 1.0 GB of data to test the transfer speed. The transfer took about 5 minutes, which equates to a very respectable 200 MB per minute. This is very similar to the speed of the other Insignia player that I own.
Songs and photos can be transferred onto the device using either Rhapsody or Windows Media Player. The device shows up in My Computer, and it is also possible to just copy the files you want and paste them right into the device. I prefer this method.
The NS-2V17B also has Bluetooth connectivity. I tested this with a pair of Insignia Bluetooth headphones. It was fairly easy to pair the headphones to the player, although only after I read the instructions for doing so in both user manuals. The device takes about 10 seconds longer to boot up when Bluetooth is enabled.
Ease of Use 90/100
Sound Quality
First, I tested the Insignia with a pair of Bluetooth wireless headphones. These headphones are also Insignia brand, and are currently selling for around $50. The sound quality is fairly good. I would say that the sound via Bluetooth is comparable to most consumer devices with typical consumer headphones up to about $25. I think most people would be happy with the sound quality. The range seems to be up to about 20 feet, with good sound quality up to about 10 feet.
Next, I gave the device a bit more thorough test with my Sennheiser HD 580s. Most MP3 players will not be lucky enough to hook up with a pair of HD 580s. Still, it is a good test of how pure the sound coming out of the device really can be. The Sennheiser's are also a high impedance headphone, at 300 Ohms. So if a portable device has enough power to drive the HD 580s, it should have enough power to drive just about any headphones it will ever encounter.
The NS-2V17B could drive the HD 580s at about 2/3 of the maximum volume. So yeah, this little player has plenty of muscle.
Audio formats supported include MP3, WMA, WMA Lossless, WMA, DRM, and OGG.
Similar to the first Insignia player that I tested about 8 months ago, the sound quality of the NS-2V17B is very good when hooked up to quality headphones. The music that I sampled sounded clean, rich, and neutral. Like Switzerland.
Sound Quality 85/100
Photos
With the previous generation Insignia player that I tested last year, I thought the ability to display pictures was sort of a gimmicky feature. I had a hard time getting any pictures on that older player, as it only accepted a very strict size limit and format.
I wasn’t expecting too much from the photo feature of the NS-2V17B, either. The screen is decent sized for a player this small, at 1.7 inches. Just because I am ornery, I took a full sized picture that I had shot with my 8 mega-pixel digital camera, and dumped it directly into the player’s photos folder. The file was 3.58 MB in size, and I fully expected the NS-2V17B to fail miserably when I tried to look at the picture. However, the player proved to be up to the test. It took about 20 seconds to load the picture onto the screen, but it was able to display successfully. The picture looked pretty good, considering the small size of the screen.
Feeling a bit more generous, I loaded a second version of the picture onto the device. This time I compressed the picture to a far more reasonable size of 186 KB. The NS-2V17B did far better with the picture this time around. The picture took about 3 seconds to come up onto the screen. The quality was similar to the first version of the photo.
The picture abilities of the current generation of these players have certainly improved. The limiting factor is the screen size, which is in turn limited by the small size of the player. Overall, I think it does a respectable job.
Photos 45/100
Video
I don’t have any videos to test the player with, so I took a look at the video that came preloaded. The video was in .avi format. The video looked pretty good, again considering the small size and limited number of pixels of the screen. The audio was decidedly mediocre. I think it was decent overall. I really don’t think the video feature will be a big draw for this device anyway, it is more of a bonus feature.
Video 40/100
FM Tuner
The FM tuner works well. There are presets, and the display shows a cool little tuner dial plus a digital tuner. The tuner was able to pick up all the major stations in my area, even in difficult places like the basement. If you are one of the five remaining people who listen to the radio, (alright, maybe more like twenty :) this player will make you happy.
FM Tuner 90/100
Battery
The battery is lithium-ion, and is rated for 25 hours. I did not exhaustively test this. I did listen to the player for several hours, as well as watching the pre-loaded video a couple of times. The battery strength indicator did not budge from a full reading. Flash memory based players generally use less juice and last longer than hard-drive based players. In the grand scheme of things, I would venture to say this is a very good battery life.
Battery 85/100
Warranty
The NS-2V17B has a one-year warranty. This is better than many inexpensive MP3 players.
Warranty 90/100
Reliability
The build quality of the NS-2V17B seems very similar to the earlier Insignia player which I own. That player, after 8 months and moderately heavy use, is still going strong. During the same period, one of my friends has gone through three or four comparable SanDisk MP3 players. My Creative Zen Sleek, used a similar amount, has started to get really flaky. Based on that, I would guess that the reliability on this player will be above average.
Reliability 80/100
Overall
Once again, I think the people who designed this MP3 player did a really great job. The design is clean, functional, and attractive. All the main features work. Loading media onto the device is easy for the moderately computer literate. Usability is good. The sound quality varies greatly with the quality of the headphones used, and is very good when paired with quality equipment. Build quality seems solid. Reliability should be better than average. I would recommend this MP3 player to anyone, without reservations.
Overall 90/100. Highly Recommended
I received this product from Hass MS&L for the purpose of providing a fair and honest review on Epinions.com.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 90
Recommended for: Beginners - Easy Enough for Tech Newbies
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Epinions.com ID:
symbiosis
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Reviews written: 49
Trusted by: 91 members
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