Pretty Good Player Overall
Written: Sep 12 '02 (Updated Dec 01 '03)
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Pros: CompactFlash flexibility. Plays WMA and MP3. Great sound. Small.
Cons: Cheap feel (then again it is cheap). No firmware updates.
The Bottom Line: Great sound, uses AA batteries, uses CF, supports WMA/MP3.
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| marklyth's Full Review: Frontier NEX II MP3 Player |
Dec 1, 2003 Update---
The battery door fell off, but overall the player is chugging along even though my fiancee drops it once a week ;-) Unfortunately Frontier Labs has not put out new firmware in over a year, no support for new formats, no support for music folders.... In their readme.txt for the last update it says;
Newer versions of NEX II Firmware will be constantly made available on our web site, www.frontierlabs.com/Downloads.html.
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I bought this in December '01 for my girlfriend. Overall it is a very good player, good sound, good amplification and support for WMA means she can get more music on her CF card. The best feature is its support for CF, some players have built-in memory, others support MMC or SD, CF is still the cheapest/highest capacity small size format. MMC maybe smaller, but until their capacity gets above 128MB at a reasonable price, it isn't very useful. Also, since they use standard AA batteries, which we already have for my digital camera, it is easy to get rechargeable batteries. All she wanted was a portable MP3 player, so it wasn't important to get recording/FM, etc.
The downsides;
1. The battery holding/loading mechanism is flimsy. The simply use a strap that is taped onto the player, unfortunately this came of the first day. Now we have to take the batteries out by using our nails to claw at them or other prying tools. Could use a slightly better design there.
2. Slow firmware updates. I emailed tech support in Jan/Feb timeframe asking about support for playlists, they assured me that they are working on it. To this day there hasn't been a new firmware release. It would be nice if they could support Ogg Vorbis format, but with the rate of updates it probably won't happen
So, overall it is a pretty good product, but lacks support.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 100
Recommended for: Music Lovers - High Capacity Storage for an Entire Album Collection
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Epinions.com ID:
marklyth
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Reviews written: 32
Trusted by: 1 member
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