I picked up this little gadget at Best Buy after reading about it in their paper. $250 (plus extended warranty - hey, never know when you'll destroy the thing), struck as a good deal, plus an external hard drive, which this can be used as, didn't sound like a bad idea.

I wanted to read up more on it, but since no one had any reviews for it, I took the plunge. So ultimately, what could've been my loss could've been your steering away from a loss.

However, so far it looks like a gain.

Despite it's very lacking instruction book, it's a simple set up: plug in AC Adaptor, attach USB Cable, put in software, etc, etc, you're up and running. it runs on an internal lithium ion battery that lasts up to 12 hours (less if you record a lot), so no battery switching. That can be a bad thing sometimes, though, especially if you're dying while recording a song. But I move on.

The setup is like so: On the center of the player is five buttons. The very middle is a play/pause button, which you use for MP3 playing, and as an enter button for editing, accessing your radio presets, and the like. The left and right buttons act as track buttons, rew/ff, and moving up on your radio frequency. The top and bottom buttons act as volume buttons for audio, as well as the levels while recording. The top three buttons mimic the actions listed along the bottom of the screen. I.E., if the middle green listing say radio, hit the middle button, and boom, radio.

And with that, lets get to the big deal of the player: it's recording function. Other hard drive players, as well as a few memory card ones, have a recording function, but only through microphone for spoken word. This one, however, is very unique. Turn on the FM band, and if you start to hear something you like, hit the third button from the top, the screen says "Wait!!!", it activates its memory buffer and starts recording. The beauty of the buffer is that it catches up to the last 30 seconds of what you've heard on that station. If you need to edit a few seconds of your least favorite morning zoo DJ introducing the newest cool song, you can edit out his intro, and if need be, edit out the last few seconds before the DJ honks his horn and goes into another unfunny prank call bit.

My main reason for this machine was the fact that I had an MP3 CD player, a SONICBlue one which worked great but was too bulky to carry. Having a radio band was a good bonus, but the recording was the best part since I like to archive the radio talk shows I listen to. I mean, you can never have enough Howard Stern, right? ;)

This player isn't perfect, though. Press too many buttons at once, or hit the controls too fast, the player locks up. No button presses will snap it out of its funk. Heck, I had to set the player down for two hours until it finally shut itself off. I'm hoping future firmware updates will fix this. (For the computer vocab illiterate, firmware is the internal programming of the hardware in question. Updates make it run easier, faster, and sometimes with new features.)

I like to sum it up like this: if you don't need an FM band, you can save a couple bucks and find similar hard drive players. For the features, though, the price is great, even with the flaws. Radio fans (and people dying for the next Stump the Booey or Kid Kris prank) will find it irreplaceable.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 250