Economically and musically it rocks...
Written: Aug 23 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Low cost, cheap media
Cons: Cheap construction, terrible manual, no ID3 tag support, absolutely impossible and useless programming feature.
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| VincenzoSI's Full Review: MPTrip MP3-CD Player |
On one hand you have one of my "Love it" products; the Diamond Rio 500.
On the other hand, you have a new addition to my collection o' toys the Genica MPtrip.
The RIO cost me $200 and includes 64 megs of onboard RAM and can be expanded up to 128 megs.
The MPtrip can do 60 times that storage AND costs half of what I paid for the RIO which is low anyway.
So is it worth it?
Most definitely. For $115 you get the player, a pair of generic batteries, a blank CDR disc, an A/C adapter which doubles as a battery charger if you pop NiCads into the player, and the player itself. You also get a really REALLY horrific manual, er, pamphlet with really poorly translated foreign instructions. You'll learn more playing with the player than you will reading the manual. [Case in point: At one point in the manual it says that pressing the Repeat button to replay your custom program will do irreparable damage to the player!]
The player itself is hideous. It's a brushed gold type casing and an it has fake chrome silver plastic buttons. It's somewhat flimsy, and the buttons feel like pushing them the wrong way will totally break them apart. I would advise Genica to strongly consider toning down the outward appearance of the player.
A point worth noting is that the player is only $115 dollars, so basically when it comes to quality of construction, you get what you pay for.
Does it work?
Definitely. And very well, with a couple of very minor hiccups.
No ID3 tag support. A big problem when you try to figure stuff out by "track" number. And, the player sorts files by where they are written to the disc, not by their name, so if you have an alphabetical list, the track layout may not end up the same.
A large collection of MP3's in one directory on a freshly burned CDR/CDRW can present problems. It's been my experience that you should keep the collection down to about 80 per folder. 80 minute discs are a no-no, and other than that, you shouldn't run into any real problems.
Variable Bit Rate MP3 files are not supported. This is something that any portable MP3 player should have as a basic standard function, and hopefully in future revisions of the player's software, it will.
Okay, so I named a lot of problems, but the fact is, that for $115 you get a hell of a CD player with 40 seconds of MP3 anti-shock (not much for regular CD's though), a 5 setting equalizer (not 5 bands, but 5 different presets), a line out jack for hooking up to a stereo, a hold switch to keep the buttons from being pressed in your pocket, etc., and most importantly, a cost effective way of managing your MP3 collection. With its ability to read CDR and CDRW discs, you will never be in a pinch for music to listen to.
I would definitely recommend this player, as long as you don't expect the world from it. While it rocks at what it does, there are ways that it could do what it does better.
As the first MP3 CD player under $150, though, you'd have to be crazy to not at least try it. Chances are you probably won't even mind it's shortcomings while you're listening to 10 hours of music on one CD.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
VincenzoSI
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Member: Vincent Ferrari
Location: Staten Island, New York
Reviews written: 43
Trusted by: 14 members
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