HawgWyld's Full Review: Trekstor i.Beat emo (2 GB) Digital Media Player
My wife ran out and got an iPod Touch before Christmas and the kids went nuts over it. We didn't rush out and get them iPods because those are expensive little items to hand kids (don't feel too bad for them -- each of our two children got Nintendo DS systems for Christmas and a lot of other stuff, besides), but we figured they'd like a couple of MP3 players.
Since I'm a cheap bastard, I gravitated toward the TrekStor i.Beat emo because it was on sale for a mere $15 at Office Depot. These little beauties have performed much better than expected and are truly one of the best buys in the MP3 player world.
What do you get for $15? You get a unit with two gigabytes of storage, some headphones, a USB cable, instructions and a video conversion disc. Frankly, I love the simplicity of this thing as I simply plug the thing into the USB port on my computer to both charge it and drop songs on it. The drag and drop process is as easy as can be as my computer automatically detects the player as a disc drive, thus allowing me to copy files to it.
The player recognizes WAV, MP3 (both the "normal" type and the variable bit rate files that I prefer) and WMA files as far as audio goes and reproduces sound quite well. There's even an equalizer built in that is serviceable (I set both of my kids' players to the "rock" setting and turned them loose). The player also recognizes videos in the SMV format and the included video converter translates files from AVI, MPG and WMV into SMV. The converter works quickly and pretty well. Frankly, I'm not sure how much video anyone will want to store on this thing -- a 2 GB player is great for music, but there's just not a lot of room for video on the player.
Additionally, there's an FM radio built into the player and a recording function that can be used for both the radio and voice recordings. The voice recording feature is handy for those who like to make quick, audio notes of things here and there and is easy to use.
Of course, I have a couple of complaints about the player but they are minor. The biggest problem has to do with the weird, uncomfortable headphones. The headphones are, essentially, a couple of ear buds attached to a weird, cloth-covered cable that is meant to be worn around the neck to hold the player. The ear buds aren't bad, but they tend to break easily, meaning the chances are good you'll have to find some earphones of your own at some point. My kids broke the earphones that came with the player within a week.
Another minor complaint is that the screen goes dark very, very quickly. If you take your finger off any buttons, the thing goes dark in about three seconds -- that means there's not a lot of time to hunt around and figure out what you need to do to get the player to work. That is a real problem because the menu system is easy to learn, but it's a bit clunky in terms of switching between modes (video, radio, audio, etc.), but a little patience prevails there.
Also, the instruction manual is very basic. It covers everything, sure, but it leaves out little details such as charging. It sometimes takes a few seconds for the player to start the charging process and that's something I had to figure out through trial and error. When I first plugged the player in, it started charging immediately, so I thought something was broken the next time I charged it in and the battery meter didn't move. I left it plugged in, however, and the charging process started normally after about 10 seconds.
The controls on the device are good, relatively intuitive and easy to use. The power and recording buttons on the side can be a bit confusing because they are small and hard to read unless you're in a bright room. Still, playing with the device a bit is all most people will need to do to get a hang of it quickly.
The battery life is quite good as a full charge will last about 10 hours of listening time. I'm not sure if the battery can be changed or not but I don't really care, either, as the battery is supposed to last through 500 charges. By the time we max out the battery life, my kids will want something else, anyway. The unit is small, thin and light (about 3 inches tall, 1.5 inches wide, .5 inches deep and weighing in at less then 2 ounces), so it's very portable.
All in all, this is a reliable player that didn't cost much (due to a great Christmas sale, I'm sure) and has survived a fair amount of abuse from my children. It's a heck of a bargain, it's easy to use and even comes with a color display (1.4 inches) that's sharp for video and makes those ID3 tags on audio files easy to read. It's hard to go wrong with this player.
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