Bad design in action
Written: Jun 06 '01
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Pros: It does its basic job - its a light, portable mp3 player.
Cons: Bad design, bad interface, annoying encoding......
The Bottom Line: If you're on a budget and don't want anything too fancy, you might consider this - if you can afford anything else, get that instead.
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| jim18's Full Review: RCA Lyra RD2204 (64 MB) MP3 Player |
Ok. It sounded good. Boy, did it sound good - for 100 english pounds (140$) I could have a brand-spankin-new mp3 player with 64mb of flash-ram. It was cheaper than the competition (by a long way) and the statistics easily measured up. When I got it I was immediately impressed - no-problems with the sound quality. However, within the first hour I'd noticed the first of my long list of gripes with the machine. Its the buttons - they're nice enough - big, responsive, that sort of thing. but you can't lock them - so you've got this thing in your pocket and you can't get through a song because as soon as you move muscle the stop button gets pressed and you're back to square one. I know theres a belt clip but I find this incredibly annoying.
I got home, and wanted to try out the realplayer software. It installed ok, no probs there - the paralell interface was a bit of a biatch - USB would have been much better, but I figured it was a small price to pay for the cheaper player. This feeling was not to last. The software is awful - clunky mechanism and bizarre access to files. Then I found out that anything put on the lyra in encoded into the encrypted .rmx format, which can't be played back by realplayer. For someone like me, who doesn't have internet access on his home PC, any files bought off the internet, or encoded to mp3 on another machine can be copied and kept, as you can put them straight on your C drive, but won't then be accessible via the realaudio software, and can only be played back when put back on the lyra. This, for me, is a nightmare, especially when taking into account the slow paralell interface. It wouldn't be as bad if the lyra was accessible as simply another drive and you could drag and drop any file format onto it, but you have to use the software each time you put a song on it.
Basically - its not at all flexible, the button thing is annoying, and the battery life is none existent. A toy that could have been indispensable, but ended up being more stress than it was worth.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 140
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Epinions.com ID:
jim18
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Location: North, England
Reviews written: 17
Trusted by: 1 member
About Me:
Part time Rock hero/intellectual love god, full time designer.
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