A decent, albeit pricey mp3 player/voice recorder combo
Written: Sep 15 '03
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Pros: Voice and music recording, very crisp sound.
Cons: Price, awkward interface.
The Bottom Line: The Pogo RipFlash 128MB delivers wide array of functions rarely found in other devices.
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| NetDanzr's Full Review: Pogo RipFlash (128 MB) MP3 Player |
Almost a year ago, I was looking for an inexpensive digital voice recorder. When I found the RipFlash I considered the mp3 player feature to be just an additional bonus. Over the months, I realized that I lucked into a very solid mp3 player with several important additional features; voice recording being only a small part of them.
The Pogo RipFlash 128 MB is, as its name suggests, a flash memory-based mp3 player. This means that it doesn’t have any movable parts. While players with larger capacity seem to be less expensive on a price-per-byte basis, they all have a built-in hard drive, which rotates when the player is in use. This may result in the same kind of skipping or even stopping whenever the device is shaken too violently as with CD players. Pogo doesn’t suffer from this problem and always delivers an uninterrupted stream of music. In addition, no movable parts means also that the energy usage is lower and the batteries can last longer.
In order to better understand what Pogo actually does, I divided the following review in several parts, describing each function separately.
Music playback
Pogo can play back music in two formats – mp3 and wma. With 128 MB of internal memory, you can fit in two hours of CD quality of mp3 music or 4 hours of wma music. (Pundits will say that 128 kbps encoding is nowhere near CD quality, but I can’t tell the difference.) The Pogo has a huge advantage over other similar players, though: it’s got a Smart Media memory card slot, and can hold an additional 128 MB of memory for an additional 2-4 hours of music.
The playback itself is one of very high quality. The small headphones that are included offer very crisp sound, and hooking the device up to large speakers will only prove that the player does not distort the music in any way. The device also features a built-in speaker, which kicks in when you don’t have the headphones plugged in.
For playback, you’ll have the usual range of options, such as selecting random play, repeating a song or all songs. The controls are large enough to use with gloves on, and even allow you to fast-forward in a song; a feature I’ve been missing all too often in other mp3 devices or even CD players. The transition from the internal memory to the external Smart Media card is seamless, and there is no noticeable slowdown or distortion when you play back songs from the external card. The equalizer allows for four presets – pop, rock, classical and jazz.
Sound recording
Sound recording is actually one of the weaknesses of this player. While the device offers some features that add value to it, their implementation is less than pleasing. Basically, there are two modes of recording here: voice recording and music recording.
The RipFlash features a small, but relatively sensitive built-in microphone. Depending on the encoding level you set, you’ll be able to record up to 32 hours of voice recording, directly in mp3 format. The default setting will allow for 8 hours of relatively high quality mono recording. I’m using the RipFlash for this purpose very often, and the resulting quality may be actually a little too good, with background noise clearly audible.
However, there are two crucial downsides to voice recording. First, whenever the device is off (it turns itself off after a few minutes), some of the settings go back to default. This is especially troublesome for people who want to record on the external card and reserve the internal memory for music, as they will have to change this setting before each recording. Second, once you run out of space, the memory tends to get corrupted, and you’ll end up formatting it, sometimes without being able to retrieve what you recorded.
The RipFlash also offers music recording, which is a great boon to those who either own crippled CDs or, like me, still live in the era of tape recording and are used to synchronize a CD playback with a tape recorder. You’ll be able to connect the device via a cable to your CD player and record music directly into your player, where it gets encoded into the mp3 format. Again, there are several levels of encoding, with the highest being 192 kbps and the default 128 kbps. The latter encoding is also the one where I stop hearing any difference between the file playback and the original CD.
As with voice recording, the implementation is not that good, though. While you can record the whole CD in one large file, it proved too difficult for me to find easy-to-use software to split the files. As such, I stuck to the track-by-track recording. However, here the recording starts only after the device recognizes that the music is playing. As a consequence, all songs have an abrupt beginning, which is very noticeable especially in songs that start immediately with singing.
Interface
The interface on the Pogo device is very easy to use. It takes about half an hour to get familiar with it, as the small display shows very little and you’ll have to scroll through options. The buttons are large enough to use with thin gloves on, and a hold button is a lifesaver especially when you want to keep the device off. My two main gripes are the lack of a backlight on the display, which makes it nearly impossible to change player options in dark, and the fact that the player doesn’t recognize file ID tags and thus cannot show the name of the song that is currently playing.
The interfacing process with the computer is the low point of this device. The drivers are unsigned by Microsoft, which means that my Windows XP tends to loose track of the device and I end up reinstalling the drivers every time I connect it to my computer (considering this happens to me with all removable devices with unsigned drivers, I blame Microsoft for that). This problem doesn’t occur on my Windows 98 computer, though. The player supports only USB 1.1, which results in relatively long download times; I average 250-300 kB per second or around 20 seconds per song.
The device comes with software called MP3 Manager. I found the software a little sluggish, and the interface quite confusing. For example, you download music from the computer and upload it into the computer. I always end up trying to do the opposite thing here. In addition, the software takes a long time to refresh after you manipulate the files. My last complaint here is that the software doesn’t recognize the time of the recording, so all files you record will have the timestamp of when you download (pardon, upload) them to your computer, which makes their future recognition a little harder.
On the other hand, there is one advantage to the RipFlash-PC interface. The software allows you to transfer any files, not only music, to the device. As a consequence, whenever I want to transfer a file that’s too large to fit on a floppy, I simply use the Pogo as an external hard drive.
Other considerations
There are two more things to consider before purchasing a device like this – battery life and price.
The battery life greatly varies. Pogo uses two AAA batteries, and the casing is very thin and unprotected. This means that the batteries will be pretty much exposed to the outside temperature, and their life will vary wildly. I managed to get 16 hours out of them in ideal conditions – in a series of plane trips, when the surroundings were very dry and the temperature mild. On the other hand, when I was trying to dig myself out from the last snowstorm, the batteries died on me after 4 hours. When the batteries die while the device is in use, all settings are set back to default; a feature that doesn’t make me happy, either.
The price of the device is a little steep for my taste. I was lucky to get it under $100 in an outlet store, and I would not recommend paying more than that. At $100, the memory costs around $0.80 per megabyte. This is pretty much in line with flash memory costs, which are around $0.50 per megabyte, and factoring in the price of the device and its features, I find $100 to be fair price. However, compared with $0.02 - $0.05 per megabyte for various jukebox mp3 players, the price is extremely high.
Conclusion
Pogo RipFlash 128 MB is not for everyone. It’s too expensive for people who look for a solid mp3 player. Its interface is a little too clunky for people who want to use it only as a recorder. However, people who look for a multipurpose device that includes a player, a voice recorder and a music recorder should look no further. The ability to expand the memory with a Smart Media card and use the player as an external computer drive is just an added bonus. To my best knowledge this model is out of production by now, and thus can be found relatively cheaply in various outlet stores.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 99
Recommended for: Athletes - Lightweight and Portable, Perfect for the Gym
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NetDanzr
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Location: Chatham, NJ
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