Costco's got 'em, Let them keep them!
Written: Oct 04 '03
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Pros: Size, price, expandability
Cons: FM, headphones
The Bottom Line: If you're looking for a MP3 player with a FM tuner, look elsewhere
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| andykay's Full Review: RCA Lyra RD1080 (128 MB) MP3 Player |
This is a remarkably small MP3 player with a FM tuner. The unit comes with headphones, a wristband case, a carrying cord and batteries.
The Good- Very small size. Decent 128MB capacity. Easily expandable with SD/MMC cards. Backlit Screen.
The Bad- FM tuner is all but useless. Headphones offer all the negatives of traditional headphones and ear buds with little of the positive. Controls and instructions are a bit confusing.
I bought this unit on a whim while shopping at Costco, hoping it would replace my 10 year old FM pocket radio/ PDA based MP3 player combination I currently use. Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be.
The Unit is very small and solidly built. The screen has a backlight with a cool bubble distortion and offers surprisingly complete info for its size. The controls consist of 4 buttons surrounding a central joystick and a side mounted volume rocker switch. The controls are sufficiently stiff to avoid unintentional activation with the exception of the 5 way joystick. The joystick is all too easy to move unintentionally. There is a lock feature activated by pressing the "mode" button. The volume rocker is somewhat slow to respond. The top mounted SD/MMC slot for memory expansion comes with no memory card "blank" to protect the slot from accumulating pocket lint when a real memory card isn't used. There is a usb port on the bottom of the unit that is protected by a rubber cover. The battery compartment door is a little too easy to open for a pocketable device and I fear it would be a future problem.
There are 2 manuals, one covering the FM radio and general use, the other covers the MP3 player and how to install the PC software. The Manuals are a bit confusing, particularly on how to turn the unit on (you press and hold either of the lower two buttons).
The included software is Musicmatch Jukebox for file transfers and management and a limited use demo of ID3man. Music match is ok for the management purpose but the transfer functions are a bit weak and confusing. There is no way to change the bit rate of the files during transfer. If you're willing to sacrifice a little quality for quantity of songs, you'll have to downsample the songs manually before you attempt to transfer. I didn't use ID#man, or look at the included "100 free MP3 offer from eMusic".
The MP3 player works well. You can pause, fast forward and rewind with little effort. You can choose continuous play, random play or both. The screen displays track info including artist and song if available. The DSP button allows you to choose from various tone settings (Jazz, Rock, Flat, Bass Tone). The changes are subtle, which is good compared to many awful over exaggerated DSP features on many music devices. With the headphones available to me, all the modes sounded a bit muddy in the bass, a bit light in the high end.
The included headphones are not great. They are large chrome earpads that clip on to each ear, sort of in-between traditional headphones and ear buds. Instead of the best of both worlds, they seem to nail down the worst. As mentioned, the sound is not great but it's the design that turns me off. They're large, don't hold on as well as earbuds but the tangle easily like earbuds. As a personal dislike, I hate unequal length headphone leads, the right lead is longer than the left causing the junction point to constantly rub my chin and cheek. A minor annoyance but one that I do notice.
The FM tuner is this units weak point, and the reason I will be returning it tomorrow. The reception is awful, my 10 year old $8 AM/FM walkman blows it away. It's to weak for fringe areas and not selective enough for urban areas like NYC. There's no Local/Distance switch which this tuner desperately needs. The 10 memory positions are all too easy to change inadvertently with a flick of the joystick and it's not intuitive how to select from the mem points.
I like the size and design, but without a usable FM receiver it's useless to me. I would suggest either looking for a model with better FM or selecting a less costly model that lacks FM altogether
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 110
Recommended for: Beginners - Easy Enough for Tech Newbies
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Epinions.com ID:
andykay
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Reviews written: 24
Trusted by: 5 members
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