Overall a great player, but has some problems.
Written: Oct 14 '04
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Pros: small, good battery life, expandable
Cons: 200 file limit, no folder browse
The Bottom Line: If you are looking for a cheap, small yet expandable mp3/wma player, this has a lot of bang for the buck.
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| spawnflagger's Full Review: RCA Lyra RD1021 (64 MB) MP3 Player |
I was looking for an MP3 player for the gym with only the following requirements -
a) was small/lightweight
b) supported SD expansion
I found this player for $55 on amazon, so I went for it.
You can find it for $49.99 on rca.com now.
The Good
To my surprise, this one is actually a lot smaller than it looks in any of the pictures.
Sound quality is good. The DSP (equalizer) works well in rock mode, but the other modes don't change the output enough to be worth using over the "flat" (off) mode. The headphones are average. The cord isn't that long (about 4'). They are lightweight, but I prefer the audio quality and longer cord of my Sony clip-ons over these.
I tried MusicMatch jukebox, but wasn't impressed. All the features I wanted were only in the Pro version, so it's not worth using instead of WMP. There was a coupon for 100 free mp3's from emusic.com, though I haven't used it yet. It's much easier to just drag and drop files to the drive letter(s) using windows explorer. It actually shows up as 2 drives, 1 for the internal 64Mb, and 1 for whatever SD card you have inserted. I would still recommend using a USB 2.0 SD card reader - file transfers are much faster than going through the device itself.
Also, it supports both FAT32 and FAT16 formatted SD cards (most players only support FAT16).
The Bad
Now for the problems:
(as of firmware ver 1.607)
(ranked most to least annoying)
I have a 1Gb PQI SD card ($95 shipped from ebay), and the card works in the player, but also unveiled a 200 file limitation of the player. i.e. if I have 250 mp3/wma files on the card, I can only ever play the first 200. And if those are in subfolders, that number is even less than 200. I verified the same problem with a 256Mb card (placing 220 small mp3's on it) - and it still only showed 200 files at most.
You cannot FF/REW variable bit rate MP3's. They only move forward or backward in real time (so it's essentially a temporary mute - useless). Regular bit-rate files work fine though.
You cannot browse folders. All files are linearly arranged in the order they were copied onto the device.
(I recommend this nice little app - ReOrganize! [http://www.oliver-frietsch.de/reorganize/?lng=en] - it rearranges the tracks on the media so they play in the order you like.)
Instead of showing the filenames if there are no ID3 tags, it just shows garbled text. (I use Media Tagger [http://www.volny.cz/media-tagger/eng/index.html] to fix those - adding tags by filename is also available in the pro version of musicmatch, but for a fee)
Sometimes when the battery is below half, it doesn't read the files on the SD card when it is first powered on. Removing and reinserting the card fixes this.
The process of programming playlists on the player is so time consuming, it's useless. MusicMatch can't create them either. Would be nice to see support for standard .m3u or .pls...
The random play mode is not very random. (often picks tracks 1 or 2 away from current track, and will repeat some songs before all have been heard)
The armband is too tight (max adjustment to 12", a stretch to 14"). Your mileage may vary.
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hopefully some of the problems will be addressed in a future firmware. I will update this review accordingly if that happens.
Overall though, for $50 or less, this is a great player with expandability.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 55
Recommended for: Athletes - Lightweight and Portable, Perfect for the Gym
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Epinions.com ID:
spawnflagger
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Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 2 members
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