Great Sound, Cool Toy!
Written: Nov 20 '03 (Updated Dec 14 '03)
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Pros: capacity (~3-6 hours!), reasonable price, expandability, ease of use
Cons: difficult to use skiing/snowboarding, funky "headphones"
The Bottom Line: reasonable price, good capacity, easy to use, RCA brand name, funny "headphones", difficult to operate with gloves on
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| pmartinj's Full Review: RCA Lyra RD1071 (128 MB) MP3 Player |
I bought my Lyra to listen to music primarily while snowboarding, but it seems like I'm playing with it all the time! I love the fact that I can jog or ride my mountain bike without any skipping and the thing is very, very light!
I shopped around, and you might be able to find a "no-name" brand 128Mb player for maybe 10-20% less, but I figured that RCA was a well-known, long established company, and so they might back their product. I've only had it about two months, but I haven't had any problems with it thus far. I considered the 64Mb player, but the price difference is only about $20; in my opinion, the lower-capacity model doesn't make much sense financially.
I'm loading music into the player from PCs with Windows 98SE and Windows 2000 Professional operating systems with no problems whatsoever. I have heard that some folks have had trouble getting this to work, but it's been easy with my computer. My older machine with 98SE takes maybe a minute or two to load a song, and my faster office computer loads songs even faster.
I'm able to get about 3-4 hours of music (roughly 40-50 songs) at near-CD quality (96kps), which sounds good to my ears. With the expansion memory, I guess I can double this, but I haven't tried this yet. If you have to be able to hear different songs all day, you might be frustrated, but it doesn't bother me. However, I often listen to one CD all day while snowboarding, so having 50 songs to listen to seems just fine.
My only complaint is that it is going to be difficult to use while snowboarding with gloves on. I have to take off my gloves, unzip my jacket, and reach in to skip songs or change the volume. It came with an arm-strap to wear it on the outside of my jacket, but I'm a little nervous about falling on it, and I'd still have to take my gloves off to operate the controls. I wish they would come up with some sort of wired remote with buttons that could be operated with gloves.
Also, a minor complaint is that the headphones are sort of weird; I don't particularly like them. I switched to a pair of reasonable quality headphones, and the sound is fantastic!
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On a side note, if you're listening to classical music while you snowboard, this might be of interest to you:
www.SnowboardingForGrownups.com
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 80.00
Recommended for: Athletes - Lightweight and Portable, Perfect for the Gym
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Epinions.com ID:
pmartinj
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Location: Lake Tahoe, CA, USA
Reviews written: 17
Trusted by: 0 members
About Me:
snowboarder (20 years!), teacher, bass player, cyclist...
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