Philips GoGear Mix Sports Clip. My Review.

Good things can come in small packages. This clip-on player from Philips is well thought out, full of features, and sounds great. More than just a music player it will also tune FM radio channels for your listening pleasure. You can use it as a voice recorder or dictation device. It's also a 4gb USB thumb drive that can plug directly into your PC's USB port.

Although the screen display can be flipped 180 degrees, for the purposes of this review I've got it oriented so the controls are along the top edge. They include the Power/Hold slider and a Volume +/- teeter. You'll find a reset hole as well as the microphone input also along that edge.

The face is where you'll find a tilt panel with Up, Down, Play/Pause/Enter, and Back controls. The bottom edge reveals the headphone jack as well as a slide button to eject the USB jack. The right end is where the USB plug hides. Slide it out and you can plug the Mix directly into a USB jack on your PC. It's a bit fatter than most USB thumb drives, so you may need a short USB jumper cable. The main menu consists of 6 options. Music, FM radio, Recording, Folder View, Settings, and Last Played:

Music is the main role for the Mix, and within the Music options you can sort by All Songs, Artists, Albums, or Playlists. There are four play modes accessible from the Setup menu. They include Shuffle All, Shuffle Off, Repeat One, or Repeat All. I found music quality to be decent, although missing some low end. It was easy to find any song by name, album, or artist. The now playing screen is informative, with title, album, artist, position in the song and length of the song, play mode, and battery status all in the view. FM Radio: There are up to 20 preset positions to save your local radio stations in. FM requires the headphone cable to be plugged in as the antenna. Reception will vary depending on the quality, length, and position of that cable. I found FM sound quality to be satisfactory. The auto-tuner was precise and found all my local channels at their published frequencies. The interface is efficient, giving you the option to go into a list of your presets to select a station before the sound kicks in. Once you pick a station the audio level comes up slowly to give you a chance to adjust the volume if it gets too high. A down or up tap of the front controls will take you down or up a preset respectively. You can also opt to enter the app in manual-tune mode. This is handy for when you're in a new area and don't want to reset the preset list. There is no RDS and no FM recording. There is no mute. Once started FM will continue to play until you pick a song from the music app, begin a recording, or turn off the Mix. Recordings: It couldn't be simpler. Once you select the Recordings option you get two choices. You can start a Voice Recording or access the library of existing recordings. Pickup from the internal microphone doesn't appear to be very sensitive. At about 12" from the player my voice did record but at a low level. I had better luck holding the player within 3" of my mouth. I'm not impressed with the quality of the recording compared with against other players I own. Don't buy this player for the recording feature, but it might be handy for a quick voice memo to yourself. Folder View is a simply way to browser the contents on your Mix. You'll find the Music, Playlists, and Recordings folder, as well as any standalone file you may have transferred to the Mix. Settings is where you'll find options to change the display colors, a few equalizer presets to choose from, the Play Mode, Information about the device, and an option to restore it to factory settings. Last Played is the final option. This will return you to the last thing played, be it a recording, radio station, or music file.
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The Mix is a decent player at a reasonable price. I found mine at my local Target for $47. Battery is rated for 25 hours on a charge. The included headphones are designed to stay on your ears while jogging and while I can not attest to that capability I can verify they will stay attached while you mow the lawn or surf the web. ;) The controls are well marked, straight forward, and simple to understand. I enjoy it's simplicity and compact size. All the optional software was include on the device itself rather than a secondary CD to lose. It won't win any audiophile awards, but should bring a few years of music enjoyment to anyone who owns one. I'll rate this one a Good Buy.

Owner's Manual (PDF)

Latest Firmware (1.05)

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Cowon S9 Gets Another Update! Firmware 2.30b

Update: Firmware Version 2.30b (still a beta release) is now available for download. You can find it HERE along with info on what it includes. For direct download of the Zipped file click HERE. The main difference between 1.30b and 2.30b is that 2.30b doesn't include a dictionary icon or application. It looks like Cowon has decided to be king of the hill among the Korean players. They are at a feverish pace with updates to their beautiful S9 media player. These aren't minor bug fixes.

- This update enables full access to the S9's tilt sensor. Data returned is no longer limited to up, down, left, and right.

- There's a new game to exploit it. Hunter has five levels, each a little harder than the previous. The objective is to not get hit by a bullet. You tilt the S9 to move the character around the screen. The longer you last without getting hit the higher your score. It is similar to the ancient arcade asteroids game, except you can't shoot back. It proves how sensitive the tilt sensor is.

- They've completely started over with music art display in landscape view. You get a 3 x 5 array of your album art. Slide left or right to see more pages.

- Tap on a cover to see a big view and a list of the songs in the album. Do a quick double tap on a song title to start playing that song. The CD below the art appears to spin if a song is playing. The album name overlays it.

- You now can opt to give the S9 a shake to change songs forward or back a track. You can also optionally lock off both landscape Matrix View and the Shake feature. - It's still in beta, so you can expect a few more improvements before the final release. A few things that still need work include remaining in your previous sort mode once you select a song from the landscape matrix view.

You can download the 1.30b firmware HERE. Some info thanks to Google Translate is HERE.

Enjoy!
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Jensen SMPV-4GBTA. Portable Digital Media Player. My Review

I stumbled across this interesting player while browsing my Target portable electronics aisle. Just under $70 for 4gb capacity it plays songs, little videos, tiny photos, ebooks, and even does a decent job of recording voice. It's also got an attractive but slightly confusing touchpad interface.
Included in the package is a standard USB cable, some basic earbuds, a registration card, small software disc, and user manual. The device itself is as simple as can be. The bottom edge is where you'll find the USB port and headphone jack.
The top edge has a simple power/off slider and a place to hook a wrist strap. There is a microphone somewhere, but no marked indication for it on the body. Construction is decent, although they took no time to disguise the screws that hold it together. Looks like it would be easy to inspect the insides if you wanted to.

It's not large at roughly 1.69"wide x 3.5" long x .375" thick. It weighs 51 grams or 1.8 ounces. It has a nice heft to it. Below you can see it next to my Samsung T10. The screen is only 1.46", but is full color for photo display. You can choose from dark, blue, or pink for the background menu color. As for photo display the resolution is only 176 x 132 pixels. Most inexpensive photo key chains do better.

Voice recording is decent. The mic is more sensitive than most I've tested. There are Quality (Long Play, Normal, and High), VAD (Voice Auto-Detect), and AGC (Automatic Gain Control) toggles in the settings menu for recording. Recordings are saved as WAV files, and can be played back from within the recording app.

Music playback is acceptable, although it's hard to sort through and find a specific song when you want to. You can only see one song title at a time on the screen. It'll play MP3, WMA, and WAV files. Estimated play duration is about 7 hours before needing a recharge. You can sort by file or classification (id3 tags). There appears to be one playlist you can create and play from. You can enable A3D mode for a more 3D sound, although the effect depends on your music files. There are 6 EQualizer presets to choose from but no user defined options. You can shuffle or repeat. Nothing much more.

Video playback isn't worth bothering with in my opinion. The only supported format is MKV (MatrosKa Video). This is the first I've heard of this format despite having reviewed quite a few other video capable players. There is apparently no licensing fee required to support it, so it's likely we'll be seeing more and more of it. For now the included software is required to convert video into this format. With the required resolution being 160 x 128, there won't be much detail to appreciate on the Jenson's tiny screen. No further info, as it's not worth my time to convert a video for testing.

Photo display is possible, but again limited by the small screen. This Jenson will display JPG and BMP formats. You can put photos on that are larger than the display, but there is no zoom function and you'll only see a 160 x 128 version of them. I copied a few 480 x 272 photos to the Jenson. Color reproduction is close. The images load and display on the small screen. Tapping the bottom "play" control started a slide show of the images, although I can't find any way to control the timing of the images, and it was impossible to stop the show until I went back to the main menu choices.

Text (ebook) viewing is also supported, but again I don't see the point. The Jenson supports only .TXT files. I suppose a simple grocery list might be handy to have with you, but even a short story would be a trying experience to read on this small screen.

There is one game include on the device. Gobang it's called, and essentially your goal is to get five tiles in a row before your opponent (the computer) does. While it is not impossible to play, the control pad is difficult to master and with such a tiny screen a magnifying glass may be required to see what you're doing.

Key Lock. If you don't touch the screen for 30 seconds the device locks off all inputs until you unlock it again. To unlock you have to hold your finger on the menu icon for a few seconds until the padlock image opens. This is an extremely aggravating "feature" of the Jenson. There is no way to turn it off or change the time to a longer period. Imagine listing to a song for a minute or two, then wanting to skip to another one or even change the volume. You won't be able to do either until you press the menu icon for a few seconds to unlock the device first. VERY annoying. For this reason alone I get aggravated every time I use this device.

UI. The user interface needs work. There is what appears to be a four direction (NSEW) with center button touchpad, and a "M"enu icon to press. Yet the direction pad is only left and right, while the center vertical strip is a scroll pad for going up or down a list or controlling volume up and down. The M button is your main select/enter command. This is not intuitive at all. A long press of the M button will take you up to the main menu choices. A long press at the bottom of the vertical touch strip will power off the device. Tap the bottom of this strip for play/pause control. Nothing happens when you tap the center spot of the controls. I don't see why manufacturers feel the need to re-invent how you control a player. Jenson may think they've got an original input scheme here, but it's a cludgy system for accessing your media.

Conclusions? There are too many things wrong with this Jenson player for me to recommend it to anyone. I was surprised to find it didn't have an FM radio, as every other player I own (except iPods) does. Finding a particular song is difficult if not impossible. The user interface is unintuitive and frustrating. I'd have been more impressed if they had left out photo and video play in exchange for a better music app. Yes, it will play your music. Yes it will show photos and videos and text. It does none of these things well, though. My advice? Don't buy one.

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iRiver P7. My Review

If you are looking for something that has a big screen and can play your videos then the iRiver P7 may be just what you need. With a 4.3" touchscreen and an original interface the P7 is an excellent video/photo display device. You also get ebook (TXT) display, Music play, FM radio with recording, and voice recording. There's a world clock, calculator, and calendar too. Included in the box is a Quick Guide, Software CD, Warranty booklet, Headphones with pads, Data Cable, and a stylus.
The Data Cable is proprietary. Plugged into your PC you are presented with three options: Power and Data, Power and Music, or only Power.

One nice thing about the touchscreen is that you can touch it with your finger or a stylus. A simple aluminum (I think) stylus is included. Dimensions are 0.53" thick by 4.44" wide by 2.9" tall. It weighs 174 grams or 6.1 ounces. For comparison my iPod Touch weighs 4.2 ounces and my Zune 80 weighs 4.9 ounces. It's no lightweight for sure.

Controls include a power button, volume +/-, and a menu button across the top edge. Along the right side is the headphone jack, microphone, hold slider, wrist strap connection point, microSD slot and a reset hole. The data port is under a sliding bar on the bottom edge. The back has a speaker slot, and the front has a small led charge indicator light.
UI. Turned on you are presented with "designed by iriver" as the Operating System loads up. No icons on this touchscreen. The home page is like a contemporary magazine contents page. Each application has it's own section of the screen. Music displays the album art of the last or current song playing. Photo is the last one you viewed. If there was art with the movie you last watched it'll display in the video section. You'll see the last radio channel listened to, and in the document section you get a snippet of the last text you viewed. I have to admit that I was not overly impressed the first time I turned on the P7. It's not obvious what to do, but touching any area on the screen invariably opens an application. Touch the album cover art and you'll find yourself in the music application. The upper most level gives you the choice of Now Playing, Quick List, All Music, Artists, Genres, "My Playlist", and "My Rating" to sort your music by. Quick list is basically a playlist you can create as you browse through your songs.

The Music App is straight forward and competent. Supported formats include MP3(8-320kbps), WMA(8-320kbps), OGG(Q-Q10), FLAC, and WAV. Music sounds great. The options along the bottom of the Now Playing screen include back (to music list), RWD, Pause/Play, FFwd, AB tagging, Bookmark, and Goto (bookmarks). You get a roughly 1.375" square album art image, a dynamic waveform graphic, the Title, EQ option, Shuffle/Repeat access, and the option to rate (0-5 stars) the song. A side menu gives you access to SRS WOW HD settings, User EQ settings, and Fade-in ON/OFF. If your song has lyrics attached a swipe across the album art will reveal them. A long swipe across the width of the screen will slide the art over to show a short section of the song list to scroll through and choose from. Lastly there is a standard M in the top right to take you to the home menu from any page. Video playback is also right to the point and excellent. Formats include AVI, WMV, MP4, RM.RV, DAT/MPG, 3GP/K3G, and FLV. The video app remembers where you are within any video previously played. You can stretch video to fill the whole screen. The expected skip back/forward and play/pause are there. You also get the same bookmarking options the music app had. The submenu has Ratio, Video Option, and Subtitles, with Scan Speed and Play mode under Video Option. I've tested MP4, AVI, and WMV files on my P7. All played fine. The only negative thing I can find about video play on the P7 is related to the screen technology used. The AMOLED screen of the iRiver SPINN can be viewed from any angle without color distortion. The P7's LCD screen discolors when viewed from any low angle, and dims a little when viewed from the side or above. It's also a little washed out compared to the same video played on any AMOLED screened player.

Photos are beautiful, although again not as stunning as they appear off the AMOLED screens of the Cowon S9 or iRiver SPINN. The P7 will rotate your photos to best fit the screen automatically, or you can rotate them yourself. Zoom and pan to 1/2, 1/3, or 1/4 of the photo on the screen, but not fluidly. Photo scaling and sliding is nothing to be proud of but it does work. You get to control the timing of your slide show, and can sort photos within folders to specify a subset you might want to slide show through. The 4.3" screen certainly improves the experience as it's close to the size of dedicated digital photo frames. You may not mind looking at your photos on a 2" screen ( of an Ipod Nano for example), but once you see them at 4.3" you won't want to go back. Recording is straight forward and versatile. Tap the red circle on the home screen and you're in the recording app. The submenu lets you pick from 3 quality settings including 64, 96, and 128Kbps WMA. The mic is on the right end of the P7, and I got the best recording if I talked directly into it or at least tilted the P7 so the right end was toward me. Once you have a recording or two you can play them directly from the recording app. Your list of recordings is revealed if you slide the screen from right to left.

The calculator appears better than I normally find on Korean made PMPs. This one has memory functions, square root, and percentage. Using it is a little confusing, however. One simple way to find the Golden Ratio is to take the square root of 5, divide it by two, then add one. This calculator won't let me enter "5 √ ÷ 2 = + 1 =". The math can be done, but not without employing the memory to save intermediate values. It doesn't seem to cache current results for the next calculation. Fix this, iRiver!Radio. Nothing special here. The P7 FM Radio app won't bother doing anything until you plug in some headphones (antenna), and actually reminds you to. Once plugged in, you can manually tune or have the P7 automatically scan for and create a preset list of available channels. No RDS. You can record from FM, and choose from three different quality settings. There is no scheduled record. Competent, but not extraordinary.

Text. A nice option for a big screened player. You can put any TXT file on the P7 and view it there. The screen will report how many pages of text there is in the file. It will auto-scroll the text for you, using a variable rate you can set in the submenu. You've got three sizes of fonts to choose from, also in the submenu. You can also pick from several languages. There is a bookmarking option, and once you have set at least one bookmark in a file you can then pick from a list of the bookmarked positions to go to. There is no font or background color option. The black/gray text on the white background is easy enough to read though. My old eyes appreciate the large font option.

Conclusions? At $199 for a 16gb model I think the P7 is a bargain. It has a microSD slot that supports at least 8gb cards (largest I had to try). It's not ideal as a pocketable player, but would be an excellent media device to keep in your briefcase or purse. It's an excellent way to show off photos and videos. You can sync media with it using Windows Media Player or the included Jetaudio app, or just drag and drop media files directly onto it. It played everything I put on it except a protected WMV file that was included with a BluRay movie. There is a rumor that it supports video output, but I have found no concrete proof of this.

I've you've been looking for a large screened player, this is a good one. It's likely to get better with firmware updates. I'm keeping mine.

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Firmware version 1.15 LINK (English). IRiver LINK.

Home-Made Tripod Mount for the AAXA P1 Projector

One of the things that bothers me about the little AAXA pico projector is that it doesn't come with a tripod mounting hole. Nextar, who sells their own version of this same projector, recognized the need and packages a custom mounting bracket/tripod with theirs. Using the P1 is difficult without a stable platform, so I set about to create my own. I started with a scrap of 1/4" clear plastic, 3.625" x 3.625" square. There is a single hole in the bottom of the P1 which I decided to use as my reference point. A 5/32" hole through the plastic lets me push a banana plug though it and into that hole.

The banana plug expands into the hole so it won't fall out. So far it's the best removable pin I could find. It keeps the P1 from sliding off the platform. I cut a slot in the plastic to expose the vents in the bottom of the P1. I pressed 5mm (0.1969 inches) shelf pins into 3/16" (0.1875) holes on each side of the platform. These keep the P1 from spinning about the banana plug.

The tripod itself is an inexpensive one I found at my local Target store. You could use any tripod that has a 1/4" threaded post and doesn't interfere with the protruding banana plug. I found the approximate center of mass below the P1, then drilled (#7 drill bit) and tapped (1/4-20) the hole for the tripod post.

An easy project if you've got some tools. I cut the plastic on my bandsaw, then filed the edges smooth. I drilled a 5/16" hole for the vent slot, then used the bandsaw to extend that hole to the edge of the plastic. I used a drill press to drill all the holes. I don't recommend using a hand-held drill. I even used the drill press to press the metal pins into their slightly undersized holes in the plastic.

Those side pins were precisely positioned, and leave no room for the P1 to move between them. Notice that they don't block any vents or interfere with controls/jacks on the P1.

All in all I'm happy with this prototype. I like the clear plastic but it's gotten a little scratched up in the process. I've got some black fusion paint I may eventually use to paint it black. Stay tuned for my "Easy, Portable Projection Screen" post.

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AAXA P1 Pico Projector. My Review.

Do you own an iPod, Zune, or any other media player with video output and wish the device had a larger screen? For $239 or less you can have your own projector to increase the video size up to 50" diagonally. With 640 x 480 pixel resolution the AAXA P1 Pico Projector does a fine job so long as you have a white surface to project on and a dark room to project in.

Included in the package is a red/white/yellow RCA to 1/8" 4- conductor audio/video cable, 100 to 240 vAC to 5vDC 2.0 amp charger, a simple owners manual, and the P1 with it's (removable) lithium battery inside. The AAXA P1 is one inch thick, 4.1 inches long, and 2.3 inches wide.

In addition there are accessory A/V cables for several devices. Below is the one for iPods. The P1 comes with one video file and 3 photos already using some of it's 1gb of internal memory. On the right side there is a microSD slot which will read up to 2gb microSD cards. The rear panel has a 5vDC jack, A/V input, headphone output, and the power switch (Battery/Off/DC). There is a micro USB jack next to the volume dial on the left side. There is a rubber lens cap that stays attached but will pivot out of the way of the lens when the P1 is in use. The top of the player has a focus bar and a 5-way button array for software control. You'll also see a reset hole next to the charge/usb LED status light in the bottom right corner. The P1 doesn't even need an external device to entertain you. Although files space is limited you can put a movie or two, several photos, music files, and even a few text documents on board. The P1's software alone can play several media formats:

Video: AVI*, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4 3G, WMV9/VC1, ASF, RM/RMVB*, and FLV formats.

* The RM/RMVB video play only supports video files which are below 720 x 576. The bigger the volume file is, longer will be the time to start playing.

* AVI video play only supports video files below 800 x 480. The bigger the volume file is, longer will be the time to start playing.

Audio: MP3, WMA, WAV, APE, FLAC, AAC/AAC+, and MPEG1/2/2.5 formats.

Photos: JPEG, BMP, and GIF formats.

Text: The documentation doesn't mention any form of document display, but the Rockchip Software includes an ebook option. I threw a TXT file onto the P1 and it was easy to read. I'll have to play around a bit more to see if it supports any other ebook or document formats.

Light is provided by very bright LED rated for 20.000 hours of life. There's an internal fan and several vent holes around the body to keep the P1 cool. It does generate a bit of heat when running. The fan noise is minimal and easily covered by the sound of your movie or music.

Battery life is rated for 1.5 hours of continous use, but I haven't had a chance to test that.

I'm very impressed with the quality of projection. It will project even larger than the rated 50 inches but you'll need a bright screen and pitch black room to appreciate it. The P1's speaker is small, but serves it's purpose. Headphones will give you a better audio experience. There is no tripod mount which would be useful. To get an un-distorted image the P1 needs to be centered in front of your projection surface. You'll have to be clever to find a way to hold it in place while you enjoy your movie.

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So is AAXA's P1 Pico Projector worth $239? With support of so many video and music formats and 640 x 480 resolution I consider it a bargain. Now I just need a 50" piece of white foam core board for a projection surface. No white walls in my house.

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