Latte Espresso Touchscreen Media Player, 16gb. My Review!

Latte looks like they want to move up the ladder in the touchscreen player market. Target.com sells this beautiful 3" touchscreen Espresso model in 8gb and 16gb versions for $120 and $150 respectively. No cutting costs on hardware features, as this player features a G-sensor, Haptic Feedback, Voice and FM Recording, and FM broadcast to any nearby FM radio. Target listed a microSD card slot, but my Espresso DID NOT have one. Target also lists a calendar app which doesn't exist on the Espresso.

The packaging is a nice change from plastic blister packs. Slide the top off to find the player. Lift out the player to find the normal contents beneath. You'll find a standard USB to mini-USB cable, some nice sounding in-canal earbuds, a user manual, warranty card, and coupon for 50 free songs. The earbuds appear to be well made and designed to compliment the Espresso's style. They come with uneven length cables to the buds which makes them easy to wrap behind your head. They also came with a nice net bag and spare set of tips. As a bonus they also sound Great. Good bass, plenty loud, external sound isolating, no audible noise, and expressive across the audio spectrum. They are on sale for $5.99 at Lattezone.com (regular $14.99) though, so don't be upset if they sound or look cheap to you. The only external control is the Power/Play/Pause/Hold slider. On the same end you'll find the USB and headphone jack. There is a small reset hole just around the corner. I love the way the Espresso looks, with a clean simple bronze body evenly framing the 3" touchscreen. The back and sides appear to be aluminum with a fine bevel between them . The front screen surround is plastic. The back is brushed, and the overall finish does a good job at not showing fingerprints. If you care about where your headphone jack is, then the Espresso has the perfect solution. The internal G-sensor knows where down is, and no matter how your rotate it the icons and apps all rotate to stay upright. The main menu is a simple array of icons. A tap takes you to either the files list for the app or right into the (radio) player. There is a nice haptic vibration to confirm your selection. Music. This Latte will play back MP3, WMA, FLAC, APE, and AAC (no DRM) files. I've tried MP3, WAV, WMA, and FLAC with success, although it wouldn't play lossless WMA files. The music app is nearly complete. Missing is the ability to advance to any part of a song. There doesn't appear to be gapless playback. I couldn't find any playlist support in the manual or on the device, but there is an option to add songs to a single favorites list. The now-playing screen lets you tap between album art, a graphic equalizer, EQ/bitrate/repeat/shuffle info, or the ID3 info including title, album, and artist. There is a large PLAY/PAUSE button, with track and volume buttons smaller and along the right side (or top in portrait view). You also get an A-B button, lyrics toggle, settings icon, and BACK (previous screen) icon. Finding a single song in a long list is a tedious process. There is no reliable way to jump to a relative position in a list, and with no swipe or fast scroll of the list the touchscreen capabilities are underutilized. Yet this music app is better than most I've seen on budget Chinese media players. I've been enjoying a shuffle though my music collection as I write this. Music gets a B+.

Video. Video format includes AVI, WMV, RM, RMVB, and FLV. Video is the only visual media to not rotate to portrait view. You can still flip the headphone end from right to left and the video will flip. I've tried WMV and AVI files on the Espresso, and although they play there is occasional frame drop. Audio will also get slighly out-of-sync. This may be no problem with videos formatted to fit the native resolution of the screen. My videos were all 480 x 272 or larger. The screen resolution is 420 x 240, but the user manual claims videos up to 800 x 480 (AVI) will play. This is no OLED screen, but videos look decent, and are certainly watchable. The resolution is slighty below what other 3" players feature, but on such a small screen the difference is not apparent. On a side note, the new (and expensive) Sony Walkman 3" t0uchscreen player has the same resolution yet worse video codec/format support. Video playback gets a B-.

Photos. You can view JPEG, BMP, and GIF images. You can rotate the screen, but images don't auto-rotate to fit the screen, nor will they reliably rotate as the screen rotates. There is a one-step zoom option. You can pan around a zoomed image, but screen response is slow and a bit unpredictable. Images looks fine on the screen though, when you can avoid glare. This app is immature, and my experience suggests it won't be updated. Photo display gets a C+.
Text. TXT files can be read. You get three font sizes, as three font colors to choose from. The text will rotate as you turn the player for landscape or horizontal views. Legibility depends on the background and font color you choose, but text is crisp on the 420 x 240 screen. Moving through a large text file isn't as easy as it could be. It should be easy enough to throw a grocery list on the player, though you can't create one on the player itself. Text gets a C+.

FM Radio. Works as expected. You can tune manually or let it autotune and select by preset stations. The presets page irritatingly doesn't let you pick a preset and jump to it, but it does let you delete or add stations easily. No RDS info. No HD radio tuning. Reception will vary depending on your headphones and orientation, as the headphone cable serves as the FM antenna. You can also record off of FM. You get two quality settings. To my ears the high quality WAV recording produced sounds just like the song did playing over the air. It take RDS to get an A from me, so FM Radio gets a B.

Voice Recording. There are two quality settings and five level settings. Recordings are in the .WAV format. I have no idea where the mic is on the Espresso but facing the screen the pickup seemed to be fine. There was noticeable 'static' in my recording. I could hear it through the headphone both while recording and playing back what I'd recorded. Not enough to make the recording useless, but something that will keep this feature of the Espresso from replacing your dictation machine. You can pause and resume while recording, and choose to save or not save a recording you've just made. You'll need to go into the music app or explorer to find an play back your recordings. Voice Recording gets a C-.

Stopwatch is your bonus app. Very basic. No lap times, and only a single timer. It displays time down to 100ths of a second. You can pause and resume a timing. There is also a reset icon. The display will rotate as the device rotates. That's it. Nothing special. C.

Explorer is what explorer does. Have a grand tour of the files you've put on your player.

Settings. Among other things the Settings option lets you turn on or off haptic response and the G-sensor. You can change or disable the backlight and power OFF timings. You'll also find your background choices here. Photo slide show timing is also here, although it would have been more useful in the Photo app.

·

Summary. I strongly suggest you use a soft tipped stylus with the Espresso. It's hard to be precise enough with a fat finger as the small icon/targets demand. Otherwise I find this Latte a good value for the money. FM broadcast from a media player is very convenient, and it works well on the Espresso. You can set the frequency you want to broadcast at, and any FM radio with 30 feet or so should be able to play your music. A cheaper alternative to wireless audio than Bluetooth although not as versatile. It's not as nice a player as the Samsung P2 or P3, but you get twice as much memory capacity for the same money. Target seems to have the best price on them right now, but don't trust their description. There is NO memory slot and no calendar on the Espresso. If you can get over that, I highly recommend Latte's Espresso.

4D

Ematic 3 Inch Touchscreen Media Player

Three inch touchscreen players are coming out of the walls these days. Now Ematic gets into the game with it's own 8gb effort. Available from Walmart.com, the $79.99 price seems pretty amazing for what you get. For beginners there is the 8gb capacity. Add in a MicroSD slot for added future capacity. Now sum up the rest of the hardware features:

FM Radio and FM recording.

Built-in speaker.

Rechargeable Li-Polymer Battery.

E-Book (text) support.

Microphone for Voice Recording.

USB 2.0 Storage Device capable.

Did I mention it's a 3" touchscreen player? The package includes the expected (standard) mini USB charge/sync cable, in-canal earbuds, warranty card and user manual. There is also a small stylus and cleaning cloth.

For a touchscreen interface, Ematic's is still immature. There is no swipe action support. To scroll through lists you have to tap a down or up icon. It's clear they took the buttons from their non-touchscreen players and made graphic replicas of them on the screen. No advanced thinking here. You can select a file or function by tapping on it, but sorting through a long list of songs will be painful. Tapping the down or up arrow only moves one line at a time instead of one page at a time. If you have 500 songs on the player it may take you 250 taps to get to the one in the middle. Fortunately there is ID3 tag support, and you can sort your music by All Music, Album, Artist, Genre, Favorites, and Recordings. When you've got a song playing there is a Current Play option as well. Move to the bottom of the options and you find a Hold Recollection choice, Dir List choice, and MediaLib Update choice. I commend Ematic for being thorough here.

·

Music: There is no album art support, but the Music app is otherwise complete. The Now Playing screen displays ID3 information, Volume, progression, a graphic equalizer, count (138/473), and Filename. You have buttons to access music settings, back to the file list, and main menu. You can even turn these buttons OFF if you don't want to see them at the top of the screen.

This Ematic will play MP3, WMA, WAV, and ASF files. It'll display lyrics if your songs have them (in the right format). I had no trouble playing MP3, WMA, and WAV files. The quality was surprisingly good. You get several equalizer presets including Rock, Pop, Classic, Bass, and Jazz. There is a single 5-band user equalizer you can customize. You'll find a 3D and BASS option too. I prefer my Music "Normal", but whatever you choose will be indicated on the now-playing screen. There is no gapless playback, but the delay between consecutive songs is small. Output is loud. With in-canal earplugs I found a measly "4" setting was loud enough for my old ears. This Ematic could easily cause hearing damage on it's higher settings. It should have no trouble with larger headphones. The Music app gets an A- , primarily for lack of album art support.

Video: The Ematic claims to play AVI, RM, RMVB, FLV, and WMV video files. I threw a 480 x 272 AVI file and it played fine. It also played (some of) my MP4 files and WMV videos. Don't trust the specs on the box or in the user manual. The Ematic appears to be better than they claim. I would occasionally notice a little audio/video sync error, but a tap of the Pause then Play again would clear it up. The reflective glass over the screen was the biggest flaw for video playback, as it causes glare in all but the darkest room. I'm impressed with video playback on this Ematic. For the broad codec and resolution support, as well as large 3" screen, the Ematic get's an A- for Video. It was only the glare that detracts.

Photo: The Ematic displayed any .JPG photo I threw on it. The crude UI makes zooming and rotating a photo very cumbersome, but you can at least do both. Zoom appears to be limited to 2x though. There doesn't appear to be a slide show option. No Swipe to change photos. You can have music playing while photos display, but with no automatic slide show it's pretty boring. Photos don't look as good on the LCD'd Ematic as they do an my AMOLED Cowon S9 or Iriver SPINN, but they'll impress anyone who hasn't seen an OLED display yet. Still a screen glare problem as with videos. It appears Photo display is the weakest effort on this player. Photo Display gets a C+. There is far more touchscreen potential.

FM Radio: The Radio app is straight forward and easy to use. Like every other player the FM radio requires headphones to be plugged in for it's antenna. Reception will vary with your location and the headphones you use. In the radio settings menu you set your region. Then have it auto-search for stations. Once it has located your channels they can be individually deleted from or added to. ON the radio screen there is a small record icon next to the station number. Tap it to open the record screen. There is only one quality choice (Low), and the recordings will be in WAV format. Sadly this will be a 32kbps 8KHz Mono Lossy file. For FM Music this is not acceptable, and far below the standard set by other players that can record from FM. It might suffice for talk radio, but what you'll hear from the recording will sound different from what you heard on the radio. There is no RDS support, and with such poor recording quality the radio app gets a B-.

E-Book: Text can be viewed but not edited on this Ematic. You get 3 font sizes. You get three font colors to choose from. Text can be manually paged through or will auto-page at a fixed rate. Lines are automatically wrapped to fit, and it appears tabs in the text are supported. The e-book app is better than most, so E-Book gets an A-. It would have been nice to view in portrait mode.

Voice Recording: Yes, you can record your voice with this Ematic. There is a record level setting, and I'll recommend you set in on the largest number right away. Voice is recorded in Low quality mono WAV format. There is no visible mic, so they might be using the speaker on the rear for input. I got much better results talking into the back of the player. You'll also need to be close, as it won't easily pick up noises from more than a foot or so away. It doesn't look like this could be used to record lectures. You can pause then resume a recording. You'll have to leave the recorder app to listen to your recordings. Voice recording gets a C. Average, with no exceptional value.

Extra(s?): There is only one "extra" on this Ematic, and it's a very basic stopwatch. You get one play button that will start or pause the timer. To reset it you have to exit out of the app. That's it.

Settings: In the settings menu you have a few things you can customize. You can change the timing and brightness of the backlight. You can hide or display the battery status icon. You can change between 8 different background/desktop images. You can set an auto-shutdown timer. There is also a system information option.

Build Quality: I'm 50-50 here. The earbuds that came with my Ematic are defective. The player itself seems well made and solid, if not a bit light. The User Interface is adequate, but dated. The back is what appears to be brushed aluminum, and does a decent job of not showing fingerprints. The gloss black plastic front is just the opposite. The little stylus proves valuable, as some of the targets are small on the screen. There is no external control. The only switch on one end is the Power/Hold slider. Build Quality of the Ematic gets a B. I'd have given it an A if the earbuds had worked.

Value: It has it's flaws, but this little Ematic does a far better job than earlier inexpensive touchscreen players I've reviewed. It won't compete with the Samsung P2 or P3, the Cowon S9, or the iPod Touch. For $80 its one hell of a good value though. I've been listening to mine all day, and the music is just a little sweeter knowing I only shed $80 for the privilege. Value is an A. Get one if you're considering one. Keep that receipt though, as you may need to exchange your earbuds.

4D

Kindle DX UnBoxing!

This Kindle DX arrived via US Mail just a few minutes ago, so I thought I'd share my first impressions.

The box it came is was identical in size to the box the 2nd generation Kindle came it. Zip it open down the side to find an inner box wrapped in Amazon's black alphabetic paper. Zip that open to find a stiff cardboard box that could easily be mistaken for a take-out casserole dish. Lift the lid to reveal a HUGE version of the Kindle 2. The keyboard on the lower edge was squashed to make room for the screen. Number keys have been combined into the letters. The DX is incredibly thin, and weighs in at 1 lb 2.9 oz, or 538 grams. compare that to the Kindle 2's weight of 10.2 oz or 289 grams. The only external difference around the edges appears to be speaker perforations on the bottom edge.

These last two pictures reveal what's under the DX in the box. You get a good looking beginners guide and a USB cable which includes it's own AC charging adapter.

No turning it on yet. This DX is for my wife, who's main plans for it is to subscribe to a few newspapers. She hopes the added size and resolution make it more enjoyable than reading them on the earlier Kindles.

·

4D

Sony Walkman W Series MP3 Player. My Review.

At $69 I thought Sony's headphone style MP3 player was overpriced. My local Target must have agreed, as they moved their stock of them to the clearance rack marked down to $35. At that price I decided to try them out. Available in Black or Pink, they include 2gb of storage space, up to 12 hours of play time on a charge, a 3 minute quick charge for 90 minutes play, a nice little rack that serves as the charge/sync dock, and the ability to sync with Windows Media Player OR iTunes (with included connector software) on your PC. Not for Macs, however.

Control is rather easy. The right side has Play/Pause with Track +/- on a jog dial, and volume Up/Down buttons. Inside there is a slide switch for shuffle play. They turn off when stuck together magnetically.

Zappin. With no display it would be hard to find a specific song, but the W series solves this (sort of). Press the play dial in for a few seconds to hear "Zappin In". The player will then sequence through your songs playing 5 seconds of each. Hear the song you're after and give the dial another press. The W will exclaim "Zappin Out" and start playing the song you were after. It may be a little tedious if you've got a few hundred songs on board though. You can also set it to play a longer segment of each song.

Media supported includes MP3, WMA, and AAC (DRM free). No radio. It comes with three different sizes of earbud caps.

My W202 needed a charge before it would play. Once charged with some music on it I took it out for a test ride. Sound quality I'd rate 9 out of 10. There is good range and little noise. Bass frequencies are weak or missing. Better than most OEM earbuds you get with players. I really enjoy them. Light weight. Easy fit. No cables to tangle. Simple controls. If you can find them on clearance or under $40 the W series are a great value. At the price I paid I rate them an A+.

4D