My Take on the New iPod Shuffle.

Apple released a new Shuffle today. It is smaller than most USB thumb drives at only .3" thick (including the clip) by .7" wide by 1.8" tall. There is one 3-way switch on the end for Shuffle/Play/OFF. Specs HERE. It uses proprietary earbuds that have a controller for play/pause/next/prev and a few other commands on the cable. You get an adapter cable for USB transfer and charging that plugs into the headphone jack.

I'm convinced this Shuffle will be a failure. Yes, they'll sell a few thousand. But it will go the way of the square Nano 3rd generation. Why?:

- It's too small. I've lost microSD cards, small USB thumb drives, and every other tiny thing I owned simply because they were all tiny.
- With 4gb capacity the blind/voice interface will prove slow to find and play a specific song from the 1000 or so you might have on it.
- It requires Apple's earbuds, and a replacement will cost you another $29.
- It will cost you $79. While the software on board might have taken a little extra development time to create, the hardware itself is worth about $3. A 4gb Sansa Clip goes for $49 (on sale), and it includes a screen, FM radio, and voice recording. Of course with the earbuds costing $29 you could consider the player's cost to be just $50. Still a bit pricey for a USB memory stick. You can get THIS similar sized player that also includes FM radio, an LCD screen, and is also 4gb for half that price. For $55 you can own THIS iRiver 4g player with FM, Voice recording, Radio recording, EQ, and available in 5 colors.
- No colors. The ONLY reason I own a Nano was because it came in a color I was fascinated with.

Will you buy this tiny Shuffle? If so, what aspect is most desirable? Small size, 4gb capacity, remote controls? I can't think of a single reason to buy one.

4D

Coby MP-705. My Review.

The Coby MP-705 weighs 57 grams. For comparison my Samsung T10 weighs 44 grams and my iPod Nano weighs 36 grams. All three players are roughly the same length and width, and sport 2" (diagonal) LCD screens. The Coby is the thickest of the three at .37 inches (almost 3/8"). The T10 is .31 inches thick, and the Nano is .24 inches thick (less than 1/4"). A 4gb Coby MP-705 costs $53 at Amazon.com. The 4GB Samsung T10 is $80 at Amazon. You can't buy the new Nano in a 4GB model, but last year's version with 4GB can be found for $114 at Amazon. To put this in perspective, the Coby sells for less than half the price of an iPod Nano. Lets see how it stacks up against the competition. The bottom edge of the player is where you'll find the Mini USB port and headphone jack. There is a reset hole on the back. The top edge has the On-Off Power/Hold slider. All controls are on the front face, and are back lit touch sensitive. You'll find a Menu button, Options button, and a direction array with OK in the center. The silver ring you see is simply decoration.

The MP-705 is not huge. Only 3.75" long. You can see it here with my glasses and watch. The back is a polished aluminum. The front is a glossy black plastic. Both are fingerprint magnets.

Video. As I said, all three players have a 2" screen. The Coby cheats a little with only 220 x 176 resolution while the T10 and Nano have 320 x 240. With less than half the resolution, video playback on the Coby is unimpressive. There is only one menu option: brightness. Nice enough. Next/Prev and volume controls rotate while watching videos in landscape orientation. I can't give video play on the Coby MP-705 any better than a (C+). Yes, you can play videos on it. IMO it's not worth doing.

Music. The Coby will play MP3, WMA, and OGG audio formats.
The Nano will play AAC, MP3, Audible, Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV.
The T10 will play MP3 and WMA. Cover art in the music app is small, with no option to display it full screen. You can access the equalizer, play settings, and mark a song as "favorite" all within the music options menu. Sound quality is good, although not with the included earbuds. If you have associated lyric files with your songs, you can also turn lyric display on or off. Music will play even after leaving the Music App. But one serious flaw is that outside of the music app you have NO volume control. I'll give the Music app an (A-), for small cover art and this volume control flaw.

Photos. The Coby will display .JPG and .GIF files. The Nano will display .JPG files. The T10 display .JPG files. Again the low resolution screen looses this comparison. The lack of resolution in the Coby is very obvious when comparing the same photo on all players. Control over photos is very thorough, if clumsy. A long press of the center button will bring up pixel size, file size, and date of the current photo. Press the down button to rotate pictures in 90 degree clockwise steps. Within the options menu you can zoom in or out, change brightness, start a slideshow or set the show timer, or rotate an image. Zoom is very impressive, with no apparent limit on how much you can zoom in on a photo. I could zoom down to see individual pixels of a 768x960 photo, although each zoom step required 6 button presses. Coby seriously needs to simplify access to zoom in this photo app. Still, this zoom feature has more potential than on any other player I've tried. Photo gets an (B+), for the low resolution screen and inefficient access to the Zoom control.

FM Radio. FM radio reception and performance is adequate on this Coby. Like all other players the headphone cable serves as antenna, so reception varies with position, length, and shielding of that cable. Your reception will also depend on where you live and the strength of stations near you. The MP-705 allows manual tuning, Auto scanning, adding and deleting of presets. I could not tell what limit there might be on the number of FM preset channels. Coby is a bit stingy with specs for this player. FM play will stop if you back out of the Radio application. No listening to the radio while you peruse your pictures. Accessing preset channels is a little confusing. If you've just done an autoscan the FM player will remain in "Preset" mode allowing you to move right and left through preset channels. Yet if you leave the player then re-enter it, you can only access preset channels through the options menu. There doesn't appear any way to toggle preset or manual tuning. I'll give the Coby MP-705 FM Radio App a (B+).

Text. While the Coby does let you read .TXT files you can store on it, the low resolution again inhibits the value of this feature. There is only one font. Legible. You can scroll up and down within a document, or page right and left through a screen's worth at a time if you wish. A nice feature is Auto-Page, where the Coby automatically advances to the next page after a preset amount of time. You can change this amount of time from 3 to 15 seconds. You can also set one or more bookmark within text files. A tap on the options button will tag a location. Unfortunately it takes a longer touch of the same button to recall and goto or delete saved bookmarks. I found it too easy to accidently set a tag. The eBook reader on the Coby gets a (B).

User Interface. You manuever through the MP-705's main applications by tapping left or right direction buttons. The graphics used are uninspiring, but adequate. The current time and play status is shown at the top of the screen. You'll see a postition marker at the bottom of the screen, indicating where relatively among the 7 apps you are. The touch controls are sensitive enough. Their backlight turns off very quickly, no doubt to save battery life. The buttons still respond with the backlight off, so it's not a functional problem, yet I am bothered by this "invisible" nature of the Coby's controls. I suspect I'll get used to it though.
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Value? With touch controls and a sleek design the Coby MP-705 appears to be more expensive than it is. The reality of it's features brings the low price into perspective. Coby saved costs on the screen, UI development, extent of features, and online support. Of all my players that came with 4gb memory including the T10, Zen, Hip Street, Sylvania, and a few others cost more. Many had add-on memory slots. Most had mics with voice recording. One even had a camera. Yet if you don't need those features then the Coby MP-704 will do fine, and is priced appropriately for what it does. A better value than the iPod Nano although not as thin or stylish.
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Overall grade? (B+).
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4D

StyleX 4GB Media Player: Many Features in a Small Package!

I was very skeptical when I saw this StyleX 4gb media player at WalMart for $69. Yet the features list intrigued me, so I ordered one. It took about 7 days and one backordered notice to get to me, but here it is. As you can see, what it promises to do is pretty amazing for such an inexpensive player. You may notice the 960 x 240 screen specification. Turns out that's a little creative marketing by the Chinese manufacturer. The 4:3 ratio screen is indeed 240 pixels high, but they counted each red, green, and blue pixel component horizontally to come up with 960. The net effect is a 320 (960/3) x 240 screen. It IS a very sharp and detailed image produced though, easily sharp enough for reading ebooks. The other high points include the microphone, camera, built-in speaker, and microSD slot.

Include in the package is an AC adapter, USB cable, earbuds, manual, CD, and the player. The player is suprisingly small. At 3.2" x 2" and .5" thick, the StyleX fits easily in a shirt pocket. The case seems to be chrome plated plastic, and the whole thing is very lightweight. Less than the weight of a deck of cards. There is a generally cheap feel to it, consistant with it's price.

The main controls are on the right end, and include Menu, Play/Pause, Forward and Back. There is also a slot to attach a lanyard or wrist strap through. The bottom edge reveals the microSD slot, a Volume button, and the microphone hole.

The top edge reveals the Camera trigger. The left end reveals the USB jack, ON/OFF lock, and earphone jack. Audio output is strong, no doubt to compensate for the cheap earbuds it comes with. I have to keep it on the lowest possible setting or it overwhelms my good headphones. Audio quality is very good, with strong bass, and fairly even levels across the audible frequency range.

The screen is sharp. I haven't put any videos on it, but the few photos I took with the onboard camera appear crisp. The photo viewer does a nice sideways slide from photo to photo, much like the iPod Touch.

The camera has a pinhole lens, and doesn't let in much light. 1.3 megapixels (up to 1600x1200), with 4x digital zoom capability. No flash, so to take a good photo you'll need a bright setting, preferably out in the sunlight. The camera can take photos or video. There is also a multi-shot photo mode. The camera can also serve as a USB PC camera. This is a shot taken from the camera:

The Stylex includes three games, and suggests that it plays NES games. I'll have to see it to believe it. The three games are "Explode Pigboat" a submarine hunt game, "Color Block", and "Russian Diamond". You can disable game audio if you want to listen to music instead.

The FM radio will tune to Eurpean, Japanese, and American frequencies, although the American setting is not mentioned in the manual or on the packaging. Capable of 40 channel presets. So far I'm not that thrilled with the FM radio application. It didn't want to remember my settings, and is almost too loud for my headphones. It also overpowered a small self-amplified speaker I tried with it. Don't buy the StyleX for the FM radio.

The little microphone can record WAV files, and serves to capture the audio component of videos taken with the StyleX. In contrast to the FM radio, the microphone is not sensitive enough.

There are four equalizer presets to choose from, including Jaz, Pop, Rock, and Classic. You can also set to to the unaltered Normal setting. There is also a play speed setting, from .5 to 1.5 of normal speed in .1 steps. There is a pre-listen mode, where you can set the device to play only 5,10,15, or 20 seconds of each song. Lastly, you can save any audio file as your power-on and/or power-off sound.

The StyleX can also play videos, display ebooks, show you the month on it's simple calendar, and Explore files with the option of deleting any file.

I'm impressed with the sharpness of the little screen and audio quality via my good JVC headphones. The StyleX is NOT a touchscreen device, and like most of the other devices I've reviewed does not have a very intuitive user interface. Rather than two volume buttons, the StyleX has ONE volume trigger. You press it once, then can use the forward/back buttons for volume up/down. Clutsy.

The user manual is pretty thorough, but you'll need a magnifying glass to read it.

Is the Stylex 4gb Media player worth $69? Yes. If you want the least expensive, fully featured, pocketable, expandible, camera-included device out there, this is it. A 2gb Apple Shuffle costs the same with 1/2 the memory and 1/4 the features. The User Interface gets a C. Features get an A. Audio quality gets a B, but only for being louder than my headphones needed. FM radio gets a D. Still, this one goes with me when I know I'll want to take a picture.

4D