A good buy mp3 player
So you are a serious music connoisseur and have been long in the market for an mp3 player? It seems to be an easy job to choose one since such players are nearly everywhere, from shopping malls to electronic product markets, from physical stores to online stores. Not exactly, though. In general, players from Korea are
well acknowledged of outstanding designs and decent sound quality, however, they
are usually expensively priced. You can say that seldom are good things cheap,
but, if you are observant enough and have kept an ear on the ground, you must have noticed a player from China, Meizu. Being quite a hit in the local market in
2004, the manufacturer released a new model soon after the New Year of 2005 named X2. I am lucky to have one in my hand soon after its shipment and have been testing this gadget for two days now. Let’s see how this successor of E2 performs
. Will it be a nicer choice than its predecessor, E2, which was such a blockbuster in the domestic market last year?
The design of the model has been quite a controversy since its picture first emerged on the Internet. The manufacturer seems willing to make it a “male product
” with its rough lines and squarish outer shell. The design, however, has been
widely questioned by its fans around the country, declaring it poorer than E2. Beauty is only skin-deep and no matter how artistic or charming a product may look, however, it’s the inner quality of the product that determines its popularity in the market. Personally I am not quite a critic of its design but I prefer that of E2 as many others. :P What may sound amazing is, X2 really grows on me not only by its controversial design but its large storage capacity, excellent transmitting speed and fairly good sound quality as well.
Equipped with a Sigmatel 3520 chip, X2 is guaranteed to offer decent sound quality. Some may say that chips from Phillips are better and thus products with Phillips chips can outdo those of 3520’s in sound quality performance. That might
be true, though, another item that we should mention here is how much they’d cost you. One bigwig in Phillips gown is iRiver and I happen to have a few of its
models in my pocket. I have to admit that its sound quality is unparalleled, however, their prices are breath-taking high. You’ll just have to pay through the
nose to have one. On the other side though, for users who are cash-conscious, players with 3520’s offer nearly the same good sound but are much cheaper. Take X2 for example. An X2 with 1GB flash memory costs 1299 yuan whilst for that you can hardly get an iRiver with 512MB. I don’t think there’s a need for me to highlight the advantages of a big storage capacity. Honestly speaking, the difference between the sound qualities of the two is far slighter than that of their prices! Isn’t that enough?
As I said in the title, the version of the X2 that I have is a one-gigabyte one.
Certainly you’ll find its lower capacity versions as 128MB, 256MB and 512MB. The big storage capacity makes it more practical to use the player as a portable
memory key than a beautiful white lie only. You can load a few RMVB movies or DVD rips with the stuff and not feel a thing. The tale, however, doesn’t materialize unless you are using a USB2.0 desktop PC or laptop. Personally, transmitting
big sized files with USB1.1 is nothing more than a nightmare. My recommendation
therefore is if you don’t have a USB2.0 PC, buy one or upgrade your old rattletrap. There’s some kind of PCI USB2.0 card available on the market that enables to speed your old PC up if you really cannot make do without. It’s said this
kind of card is of poor compatibility, though.
To be continued.
