Hi, Canuck's Comments folks,
The review was written for an American website which specializes mainly in portable music and vedio players. It's challenging to write reviews on digital products in English since it's more than everyday small-talk topics. To make it read
professional, it's necessary to read a lot on relevant all-English websites before you begin your own. I would like to share it with you all here, hoping this
small review would help let you know better about the best mp3 players that our
home manufacturers can currently produce. In the meanwhile, it's indeed a good
practice of written English. So here we are:
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I know iPod things such as iPod Vedio and iPod Nano are the favorites for most of you American mp3 lovers, and I am always amazed to see how Apple takes the entire world by storm, with dedicated fans screaming around at its every new release. Highly efficient in marketing and fascinating in design as Apple is, however,
Apple is facing more and more powerful challenge here in Mainland China. And this time the hottest buzzword is a player coded Miniplayer M6, from Meizu, ZhuHai
, China.
Meizu never ceases to amaze its supporters and the media alike, despite its reputation of being slow in releasing new models, say, usually no more than two or three models a year. Now that is indeed slow, compared to its numerous competitors, many of which are capable of launching a dozen of new models at a time. Yet every new player that Meizu releases would hit the national spotlight, typically
Me and last year's E3 series. Believe it or not, the open sesame is none other but its well-known "unhurriedness". Well, it is simple -- to get it meticulously
done takes time.
It has been nearly a month now since the day I received the for-test version of
M6. The prototype had a crash (I suppose you understand what I am saying? An mp3
player's crash is like that we often see on Windows. When a crash occurs, the
system just stops responding to you.) but thanks to Meizu's quick reaction, it was soon gotten over. And it's never happened since then.
I am not an iPod thing because I haven't personally tested any products from Apple, but iPods are indeed popular in here, with pictures and reviews seen everywhere. Before I began this review, I did spend some time wandering around some all
-English webistes for relevant information, and what surprised me most was many
non-Chinese users seemed to thought of Miniplayer as an imitation of iPod Nano.
I know Nano is overwhelming and is influential around the world, but it will be
no fun if we all get brainwashed like this -- Simply because Nano takes a while
shell, a colored display, slim figure design and uses a touch-pad thing?
Personally I don't see much resemblance between the two. Miniplayer has a much bigger display, 2.4 inch, 320X240 pixels to be exact (hardly enough for movie playback though, not to mention Nano's tiny little screen,) than Nano does, and is
a little thicker than its rival. So what, what most of us really care about isn'
t who is like who, but how well they perform!
One thing that is worth mentioning is that most of Meizu-released pictures, most
of which are, obviously Photoshoped, hardly do justice to the real beauty of the products. E3 is a good example, and M6 is no exception. So form factor wise,
simply do not jump to conclusions before you get your palms physically onto the
device. It's slim, but not as slim as to get you worry if it will ... crack in
your pocket. The back of it is made of metal material, as bright as a mirror ---
as a matter of fact, it CAN be used as a mirror if you are one of those who always care about how he/she looks. As mentioned before, the display occupies most
of the front area of the device, making it quite eye-catching in the shop window.
No matter how artistic or bewitching a player may look, however, the true value
of a music player lies in its sound quality. Frankly speaking, I was delighted to find that M6 presented a fully different type of sound playback from its previous cousins: a wider sound stage, more shocking bass performance, and a better balance among the three basic bands of sound reappearance. Many complain that its
bass is much too exaggerated. It's not M6's fault, though. To have a better balanced playback, you may consider not choosing those earphones that are bass-oriented, I mean...those earphones that pay extra effort to the playback of bass sound, such as PX100, the popular pair from Sennhisser. With some time's readjustment, I am sure M6's sound quality will grow on you.
Literally, I won't say Miniplayer's sound quality is any poorer than that of iRiver's or iAudio's, not to mention iPod's, which ranks far behind the above-mentioned Karean manufacturers' products in this aspect. Of course, different people
have different minds; and sound quality is a very subjective thing. It's meaningless to put any more language here since there're already heated discussions going on about this topic in many major IT portals around China. One suggestion I would still like to offer is, give it a good listen yourself, then make your own
decision -- especially if you are one of those who are extremely conscious about
sound quality.
Another item that I think is worth a note is the earphone that comes with the Miniplayer. Meizu names it "PT800 plus", which is said to have a better performance than its predecessor, PT800. Unfortunately I don't yet have this plus version,
but a PT800, and frankly speaking I don't see much difference, of course when sound quality is concerned, between it and MX500. For most consumers, I'd say, there's hardly any need to seek for a better replacement.
Needless to say, the key to its decent sound quality is what they call the dual-
core design. Now dual-core is indeed a buzzword! And it sure makes the difference. Despite having adopted a Samsung's 200MHz CPU, which itself supports acoustics encoding, Meizu equipped its latest player with an extra single sound-processing chip from Phillips. And this decision has been so far proven brilliant.
There's more to this player of course, than the excellence in sound playback. Browsing pictures, whether photoes of your little honey or of your favorite beauties, is an enjoyable experience. Though with a size of 2.4 inch, the display of Miniplayer isn't as big as those of PPC's Palm's or PSP's, its resolution is as high as 320X240 pixels. Now that's the resolution of a standard PPC (actually with a 3.5 inch display, this resolution only appears grainy on PPCs). In general,
the pictures are bright and crispy, of pretty good saturation also. Photoes can
be displayed in a ... "slide show" way, and you have a couple of ways to shift pictures like you see on ACDSee. Picture browsing and music playing can work simultaneously, as can Text reading and music playing.
Do not expect to watch photoes very well under the sunlight, though.
With a display like this, you may feel something missing if it doesn't support txt reading. Fortunately, it does. Meizu gives two options of font size for you to choose from, and bookmark function is also available. Having been a VGA version PPC user myself, I am not surprised with this, anyway. It'd be a big delight,
though, for those who can go so far as to read an entire novel on a tiny screen
such as what we have on an E3 or Nano, whatever. Many seem to enjoy listening to some music while reading, (personally I don't; that's terribly distractive), Miniplayer is sure to please with its ability of playing music and txt's simultaneously.
It's refreshing to have a voice recorder with you all the time. Think about having your teachers' lessons recorded with this slim device. Miniplayer won't let you down. Despite its tiny hole for the built-in microphone, it can do a pretty job of recording! I am getting a little tired of this all literal descriptions, so just listen to this clip and make your own judgement, "gossip among women":
http://club.mypda.com.cn/s/pan/temp/m6.mp3
Miniplayer also supports Divx playback, but at a rate of 18 frames per second, it's presumably not much impressive. I tried a high-definition animation done by
a Japanese cartoonist, and much to my surprise, it did a better job than I had expected. I hardly noticed any frame missing, and the sound effect was as good as
when it played MP3 music. I am not fanatical about watching movies on such a screen, and nor am I at the right age of worrying about impressing girls, but it all doesn't harm to watch some vedio clips a few minutes just to while away some
time.
Ok.... I hope you are not yawning ... let's cut to the chase then, the pros and
cons.
Pros:
Decent sound quality, which is the biggest selling point of this player;
Slim figure and big display with radiant display effect;
Legible e-book; and watchable movie playback;
Impressive voice-recording quality;
Catchy form factor, enough to impress girls;
USB2.0 High-speed;
Pretty good after-sales services from Meizu; hopefully it will apply to users in
America;
Last but not least, inexpensive pricing! 4GB version of M6 is priced at 1599 RMB
(You yourself do the mathematic conversion please, that's what I hate most :D )
; 2GB 1099 yuan; 1GB 850 yuan and 512MB 699yuan.
Cons:
Unavailability in the U.S. of course, but I am sure there must be a way to solving this problem;
Resemblances with Nano; actually that's what some of you think;
Built-in lithium battery; but actually it's one of the why's this player offers
impressive sound quality;
Better-than-nothing FM tuner; forget about this FM tuner if you are not a fan of
radio. If you unluckily are, though, ignore this Miniplayer.
Have you, then, figured out which is a real good buy in this age of mp3?
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This is what I can think of now. I'll keep you posted, right here. So shoot if you have any questions.
Pan.
