BoomGear MP-700 review

The MP-700 supports MP3 and unprotected WMA files, and you can move folders of music files to the device or create them with the bundled software. Thus, if you group all of your jazz recordings into a folder called Jazz, those songs will appear in that folder on the player. You can also make playlists on the player itself by creating bookmarks. In addition, the MP-700 comes with five predefined EQ settings (Normal, Rock, Pop, Classic, and Jazz), but there's no user-defined setting.

A full suite of recording features tops off the MP-700's feature set. Line-in recording takes music from an audio source, such as a CD player, and saves it as an MP3 file; you can set the player to encode tracks at up to 128Kbps. The line-in port, however, is smaller than standard, so you'll have to use the cable that comes with the device. The player also offers direct FM recording, but these files are saved in WAV format in the Voice folder, not as MP3 files in the Encoding folder. The FM radio had a difficult time maintaining stereo broadcasts of high-powered stations in the Chicago area, and unlike BoomGear's MP-900, there's no automatic preset feature, so you'll have to enter your presets manually. A built-in mic handles the MP-700's voice recordings, which are encoded as WAV files at 32Kbps.

The BoomGear MP-700 performed well in our tests. Music sounded good through the supplied ear buds. Despite the lack of a user-defined EQ setting, we were able to get decent highs and lows from a variety of music genres. And although the MP-700 boasts an output of just 5mW per channel at 16 ohms, music was surprisingly loud on a pair of full-size Koss UR-40 headphones. Battery life was slightly better than average at 12.9 hours, as was the player's transfer speed of 0.69MB over USB 1.1.