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CNET editors' review
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CNET editors' rating:
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Good
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 04/17/2003
- Updated on: 04/18/2003
The FL100's plastic body feels slightly less than robust; while no less durable than many of its competitors, it's no sports model. The included carrying case adds protection (and a handy belt clip), but ours was so snug that it tended to randomly depress the volume switch and didn't align with the player well enough to provide comfortable access to key buttons.
The backlit display packs a surprising amount of information into its three lines. As a result, folder and song navigation is relatively effortless. It's also easy to scroll through and modify the impressive array of customizable features.
The FL100 features an SD/MMC memory slot that allows the addition of up to 256MB of memory, providing the potential for hours of more music.The FL100 packs an impressive array of features into its tiny frame. In addition to MP3s, it also plays WMA and ASF files. While there is no playlist feature, you can create multiple folders on the player, so you can organize songs by artist, album, genre, and so on. Frustratingly, song shuffling is available only through Random Repeat, meaning you must first listen to all the songs in a folder in their original order.
For sound customization, the FL100 includes seven EQ presets and a five-band equalizer. Most of the FL100's other features are similarly tweakable. The LCD backlight duration, autoresume function, song title display, sleep mode, and menu language (English, Korean, Japanese, or Chinese) are among a host of features that can be modified with a few clicks.
A built-in microphone records voice memos as WAV files that can be exported to a PC or a Mac with the included proprietary software package. The FL100 also includes a full-featured FM radio. It offers 20 station presets, which you can annotate with station names or other text by using the included software, and can also record the FM signal. However, recording quality for both voice and FM recording is locked at a very low 33Kbps, so anything beyond voice dictation is essentially pointless. On the plus side, recording time is limited only by the amount of free memory, and the unit displays recording-duration and time-remaining counters.
Software is required for transferring files to the player. Digitalway includes two options for Windows users: the RealOne media suite and a small plug-in for Windows Media Player. For more detailed file management (for example, creating folders and moving files between them, upgrading firmware, and uploading WAV recordings), you must install the included MPIO Manager software. Macintosh users will find the iTunes plug-in and software support for all recent versions of Apple's OS.
Unlike some competing MP3 players (such as Creative's Nomad MuVo), the FL100 is not directly accessible as a data drive in Windows. Nonmusic files can be uploaded to and downloaded from the unit with the MPIO Manager software, but audio files are locked on the device: you can't upload them to another computer, even if it's running the same file-transfer software.The FL100's sound quality was quite good in our tests, with a respectable 85dB signal-to-noise ratio. Even with the less than impressive included earbud headphones, the music maintained a clean sound. With a decent set of headphones, the FL100's ample bass response--the Achilles' heel of many portable players--was also notable.
Despite manufacturer claims of 11 hours of battery life, our alkaline AAA petered out after about 8 hours. File-transfer speed was a somewhat poky 0.46MB per second, so filling 128MB takes about four and a half minutes.
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