The Best of Both Phone, and Tablet-
"Cnet is way too critical." on by Shadyghost
Pros: Price per gigabyte. Overall design. Sound performance. Simplicity. Battery life.
Cons: A few shabby design flaws. Could be a bit louder.
Summary: Wow, I cannot believe C/net gave this a 6. If you are considering buying this mp3 player do not be scared off by C/net's biased review.
Not sure why James Kim had such a difficult time with the mini joystick. (although by the looks of his cordination trying to use it in the video review of the m500 I can guess) I found the joystick a breeze to use. It's the same proven design that has worked so well for sony ericsson phones. You move four directions to navigate and click down to select. I haven't had one problem.
The updated firmware for the player is great. I easily found my way around and mastered the system within thirty seconds of use. The people who complained the player stopped working didnt update the firmware before use.(including c/net) Do that first.
The player sounds great, feels secure and the battery lasts forever. The color should not be an issue. Who cares what it looks like if it performs. The screen is small but very clear and concise. A bigger screen would only cut the battery life so I'm glad its the size it is. It gets the job done beautifully.
The only negative I can find for this player is a few shoddy design flaws. One the back cover doesn't fit perfectly snug and aligned. Im a perfectionist so it bugs me. It shouldn't bug anyone else. The other thing is when your in the dark and the backlight is on, light leaks out through the edges of screen frame. Its not a big deal but would not have been hard to fix before production.
Don't expect too much from the headphones that ship with it due to the fact that they aren't worth the cost of the materials used to make them. Don't even open the package. Just toss em away. I tried them out and I had to adjust the plug to get sound from both earbuds. Horrible. My koss portapro's sound amazing with this player. I suggest you get yourself some real headphones.
All in all this player kills the ipod mini and all of the competition for the price. The ipod mini cannot play wma or audible files, does not have a fm reciever, is 100 bucks more expensive and doesnt have a removable battery. Enough said. Buy this player. -
"Don't expect to get any help if something goes wrong" on by goldengirl330
Pros: For the first 2 yrs of ownership, it worked fine, but not above average-just fine
Cons: When something went wrong with it, Motorola refused to stand behind it. i couldn't talk to a live person, all request are done by email, nothing offered worked, and when they couldn't offer a solution, they basically said, "well, sucks to be you"
Summary: Bottom line, buy any other brand besides Motorola. After a few months, they'll discontinue their product, then offer no service if you have a problem. When you look at spending any of your hard earned money, consider the company that makes the item and see how well they rank in customer service, because regardless of what you pay, for a company like Motorola with customer service that sucks, you'll spend a lot of time, trouble and heart ache for nothing. BUY ANY BRAND BUT MOTOROLA
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"Lovin' my lil' M500!" on by dstaffen
Pros: Does what I need, when and where I need it to. Excellent battery life.
Cons: Small learning curve using the included Motorola Music Manager interface to create playlists (no biggie), not fully compatible with Windows Media Player.
Summary: I've had my M500 for just over a year now. Bought it at Radio Shack for about $230. It has some glitches at first, but I went to the Motorola site and downloaded and installed new firmware (duh!) and it's never given me another problem. The headphones are fine. Thery're good enough to drown out the annoying kids on MUNI the few times I take the bus to work.
Gotta tell ya - go to Radio Shack and for 10 bucks you can buy their car/cassette adapter thingy. Never bother with one of those $29 car-radio-iPod-transmitter-thingies. You'll never get great reception. Just insert the cassette adapter into your car's cassette player, plug it in to your M500's phone jack and BAM, you've got music! Clear (almost) CD quality (depends on your encoding) music. I can listen to all my favorites in the car now. Couldn't be happier. -
"Small, Compact, simple, useful, and original" on by thatemokid
Pros: It is compact, sound quality, Has all the necessary operations, FM tuner, hold switch, very simple controls, usb 1.0 or 2.0, BATTERY LIFE EXCELLENT
Cons: no instructions on how to do firmware update. The screen doesn't automatically go back to the song screen when you've navigated away, belt clip is weird, nothing big
Summary: Overall, this is an amazing little player, especially for the money. I've heard people complain about the joystick control, and how "difficult" it is. That's not true, at least not for me. It is very simple, very easy to use. I started using the thing right out of the box (it already had some battery life and 20 prealoaded hits). The USB port cover is not loose at all, it is very secure. It has the important hold switch so that you don't accidentally hit any buttons by mistake. One thing that was annoying is there are no instructions on how to do the firmware update, there is a specific technique to it. However motorola's 24/7 phone support was very helpful and even sent me a new battery free of charge when the one I got with the player seemed to have crapped out. The motorola music manager software (mandatory use) is pretty good, it automatically finds all the songs already on your computer. I originally had trouble getting certain songs from some CD's to play. These were the store bought CD's (burned ones, or downloaded songs worked fine)And tech support told me that it wasn't going to work because of some sort of rights protection that was on the CD. I decided to re-rip the cd's using the motorola software anyway, and it fixed the problem. It also ripped them as WMA's and saved me a lot of space, while retaining good sound quality. the joystick is very simple to use, and easy, I haven't had any difficulties with it, so I don't understand any of these stupid complaints about it. The sound quality is good, it gets quite loud, and the provided earbuds were actually decent, tho not especially comfortable. It has a removable, rechargable battery thru USB, or an AC adapter. The batter is, as far as i know, a plain old cell phone battery, so it is easily replacable for relatively low cost, or free if you get motorola to send you one. The battery life is supposed to be 25 hours or more, and I have been happy with it. the largest battery life i have seen next to this is maybe 12-15 hours on the rio carbon, so this is almost twice as much. ipods and creative zen micros are only like 8 hours. It works with audio books, mp3's, wma's, and maybe ogg vorbis, but i'm not sure about that. It is an excellent player, and definately worth the money. If you use the provided software to re-rip your cd's, then you will end up with a lot more space as well. I already have somewhere close to 30 albums on it, and I don't think i've even used a quarter of the space. i compared this to the rio carbon, creative zen micro, zen touch, and i've used an apple ipod mini. Although this may not have some of the features they have, it has some other ones that are great, and it's much cheaper. FM tuner, FM recorder, stopwatch... its' great, i love it.
Updated
I got this player before the summer of '05 started in preparation for several trips I was taking. The reason I picked this player was the potential 25-36 hour battery life, depending on who you're talking to. The so called "difficult to use" joystick is absolute bull, it's EASY to use, and you pretty much DO NOT have to press it down at all, most selections can be made by going directionally sideways, but like I said, it works fine no matter what. It also has an FM tuner which gets good reception, FM recording, a stopwatch, bookmarks, and multiple selections to set it to your own preferences. An annoying thing is that when you go to the main menu while listening to music, it won't automatically go back to the play screen when you dont' do anything. You have to select this feature from the main menu, something that took my a few months to realize. The only other thing that I would say want someone to realize is that this uses proprietary software to transfer songs. The software is pretty decent in itself, but when it runs it's scan to check your computer for pre-existing songs, some of the albms will NOT play on the m500 because of recent copy protection software. You have to Re-rip those CD's using the motorola software, so it WILL work, but not necessarily right away. Downloaded songs work with no problem. The firmware is a pain to upload, but the customer service is amazing, they even sent me a brand new battery for free, all shipping costs included when the one I recieved with it didn't charge all the way. I'm not absolutely positive on the solidness of it's construction, because the back plat that covers the battery doesn't seem to be on straight. It stays on fine, it just doesn't look smoothly connected, like it was made slightly off. I think it's just my particular model. -
"Great in the Beginning, after 1 yr. it failed" on by badboyvip1
Pros: The good thing about this product is that it has a AM/FM radio in it, I also liked how it held a lot of music. The sound was good and the joystick was easy to use to navigate. The screen display is ok.
Cons: The player takes a while to boot up.
Summary: When I first bought this product it was great. After a year using it the mp3 player would not turn on and it just displayed a message saying "Upgrader." I called motorola and they said I would have to send it in and there was no guarantee they could fix it. I tried doing a firmware update and that failed. Then they discontinued the product. They haven't tried to help everyone that bought the product and discontinued selling the product. They didn't even put out updates for the mp3 player. I had thousands of songs on the mp3 player and now they are also lost. I will never buy another mp3 player. I then went out and bought and IPOD which is much better especially from apple. I think Motorola is horrible and that they should really try to help their customers.
Motorola M500 Digital Audio Player user reviews (5GB)
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