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- Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 25 reviews Back to product review
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1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
4.0 stars
"Small, Compact, simple, useful, and original"
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.
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