RCA Pearl user reviews (512MB, gray)

4.0 stars

"Effective and inexpensive player" on November 22, 2009 by VGJustice

Pros: No extra cords to lose or replace, does not require any software to use, battery life, expansion slot, size

Cons: Clunky menu, poor randomization option, doesn't support playlists/sync, no FM tuner

Summary: Purchased this little guy from Walmart a couple years ago and I've had nothing but good experiences with it. The audio clarity is excellent and you can really tell when you load up a high bit rate song (320 kbps). The expansion slot makes the small looking internal memory almost meaningless since you can just drop in a microSD card and vastly expand upon the normal memory limitations.

One thing I've noticed about this player is that does not under any circumstances require software to load or unload the player. Everything is handled natively under Windows, including the microSD card reader. This means that ten years down the road you won't have to worry about incompatiblities with a new OS. Add on to that the removable AAA battery means you won't have to spend almost as much on the player again just to use it. This thing has some serious lasting power.

There are some quirks I've noticed with the player, though. The randomizer is more than a little problematic. If you turn the player on and turn the randomizer on, let it play a few songs, then switch it off, it'll play the same songs in the same order if you turn it back on and hit shuffle. Not really a big deal to me, but it doesn't truly randomize. It also has a funny memory. It won't always remember which track you were on when you last turned it off, so sometimes you'll hear the same set of songs two uses in a row. It can also start to flake out pretty badly when the battery starts to get low, causing the music to sound strange and it'll start skipping. Not a big deal, just replace the battery.

I picked up some rechargeable AAAs to go with this player and that's been an excellent pairing. It gets pretty good life out of the AAAs it uses, but it'll still eat the things. $20 extra now on a set will save you a lot more in the long run.

For anyone like me that would prefer to manually drag and drop files or for anyone looking for a device that's honestly future proof, I'd highly recommend this line of players. These are also compatible with slotMusic, so if that ever gets off the ground you'll be set.