Shop RadioShack for Great Gifts
- Average user rating: 4.5 stars out of 14 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
4.5 stars
"Great audio quality, good value"
Pros: sound quality, convenient interface/button controls
Cons: missing features, no fm, no podcast directory
Summary: Great player for music, bundled headphones put the ipods and most other competitors bundled units to shame. interface is simple and easy to use, buttons are responsive and conveniently placed, hold button and volume controls on the side can be controlled without having to look at the thing. Battery life is excellent, video quality is good with great battery life. it can be hard to figure out how to encode the videos at first since it doesn't come with software. Jodix free ipod video converter will transcode into mpeg4 and is about simple as it gets. handbrake and media coder will give you more control and encoding speed. Handbrake is free and will transcode dvds. Media coder also transcodes videos of many formats and is free. h264 support is more tricky. it requires that level=13:bframes=0:cabac=0 be placed in the advanced tab of handbrake. similar settings required in media coder. after you figure that out the videos turn out quite well and are very watchable and smooth on the screen. the h.264 lets you get away with quite low bitrates and still retain a very crisp and smooth video. using at least 128kbps audio and you get perfect audio from the included headphones, you even get a surprising amount of bass which is nice if you've encoded a film. no audio quality sacrifice needed when it comes to video on this unit.
and unlike some other players..the eq and other sound settings actually are quite effective.
the only downside, no podcast directory. So even if you separate with a directory structure within music, you cannot shuffle music very well if you are carrying audiobooks/podcasts. it also suffers from a lack of on the fly playlisting or ability to manage files on the go...delete etc.
i've found that it is cheap and easy to protect this player using a do it yourself transparent screen protector from bestskinsever which is the same material as the invisible shield stuff, and a cheap silicon skin to protect the rest. after that its pretty rugged and easy to take care of.
and the drag and drop capability is nice. if you want you can use winamp, wmp11, MediaMonkey, or J.River Media Jukebox instead to manage your content.
its a good practical player with top notch sound quality that beats more of the competition out there. even very expensive headphones are justified for use with this unit. and the headphones that come with it are far above average and will make most people quite happy. i know many players use touch screen or touch controls. after you get past the gee wiz factor those are a chore to use in real life. tactile controls you can manipulate within a pocket without looking make this player a winner.
- 1 reply to this review
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Thanks for your review. I've been on the fence about buying this Walkman, but have been waiting to hear someone talk in detail about the video encoding issues. You have pretty much covered it.
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