- Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 7 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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4.5 stars
"Awesome. Go away Ipod!"
Pros: Large screen. Fairly intuitive to use. Easy to Sync.
Cons: Short battery life. A little large.
Summary: O.K., on the first impression, it came in a nicely pakaged box. Very professional looking. It was a bit difficult to finally get to the slacker itself, but worth the effort.
I take the Slacker out and see that it has a battery contact spacer. I guess this is to lessen battery depletion in the box. Kind of nice. the first look at the display was impressive. Its huge. Very easy to read. The colors are bright and vivid. I just wish that the static cling on the front was clear so that I could leave it on. I really dont want to go and test the screens scratch resistance. it smudges easily, but thats unnavoidable.
The buttons are arranged in a semi-good layout. My first impulse is to grab the slacker by the top corners to pull it out of the included pouch. You HAVE t o pull it from the center or else you start navigating through the menu or hearting/banning music. The buttons have good tactile feedback and are clearly marked. I really havent come up with a better way to place them, but I cant help feeling that it needs to be different. The only cheese factor is the little rubber plugs in the USB and Dock ports. They get caught on anything and pop right out. Ive written them off as lost in less than 24 hours.
The main body is solid and passes the twist test. No creaking, no bending. Very sturdy feeling. It feels lighter than it size indicates.
As soon as I turned it on I was able to scroll through menus without any problems. At a few tests of the touch stip I realized it was off by default. I turned it on. This is either a weak point or strong point. You have to be extrememly carefull how you hold the slacker if you want to use the touch strip. If its locked into a cell phone holder or some sotr of rigid dock you should be O.K. But in your hand, a simple change of grip can change stationse, connect to WiFi, or a whole list of other things. Its touchy, but with a large learning curve it could be mastered. Slacker: turn down the sensitivity or move it a little farther from the edge. Other than that, if you can use the web player you can use the portable.
WiFi: It connects to my home network easily. After the initial loading of stations and music, syncs are a snap. While at work I listened to about 9-10 hours worth. I found a WiFi hot spot and connected. It took about 30 seconds to reload my stations.( I only have two right now. I guess I should clarify here. The Slacker Portable is primarily a RADIO not an MP3 player. It doesnt require a satellite signal or radio waves to work. It stores your music on-board the same way an MP3 player does. When you have listened for a while, you can either use the USB cable or the built in WiFi to reload new music to the Portable. Its basically a wireless Internet Radio "Reciever". You dont have to leave the wireless on and no signal is ever required to listen to the device unless you have exhausted your music supply.( the 15 station holds roughly 70+/- hours of music)
The USB connection is straighforward and simple. You plug it in, it does its thing.
The battry life leaves something to be desired. I dont know exactly just how long mine will go for, but its to the tune of 6-8 hours. My first adjustments in the menu before I even sync'd was to lower the brightness to its lowest setting, and to put it on its lowest timeout (5 sec). The screen and WiFi are the battery killers. That brings me to my biggest question. Why does it have such a big screen. Dont get me wrong, I like it, but it doesnt play video, there is no animation, and other similar sized portable players were just as readable as this one. Like I said, I like it, but for such a heavy battery drain I would like to have something to show for it other than to be able to say, Well, my screen is bigger than yours!
Overall function and satisfaction. The fact that this is a portable media player creates an automatic set of criteria that it has to meet. But, its not primarily an MP3 player and thats where the nay sayers get their fuel. Yes, you can upload a limited number of your own music files to the Slacker Portable, but thats not what they made it for. THE SLACKER PORTABLE IS PRIMARILY A PORTABLE EXTENSION OF INTERNET RADIO. Its designed to be used as a listen only device with semi-interactive options. If you are an XM/Sirius customer, You often have to listen to crappy bands and crappy music. The S.P. (Slacker Portable) works much like satellite radio except YOU pick the music that YOU want to hear. No, you cant scroll through your playlist like an Ipod. No you cant fastforward, rewind, or restart like an Ipod. But you cant do that with satellite radio services OR standard FM radio for that matter. Slacker queues up the bands that you selected, uploads a random selection from those bands into your S.P. and you get to listen to them. Where the S.P. really steps up is that you can ban songs/bands that you dont like (on the free basic service Slacker does periodically inject music from your basic genre to see if you like it. free advertising for the music industry)or you can mark them as a favorite. Slacker will then either not play that for you anymore or play it more often. If you subscribe to the premium package (approx $8/month) when you mark a song as your favorite it is stored on your S.P. for you to listen to anytime you want. Just so you know, you can NEVER remove music from the S.P. unless it was yours to begin with.
Bottom line, I love it. I get the portable convenience of an MP3 player, services similar but superior to satellite radio, interactive options to cutomize my radio experience, and its FREE.
If your tired of having to pay a premium for satellite radio, get bored with your own selction of music, and are tired of having to actively search and (most likely illegally) download your own music off the web, then Slacker is for you.
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