TV with DVR & Internet: $84.90/mo
- Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 9 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
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2 out of 2 people found this review helpful
5.0 stars
"Should be an Ipod Killer!"
Pros: Almost everythig is better than the Ipod
Cons: Have not run into any yet
Summary: My older daughter got an Ipod video 30 for Christmas and my younger daughter was jealous. I saw this for $147 (now you can get it for 144) and thought it would satisfy her. But, now the Jealousy goes the other way around! I was a little worried when I read some reviews. Here is what the reviewers did not like. Grainy video. All I have to say is... Were they wearing their glasses??? to me it's beautiful really. Next, controls on the top. They make sense to me as typical cd controls and make using the unit easier. Third People say that they have trouble transferring vongo movies. Maybe vongo got it fixed because it works great. It's too big. When I got it I was surprised that it was not as gigantic as people said. It is bigger than an Ipod but for the twice as long battery life, much better viewing screen, and built in speaker, it just makes sense that it would be bigger. Look at the picture, the screen takes up less of a percentage of the whole thing than the ipods screen does and it is only .8 inches thick at it's widest point. Not too shabby. Lastly, people complain that you can not charge it via usb. Really when I thought about it, this turns out to be a positive. The rechargeable batteries in these kinds of things (including the ipod) are expensive, have a limited life and are hard to replace. With an on off button, the unit does not access the battery. So, when you are by an outlet connected to the computer, lying in bed watching a movie, or at your friends house connected to their tv watching a movie etc... the battery has nothing to do with it saving your charge/recharge cycles for when you are on the go and at 30 hours for sound it's even better. If you treat it right, your ipod will be long dead before this thing. Unless your rich or a total geek and have to have the latest thing, thats important.
The only reason I can see that this thing is so cheap is because it may be being discontinued. Better grab one now. When mp3 players first came out, the battery life was low, quality was bad, had limited storage etc.. This is really in the category of "the last one you will ever need to buy". And for $144 you better get it. It is a shame that I think it is people with Ipods who are jealous of this units capabilities that are giving it bad reviews and are trying to kill it off. Because on it's own merits, this should be an ipod killer. Maybe in a few years the chocolate phone 9 with a phone, camera, video player and built in voice recognition computer internet wirelessly connected thingy will be better but for now this is great.
I was going to get this for my daughter and then get something better for myself because I thought for the price it must be built cheap or something but now I want it for my birthday. I am giving this a rating of a 10 and cnet warned me about giving 10s. But the fact that this is twice as good as the leading product (ipod) and almost half the price, A 10 is very justified.Updated
After listening to this thing I found another great feature above an Ipod. If you purchace music on line, it usually does not come in the best compression for quality but for size. I rip my cd's at a higher rate. But if you get one of these low conversion rate files, in order to save space they get rid of the high frequencies. The Gigabeat has a harmonics feature that tries to recreate the highs lost in conversion by adding back the upper harmonics of lower notes. If a single note in that frequency range was there origionally, of course it can't recreate that but the music does sound fuller and more life like when I did a comparison of the same mp3 file on both my daughters ipod and gigabeat with a good set of jensen over the ear headphones.
- 1 reply to this review
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I was wondering where you managed to buy it for 144 because the cheapest i have been able to find it for is 165.
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