Ultra 256MB MP3 Player

Performance:

We popped the provided AAA battery in and let it charge for a while through USB. This is convenient a pretty nice feature, but it’s also unfortunate that this is the one and only way to charge the player. This means that in order for your MP3 player to charge it must be plugged into a USB port on a computer. This is inconvenient for travelers that do not have access to laptops or PCs, but for most people it should be just fine. When the player was turned on we were immediately greeted by a large ULTRA MP3 logo and then directed to the main MP3 player screen. There were no songs on the player so we went ahead and uploaded some songs to the player. Loading files onto the player was pretty painless as it was simply like copying files to any other flash drive. The waiting period, however, was not so painless. The transfer interface used in this player, surprisingly, is the outdated USB 1.1 (Upload 950Kbps, Download 520Kbps). It took quite a while to transfer just a few songs to the device.

Once the files were transferred, we turned on the player again. In the top left corner of the LCD, the file format and battery meter were displayed. In the top right corner of the LCD were two numbers representing the track number, and the track progress. The song title scrolled slowly just below in big bold letters and the bit rate and equalizer setting could be found right under the song title. The rest of the bottom of the screen is devoted to animations of people dancing and notes flying around. We’re not sure if it was necessary to have dancing pixels taking up half of the screen, and watching the dancing animation got annoying after a while. Clicking the joystick left or right allowed us to decrease and increase the volume, respectively. Up and down on the joystick allowed us to navigate to the previous and next tracks. We tried listening to music with the included headphones. It didn’t sound very good and bass was very weak. Suspecting that the cheap headphones most likely caused the problem, we tried the Sony's MDR-EX71. The music sounded much better after changing headphones. It did still sound slightly muddy, but it was not too bad. We did have a problem with the playback of one of our songs that was encoded at 320kbps. Every few seconds there would be a ’blip’ sound that was not supposed to be there. Other than that however, the audio was fairly good. The equalizer on the other hand was pretty useless. The equalizer choices were Normal, Classic, Pop, Rock, Jazz, and Bass. Choosing anything other than normal either did nothing, or made the sound distorted and added noise. Normal sounded just fine however for the various genres that we tested. Depressing the joystick displayed a menu that allowed us to choose from six options: MP3 Player (which we were just using), Voice Player (which plays recorded audio), FM Radio, Record, Setting, and Exit. We headed to the Record function and tested it out. We weren’t sure where the microphone was so one of us just talked at the unit. Once recorded, we switched to the voice player mode to listen to the recording; and we were surprised by the quality of the recording. There was minimal static and it was rather accurate.

The next function we tried was the FM Radio. This also proved to be very nice. Instead of the Up and Down on the Joystick controlling the track numbers, in this mode they’re use for adjusting the radio frequencies. Once a correct frequency was found, the sound was clear and free from static noises. It worked very well overall. The other feature left was the e-mail function. Due to Linux compatibility issues and a missing .exe file we were not able to test it. Nevertheless, we’ll describe it briefly here for those of you who are interested. Basically, you set up the software on the MP3 player with your email account settings, and then when you plug it into a computer you can receive your mail and take it to another computer to read.

Conclusion:

While packed with features, it didn’t necessarily do well in any areas. The MP3 Playback lacked any large defects, but also lacked any strength. The audio quality was average and the equalizer wasn’t very useful. We also had noise problems with one song that was encoded at 320kbps. The radio function was nice however and we didn’t run into any problems with it. Voice recording also worked well and we were happy with the results. Overall this player was about average. It does what is says but has some flaws. Also at an MSRP of $129 it’s slightly overpriced.

Pros:

· Packed with features
· Radio Tuner works well
· Supports SD add-on cards
· Voice recording quality is good

Cons:

· USB1.1 transfer
· Audio quality is only average
· Expensive
· Can only be charged through USB port