- 1.25 Inch 3 Line Backlit Display
- Dual 3-Watts Powered RMS Speakers
- Music Playback, FM Radio, Voice Recorder, Calendar, Clock
- SD Card Slot, MicroSD Card Slot, USB Flash Drive, Auxiliary Line-In, 3.5MM Headphone Jack
- Built-In Battery
Then there is the sound. For $35, frankly, this thing sounds significantly better than I expected. It is not going to reach volume levels that you can blast across your property, but I just brought it outside for an hour of gardening and it is 90 here and I live in the city, so there was plenty of loud A/C unit activity in the backyard. Nevertheless, the thing is loud enough without distorting to be pretty much audible from anywhere in my (40 foot long) backyard without distorting. It is so small, you can put it in your pocket and take it with you to wherever you may be. Then you don't have to crank it in the first place. It would be perfect for BBQs, small parties, the backyard, the beach, travel of any kind. It charges from a USB port (or adapter) and is still holding its charge now, 3 hours in.
The display on this thing is small, of course, almost comically small for some of the icons. There's actually too much information on there. I don't need the bit rate and format of the track I am playing displayed at all times given how small other, more essential items are on this teeny-tiny display. This being said, the fact that this thing has any kind of display at all is kind of amazing. The display is obviously a little on the cheeseball appearance side, but again, keep in mind the price point. More importantly, the overall build quality is good, the unit is attractive in many colors and the sound seems pretty solid, so one can overlook the less-than-state-of-the-art display. The alarm clock function looks like it would be kind of a pain to use, but again, it has an alarm clock?
In sum, given that I am about to order 3 more of these to give to friends as presents, I think it is fair to say that I would highly recommend this purchase if you like music everywhere you go and appreciate that this $35 purchase is not going to produce sound to rival your home stereo system. Great value for the money.I purchased this mp3 boombox to place in our bathroom next to our shower. It's cheaper than buying a radio that hangs in the shower itself, and the option of playing your own music from flash drives/cards is hard to pass up. Size of the radio is very small, about the size of 2 or 3 Altoid mint cans stacked together. The player seems to be mostly aluminum, with a small base on the bottom made of clear acrylic. The build quality is excellent. The player looks a lot better than the photos online. The screen display is good enough, and I had little problems learning to navigate through it. The equalizer options are great, I set my player for SRS WOW and all my music sounds nice. The speakers are on opposite sides of the player, and with the volume set to maximum, it's loud enough to fill a room, or use out in the back yard. To make it louder, placing the player inside of a small box does the trick (you have to experiment with this, and can get unexpectedly great results! Unexpected pluses you can insert/remove flash drives and memory cards while playing music, and it automatically plays, no need to press buttons (do this at your own risk you could lose the music on the flash drive/card) and turning the player off and on with the switch on back, the music plays automatically. This is great when people are going to be using the player and aren't knowledgeable about modern music players. I filled a card with my mother's music, and told her to simply plug it in the back of the player, and turn it on. She sometimes plugs in the card then turns the player on, other times she turns the player on first, and then plugs in the card and the music starts playing, either way! Very goof-proof. I gave this player 4 out of 5 stars it's an almost perfect mini mp3 player. One star off because you have to experiment with how you put your songs on the memory sticks/cards. I loaded a 2GB flash drive with one music album to test out and it was excellent. I then loaded the card with about 11 albums, each in their own folder. When set to random, it will only play the songs in one folder. It won't go through all the music. Setting the player to 'normal' play mode and having it play the songs in order is the only way to have it play everything. These things can be fixed through a software update from the manufacturer's website in due time, but it's not a big deal. I'm about to order 2 more of these.Although "boom"box might not be particularly accurate, given the lack of bass produced (for obvious size reasons), this unit provides very clear, sharp sound. The controls are very simple to use and the display is easy to read. The only thing stopping me from giving this 5 stars, is the fact that you cannot skip folders in mp3 format. I plugged a 4 Gb flash drive in with about 500 songs, with each album in its own folder. Unfortunately you have to skip through every song in each folder to progress to the next. Probably the best option is to buy many low-memory SD cards to avoid excessive button pushing. In my opinion, a very good buy for the money.I bought this unit as well as a SimplyVibe SV-X6U1 radio/MP3 player. I bought this Visual Land mini boom-box for me and the SimplyVibe player for my wife who uses it in her classroom with her students. To be honest, this unit is not nearly as good as the SimplyVibe.
For the small difference in $$, I would recommend the other one over this one. The speakers in this mini boom box are not as clear (clean) sounding. And while neither unit has an EQ or tone setting, the SimplyVibe just sounds better and has a bass booster. It also seems to have more volume (power). And the battery is replaceable, while this mini boom box is inside the unit and inaccessible.
I am using this mini boom-box with an MP3 thumb drive on my patio and it's running through a set of Altec Lansing computer speakers which include a subwoofer. In this way, it does a decent job filling the whole patio area with good sound, And we can enjoy hours of my music poolside. But as I said, if I had to do it over, I'd go with the other player. Hope that helps your decision!
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I really like this mp3 player. For the money it's great. There are some drawbacks so let me outline some strengths and some weaknesses:Strengths:
* Excellent sound. As a previous reviewer mentioned it won't play over a truck engine, but in an office or any other quiet room this little mp3 player will fill up the space and then some. As with other mp3 players there is an equalizer option so you can vary the tone some.
* There are three ways you can play audio from. The machine can take a micro card; a USB flash drive; and a regular sized memory card. You can only have one card/drive in at once (if it is empty you can have more than one, but if you have two loaded inputs the computer can't figure out how to separate and use all of the information). This means you can put 32gb's of info (I have 8gb's) on one of these. But practically speaking unless you are basically going to shuffle the music the more files is not necessarily better (i.e. it's a hard gadget to navigate). As another reviewer stated, the way to go may be to have several different interchangeable sources.
* You can use the boom box as an external speaker for your other mp3 players.
* Nice size; very portable. I bought the boom box for a very specific purpose outside the home, but have been getting good use for it in my apartment also.
* The player picks up exactly where it left off. Some cheap mp3 players go back to the beginning of a folder each time. IMHO, that's a pain.
Weaknesses:
* Really bad instructions. There is a whole navigation system built into this player and the instruction don't even scratch on this. As a real quick primer, if you press the menu button (far right) when a song is playing you can set the boom box to play one folder continuously, repeat all, go random, etc. One tip: random is random for the folder that is playing so if you want a big shuffle you have to have all of your music in one folder (no subfolders). If you pause the music and pick the menu button and then press into "Card Folder" you can navigate through all the music you have on the player. It's cumbersome, but better than pressing the the forward button 50 or 100 times. A little patience, a little experimentation and you can make the navigation system (not a bad one) work for you.
* While I think the boom box is durable the inside chasie seems to get loose easily. I returned one player because of this (I have purchase two [keeping one and giving one as a gift] and even my replacement *seems* to be loosening a bit. I'm not to worried about this; I don't think it will be a problem, but a drop of crazy glue would have gone a long way here.
* I haven't gotten the machine itself to connect to my computer (as the instructions say it will). I have a card reader, so no big deal and maybe this is an operating system compatibility issue (I use Windows 7, 64 bit and maybe it's the 64 bit that's snagging me here) and I have a card reader which does me just fine.
So in sum, five stars for the price. Consider carefully what you want the boom box for and if after considering the promotional material and the reviews the gadget seems to fit your needs it's worth taking a chance on. I really do like it and am very glad I got one for myself and one as a gift for someone else.
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