Machspeed Trio 1 GB MP3 Player Voice Recorder Thumb Drive

• Lightweight digital audio player doubles as voice recorder and USB mass storage drive
• 1 GB flash memory holds 16 hours of MP3 and 32 hours of WMA audio
• Plays MP3, WMA, WAV, and ASF files; records to WAV
• LED screen with backlight; 7 EQ presets
• Powered by single AAA batter for up to 10 hours of battery life

Good if it meets your needs. That would be a player that demands small size and low price. Music during exercise, shopping, computer lab, falling asleep, or just as a flash drive.

You must be willing to accept these limitations.

1) Random play. Serial browsing is obviously ridiculous for 1 GB (probably 350 songs at 128Kb), and it doesn't have resume, so you must like random. e.g. you don't mind skipping through selections until you find one you want to hear.

2) Power on / off. Sometimes the unit decides to shut off during power up. You have to briefly disconnect the battery to fix it. Also, you have to return to the main menu (vs. song play) before power off works.

3) Battery. If you fall asleep listening (that's me), your battery is of course dead in the morning. Bought a cheap ($10) nimh charger that comes with some batteries (ray-o-vac).

4) User interface. You have to learn two durations of button press to navigate. Also, the unit appears dead (like 1-2 seconds!) when entering and leaving the play menu; indexing songs I suppose. (This and #2 are probably generating a lot of product returns.)

Sound is fine. I've had equalization problems with more expensive players (GoVideo, Rio). Random play is fine. Random on some players is a joke (Memorex mp3-CD).

Removable battery is great. Who wants to get stuck with a dead lithium that costs more than the player to fix? I'd rather carry an extra battery in my pocket.

Has a hold slide switch, so you can put it into your pocket. Being able to choose the backlight color (from a rainbow) is cool.

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I use this primarily to listen to talk shows that I record so most mp3 are 2 hours long. This creates issues that don't exist with just music use. Files are larger so playing off the player directly from the player with a PC or when attached to the PC is a must. Fast forwarding speed is extremely important for getting past commercials or queuing up to the middle of the file. Too fast will make getting the right place difficult, going to slow will be frustrating to get to the right place. I really wanted a direct insert device so I wouldn't have to carry around a cable. I purchased a Samsung YP-U2J but was disappointed with the fact that files couldn't be accessed directly by an operating system and it required Windows XP with Media Center 10. There are 2 categories of direct connect USB mp3 players: mp3 players and thumb drive/mp3 players. The difference is thumb drives do not require drivers or software to sync or transfer files. I prefer thumb drives/mp3 players.

Pros:

1. Works as portable storage device: no need for Media Center or other software. Works in any OS. No need to sync. Can play songs with PC directly from device. 99% of mp3 players can not do this. Very frustrating for large files.

2. Fast forward works fairly well. Starts at 10x (10 seconds per second), speed ramps up to 60x (1 minute per second). This works very well for me.

3. Uses AAA batteries so you can have backup power when you need it.

4. Pretty colors for back-light. Green, Cyan, Blue, Red, Purple, White.

Cons:

1. By far the most annoying thing is that it does not resume. When you pause and the player turns off, when you turn it on it starts in the menu. When you go to music it starts at the beginning of the first file. Ridiculous.

2. Song order is difficult if not impossible to manage. No play lists.

2. Battery life is terrible. With included alkaline, battery lasted 40 minutes. I've switched to NiMH 600mAH and they seem to last about 2 hours. Still not good for such a limited device but I can manage since my commute is only 20-30 minutes. Would be nice if it included charging for NiMH and NiCd batteries.

3. Shoddy construction. Glass screen cover broke when I was changing my oil. I was careful not to roll over on it but it still broke. Took it off and it works fine.

4. Kinda big. I really like the Samsung's size better.

5. Menu system is annoying. Samsung was very intuitive.

6. Fast forward same as next track. Hold button to fast forward tap to skip. Obviously annoying when fast forwarding 60 minutes into a show just to skip to the next track.

Even with all the problems, I like it better than any mp3 player that requires drivers or special software.

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Bought this because I wanted a good bit of space for as little money as I could manage.. and with that in mind, it's not bad. The controls are not at ALL intuitive, unfortunately (and the manual is NO help with anything), but I eventually sorted out all its quirks. Files can be sorted into folders, which is very nice. The main drawback I've found with this is that you CAN NOT put more songs on it without completely wiping off everything else first. You can delete just fine within the player's interface, but you cannot delete tracks from (in the case of Windows) the My Computer window. And it tells you everything is write-protected if you try to add something more on without having deleted everything first. Given that I only swap things out once a week or so, this is a managable flaw, but still a needless one. Apart from that, battery life is decent, and so far mine's put up with rain and pretty large temperature variations, as well as being dropped a good bit. Sound quality's not fantastic (most of the equalizer settings sound atrocious), but it's not to the point of being irritating.

Again, for the price and the amount of space, it's decent enough. Works just fine, once you sort out the controls. The size is also very convenient, it's perfect for just casually dragging it around with you everywhere in a pocket or what have you. (And much less to worry about than an iPod!)

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This is a very CHEAP player. I bought 2one for my wife and 1 for myself. the faceplates of both broke within a few weeks. In both cases, my wife and I just had them in our pockets and our keys (I guess) broke the faceplates.

Also, if you listen to longer podcasts or ebooks and turn the player off, it does not start where you stopped it at. The navigation is difficult. Another problem is that the microphone button is in a bad location and I constantly hit it and it is difficult to get it to stop and change back to the player. Overall, avoid this player

I took a gamble on this player, and I've been pleasantly surprised. I agree with a previous reviewer about the manual: it's pretty poorly written. But I got the gist of what they were saying, and after 10 minutes of exploring the player I've figured out most of its features.

As for the player's features... the sound quality is good, and the random track feature is surprisingly good when compared to other (admittedly cheap) players I've used. On many other players I've used the random track algorithm has been far from random. But this one seems quite authentic. The controls are kind of odd, but the UI is fairly good. The headphones that come with the player are poor quality, but the player itself seems fairly well made.

It's not an iPod, but for this price you can't really expect the same level of quality. I didn't have to deal with a rebate, so I can't comment on that possible issue. I also didn't run into any OS issues: it just worked seamlessly with XP from the start.

Considering the price, and the fact it's got 1GB of memory, on the whole this is a good little player.