Mp3 Players- A Word Of Warning

[kingcorn]

Recently bought my girlfriend one of those cheap no-name (or fake name) MP3 players that are all over the place. I picked up the one with the biggest memory I could find- 2 gigs. When I got it home and started loading songs to it I started getting weird errors and restarts. A little research (mympxplayer.com) and I found out that a lot of these Chinese knockoffs have the firmware spoofed so it looks like higher capacity than it really is. The one I got is actually only 1G. There supposedly are some legit 2G models out there but anything higher is sure to be hacked. It also seems all those players run the exact same firmware so the only difference really is how they look. They've all got the same features (or lack thereof). All in all it's a bit... quirky, but it's decent enough and only about a third of the price of a namebrand player. I just wish they'd been a bit more honest about what I was really buying.

[astral]

Creative have a 4Gb player.

[Lannig]

Recently bought my girlfriend one of those cheap no-name (or fake name) MP3 players that are all over the place. I picked up the one with the biggest memory I could find- 2 gigs. When I got it home and started loading songs to it I started getting weird errors and restarts. A little research (mympxplayer.com) and I found out that a lot of these Chinese knockoffs have the firmware spoofed so it looks like higher capacity than it really is. The one I got is actually only 1G. There supposedly are some legit 2G models out there but anything higher is sure to be hacked. It also seems all those players run the exact same firmware so the only difference really is how they look. They've all got the same features (or lack thereof). All in all it's a bit... quirky, but it's decent enough and only about a third of the price of a namebrand player. I just wish they'd been a bit more honest about what I was really buying.

Quite true. Reported in many places. Bring in your notebook when you plan to buy one and fill it with junk up to the advertised capacity. I did and I'm quite happy with my dirt cheap 1Gb model.

When you find one that has the advertised capacity (most of them do), though, these no-names are decent value for the money. Much cheaper that the brand names (e.g. Creative) and good enough for your daily jogging

--Lannig