The newest in the ever growing range of Sandisk MP3 players is the Fuze. It has been around for a few days now and has been given the review treatment by AnythingButiPod. What did they think? They said “across the board there are plenty of other improvements in screen quality, build quality, and sound quality” and “overall I’m pretty positive on it and can easily say it is the best Sansa to date”. Good news for Sandisk and great news for people who wanted a bigger Sansa Clip.
For the complete review, click over to AnythingButiPod.
It surprises me that companies haven’t made Bluetooth a standard feature in their ranges of portable entertainment devices (PMP, DAPs, MP3 players)? Sony haven’t added it to their whole range of players, but they have added it to two spunky (yes, I said spunky) new DAP’s. The two offending players are the 16GB NW-A829 and 8GB NW-A828.
The players also feature 2.4-inch display, FM radio and video playing capabilities. It can play MP3, WMA, ATRAC Advanced Lossless, SONY PCM, AAC, HE-AAC audio files plus MPEG4 and AVC video files. The battery is up to Sony’s impressive standards, and gives you 36 hours with Bluetooth off and 15 hours with Bluetooth on.
Look wise the players are clean and small, at only 9mm thick. The players will be priced $US354 for the bigger and $US260 for the smaller. They are in Japan only at the moment, but you can expect them to spread like wild fire.
For more info, click over to Sony. (it is in Japanese)
Unfortunately I am talking about music, not building materials and alcohol. Fortunately Iron And Wine are one truly fantastic band, which you should definitely check out if you haven’t already. If I didn’t mention it already, it is completely free.
For the album, click over to CNet.
It seems that Nintendo may be getting in trouble with the MP3 playback feature on the Wii. In the upcoming update to the Photo Channel, Nintendo will take away MP3 playback and replaced with it with AAC playback. Apparently there is a licensing fee to off the playback of MP3 files, and that fee is more then the AAC codec. Its funny that Microsoft and Sony are about to add a great amount of useful features to their consoles as Nintendo is taking away.
For more info, click over to the Engadget Blog.
Not everyone can afford iPods and ZEN’s. For those people who eat cat food just to survive and sleep in old newspapers, there is the Delstar DS2209. It doesn’t have an impressive name or a impressive design, but it does have the features and price to back it up.
It hits at $US30, which is ok, but then there are a few things you have to take into account. The first being the inbuilt 1GB of store, the second the SD expansion slot. On top of the ability to store a lot of music with a few SD cards, it also has a FM radio and voice recorder. One nice little feature a lot of players have removed, is the fold out USB adapter, making it a great thumb drive as well.
It isn’t going to dethrone any of the big players in the game of digital audio (and even more considering the introduction of playing video in pretty much every new player), but for 30 bucks you won’t mind so much when you stack and smash it into a million plastic pieces. To bad it is as ugly as sin!
For more info, click over to the Crave Blog.
I like to give you guys a heads up on reviews, especially seeing I recommend reading even the worst of reviews before buying any new toy. Below is a list of all the reviews I have stock piled this week, with a exert from each.
- First up we have the Samsung YP-T10 Review by the guys over at AnythingButiPod. They believed “the T10 is a good player with a really nice line up of features” and “may not be for everyone”. Not bad for a Nano clone.
- Mobility Site did a massive, gigantic, monstrous review of the interesting HTC Advantage X7501. There are a ton of images and the conclusion they came to was “for business users wanting a powerful mobile device for staying connected with the office and still be able to maintain phone connectivity, or mobile tech enthusiasts wanting a top-of-the-line Windows Mobile device, this would be an excellent unit”. I still prefer a true UMPC.
- Pocketables have done a great review on the new OQO Model 02, which is a tiny little UMPC. They said “the Model 02 is an amazing upgrade to previous models and definitely steps up and delivers on all of its pre-release promises” and only really didn’t like the fact that there was no stylus included in the non Windows XP Tablet edition models and the crappy battery life. The article may contain trace amounts of poetry.
- AnythingButiPod did it again with a great review of the Archos 605 Wi-Fi. They said “605 could be ‘the ultimate PMP’, but it needs a complete overhaul of the interface, making it more usable to the average consumer” and “definitely much less user friendly than what is on the market, but that said, it will make a very nice match for the portable video enthusiast”. Sounds like I’m waiting for the next generation.
- AnythingButiPod have too much time on their hands and have reviewed the SanDisk Clip, which is like a Shuffle, but with a little screen. They liked it saying “its price of $40 and $60 MSRP I can easily recommend this to beginners as well as seasoned MP3 player users as a spare” and “the Clip has found a permanent home in my gearbag”. What happened to the all rounder?
- Lastly we have a review of the Fujifilm’s FinePix S8000FD digital camera by the grand people at Photography Blog. They said “the Finepix S8000fd represents Fujifilm’s best attempt yet to fuse the advantages of compact and DSLR cameras together, rivaling the latest entry-level DSLRs” and “the Fujifilm Finepix S8000fd is therefore both our current ultra-zoom camera of choice, and a viable alternative to a DSLR camera”. Fujifilm have done it again.
Remember to thank these guys for taking their time to write these amazing reviews for you guys and girls.
I’m a big fan of the way Creative have gone their new ZEN player. It is still one of the only 16GB players with a expandable slot, and a good one at that (SD, not those silly minimicronano cards). The guys over at Generation MP3 have done a lengthy review on the little guy and had some good things to say. They liked overall quality, ergonomics, usability and price, but disliked small hiss at low volumes, videos must be encoded and battery life not as long as advertised among other things. The review is in french but the guys over a epiZENter have got a nice translation linked up for us English speaking types.
For more info, click over to the epiZENter Website (for English translation), or GenerationMP3 for french.
You could try all day and not guess what a Blog Tang A+ is. I won’t leave you hanging, because I am such a nice guy, but it is a PMP (portable media player). Doesn’t have such a bad feature set either.
Being a Chinese brand audio/video player, it is great value for money, with 4 sizes all coming in under the $US300 mark. It features a 4.3-inch 16.7 million colours LCD, and can output to your regular TV at a decent 30FPS. It can playback MP4, AVI, VOB, DAT for video, MP3, WMA and OGG for audio and JPEG, BMP and TXT for images. Other niceties include the line-in and USB 2.0 (not sure if it is Hi-Speed or not) support.
The prices are, 1,299 yuan for 40GB (US$173), 1,599 yuan for 80GB ($US213), 120GB for 1,899 yuan ($US253) and finally 2,199 yuan for 160GB ($US293). Release date isn’t set, but what do you care? There is little chance that where you live will ever see this player (unless you get it off ebay or live in China).
For more info, jingle over to the PMP Today Blog.