Digitalway FL200 256 MB MP3 Player

Rating:
Summary: Nice little device
Review: It was a bit larger than I expected, but it's still a small package. It seems to be well made and cleanly designed. Well worth the money.

It has one jack for everything (head phones and USB) and charges using power from the USB connection. (You have to have it pluged into your computer for it to charge.) The manual says it chargers in 150 minutes, but I think it charged a little faster than that.

The head phones are cloth lined where they touch your neck. I wish the adjustment on the head phones would allow the device to hang a little higher, but it is other wise well designed. The plastic thing that supports the device on the head phones feels secure and is easy to use. It does not fit on the device when using the USB cable, however.

I'm using the player under Linux, so I can't talk about the Windows softare, but under Linux it appears to be a SCSI mass storage device, so you conviently just copy the files to the player. It worked very cleanly.

It has 4 buttons, vol+, vol-, prev and next/play(on)/stop(off). The limited buttons don't hamper the usablity of the device, however. It's intuitive to use and efficent. The biggest draw back is it makes an annoying beeping sound whenever you use the rew or ff buttons.

It has no real play modes, just the ablity to advance through the tracks in alphabetical order. It will start exactly (mid-song even) where you left off when you power it up again.

For all it's minor faults, I'm so far quite happy with it. If you're looking for a small, simple, sleak device, this is a good buy.

Rating:
Summary: Won't use standard headphones......
Review: The price was right I went ahead and bought one of these since they are the smallest mp3 player on the market to the best of my knowledge. Mixed bag, some good, some bad.

- Biggest complaint is it doesn't accept standard headphones. Uses a mini-jack instead. To make matters worse they don't supply a stereo adapter with the player so I had to buy one at R@dioSh@ck and the adapter is nearly as big as the player. That sux. The whole reason for getting the player was because of it's small size and now I have to use a stupid adapter to use the headphones I want to use. MAJOR design flaw.

- It works great with XP, no drivers or software needed. Just drag and drop, as all mp3 players should be.

- Audio quality sounds good, but all mp3 players(and ESPECIALLY flash based mp3 players) should support .wma format. Small wma files sound so much better than small mp3 files.

Overall I'd probably discourage my friends from purchasing the player because of the whole headphones issue. Not many people are going to like the supplied headphones/necklace so it's a big issue. Too bad because it is smaller/lighter than anything else on the market but the fractions of an inch to accept standard headphones would have made all the difference.

Rating:
Summary: A modest, but Amazing mp3 player.
Review: This nifty little device kicks arse'. Well mine (128mb) can hold up to about 30-35 tracks. More than enough to pass the time on everyday tasks. The player itself is well built, with a heavy,solid, metalic, feel to it. The necklace style headphones are just awesome because you can just let this bad-boy hang around your neck while the jams crank out. The only dissapointment was that the headphones didn't look like the headphones that are pictured--but these are nice anyway. No belt clip or strap of any sort so that means you MUST take care of the headphones! Or else you'll end up having to pocket it rather than hanging around your neck. Sound is great and loud. I could leave my headphones hanging around my neck and still hear the song quite well at max volume. The interface for this device on my current OS (Windows XP) is simple. XP recognizes it almost immediately as a 'Mass Storage Device' and you just have to click and drag MP3 files into the player, bear in mind that you have to convert your wma files in MP3 format prior to doing that. No worries though, I found that Real Player seems to be more compatible with it rather than Windows Media, but none the less still works just fine. Real Player just has a built in converter that'll automatically convert tracks for you. In fact Real Player opened by default the first time I plugged it in the USB port. You have to take of your headphones and USB cable because I don't see how you can find replacements by any other means but through the manufacturer. I was a bit puzzled about a cd rom that was included with the package that configured older comps for the player, it was a small disc about the size of a nintendo gamecube game, didn't bother putting that in my drive. Battery life is about 8-9 hours. and the buttons are obscure but efficient and fashionable. Basic and simple and trendy, this thing is worth your one thousand pennies.