Average Customer Review: ( 23 customer reviews )
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17 of 17 found the following review helpful:
 Best deal out there on an MP3 player Sep 09, 2008
By Noah Britton
I've had this for about 2 months.
Positives:
+Very easy to use. It works well with either Windows Media Player or as a Flash drive .
+2 GB is plenty of space for anybody. That's over 24 hours of music, and no one will ever listen to more than that in one sitting.
+The best $20 you'll ever spend. Even if it breaks tomorrow, it's still a better deal than a $200 iPod that breaks after a year (do the math).
+The microphone is useful for spoken or low-volume recordings
+It doesn't even need to go in my pocket, it fits in one of my belt loops.
+I can easily go between folders with the little thing on the top left (ignore other reviews that claim it's difficult to choose songs)
+The headphones that come with it are actually very good and way better than the $20 ones I bought to replace them after one of the ears went (this always happens as I listen to my mp3 player for hours every day)
Negatives
-It runs on a AAA battery. This is touted as a positive because you don't need to bring a specific charger on vacation, but this is actually a negative because you have to either keep buying batteries (which offsets your savings on this) or use rechargeable ones which require a charger. I've chosen the latter and have been satisfied with it. It's no better or worse in this area than other mp3 players that use chargers.
-The mic isn't great. I recorded a concert and, although it's better than cell-phone quality, it doesn't have very good compression so it distorts somewhat.
-The battery connection is a little weak on all batteries besides the one that comes with the mp3 player, so if you put tinfoil on the edges of the battery it will last a little longer. The batteries last around 8 hours if you leave it on shuffle the whole time (choosing songs uses the backlight which eats the battery faster).
-Like all mp3 players, it's made in a sweatshop in China
All in all, a very good product (so far). The 4 GB one did not exist when I ordered mine. I might have chosen that for an extra $7.
16 of 17 found the following review helpful:
 A Great idea in a small package but damages easily. Feb 09, 2008
By M. Sabin
I've had two of these. It started out as a great gift from my wife for Christmas.
Pros:
For a small package and price it has wonderful features. 2GB is a great beginner MP3 memory size. The equalizer festures are what make the sound quality so great. Very versatile and a great size for travel.
Cons:
Takes a while to figure out. If you have the time to simply tinker around with it you can learn how to access all of its functions but I would not purchase it for anyone over 50 LOL.
Man does it break easily! After 2 weeks I found mine's player button mashed in and disconnected. I treated it right but it was simply fragile. Sent it back to the seller and they sent me a new one. The second one's volume control +/- button was broken out of the box. I could reduce volume but not increase it... not very useful!
The second time was it for me. Sent it back for a refund.
I miss having it but I guess either I got two losers in a row or I'm just too rough... I'm a fairly gentle buy though.
8 of 9 found the following review helpful:
Lots of features, pretty good design Feb 07, 2008
By Brett M. Bollinger
"brett"
I have had the 2 GB Centon player for about 2 months now, and it's worked out really well for me. I use it the most for working out, and it has taken quite a bit of up-and-down motion from running. I've read that other people have had these break on them in a month or so, but I have had no trouble.
Battery life is decent, I use the cheapest AAA's that I can find and still probably get around 12 hours out of them. Although most of the product has a rugged design, there is a nub that comes out of the top left that rotates slightly, allowing you to move within directories/music. I highly recommend not abusing this part, as it feels a little delicate and loss of its function will make the player useless. Overall music quality is decent/pretty good on the supplied earbuds.
Ergonomically, the player works pretty well, and the screen looks really nice, and displays song time, title, volume, battery life, and current play mode all at once. To add songs, you have to use Windows Media Player, which is free and easy enough to get, but I think it's more difficult to use and organize than iTunes, to provide a comparison. This music player DOES NOT support .m4p, so you can't use songs you bought on iTunes. It does play mp3 and wma, and a bunch of other types, too. You can also store data files on the player as you would on a USB drive, and it has a voice recorder built in (but I have not used it).
Overall, I think it's definitely worth the $21 or so that it costs, and I think it could be pretty reliable. This thing has more features than the iPod Shuffle, and costs only a fraction of the price.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 Useful Little Player Aug 12, 2009
By Wayne G. Marsh
"Wayne M."
I bought this to listen to recorded books, and it works well for that (with a caveat below). It's clear that it wasn't designed by Apple, but it's a good value at its price.
When I plug it into a USB port on my iMac, it mounts readily as a volume called NO NAME. Interestingly, its user's manual is present in its memory as a pdf file; just double-click it and read how to use the player. Unfortunately, the manual isn't very good. Fortunately anybody with any experience with these kinds of things can poke around and figure out how to use all the features in a few minutes.
One caveat for audiobook listeners: you should create a folder at the root of the NO NAME volume directory, then copy your audiobook files to that folder. When I dragged my audiobook files directly to the root of the volume (not inside a folder), the player played them only in random order, not in chapter order. Random may be OK for music files, but not for audiobook files. The audiobook files inside the folder played in order.
Sound quality and volume are excellent, at least for audiobooks. I haven't had it long enough to assess AAA battery life. For me, having a replaceable AAA battery is a selling point. Competing players all have built-in rechargeable batteries that have to be connected to a USB source to recharge.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Bulky torpedo-like body, difficult buttons, failed after six months Feb 07, 2010
By DarthRad
This thing went dead, would not boot up, after only six months. It wasn't even used that much. It just failed.
The sad part is that most likely the flash memory developed a glitch and lost part of its operating system software. Flash memory is like that - susceptible to losing information from all sorts of stuff - cosmic rays, static electricity, etc.
If the manufacturers of these mp3 players would provide software to reformat and reflash the OS, a lot of them could be salvaged. My daughter has an iAudio G3 1GB player that failed recently - Cowan had software for this player that allows you to reformat and reflash the OS onto the thing. I did this and basically brought that player back to life.
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