Centon 1GB Full Speed 2.0 moVex MP3 player [17]

I was at a local office supplies store when this caught my eye near the checkout stand. What a perfect impulse purchase. It was $19.99. It has 1 gigabyte of memory on a USB drive and it comes with an MP3 player and earbud earphones to boot. It seemed like a pretty good deal to me. The cashier tried to sell me the protection plan for $3.00, but I waved it aside saying I prefer to be self insured.

Even after a week, when I sat on it in my winter coat pocker and smashed the crystal display and wrecked the MP3 playing capability, I still do not regret paying the "protection" fee.

Here are the plusses,

+ For an MP3 player it is pretty cheap. An iPod shuffle currently costs $79 for a 1GB model.
+ I thought of it as a USB flash drive with earbuds and a AAA battery. All these things separately would be $8.00 + $5.00 + .50. So I figured I was only paying an $8.00 premium for an MP3 player
+ It came with two songs.
+ It had a voice recorder
+ It would hold about 200 songs or 600 minutes of music
+ It displays the MP3 tags for artist and album
+ You can also have the lyrics files to display the lyrics loaded
+ The ear buds are integrated with the neck loop so that you can wear it around your neck

Here are the minuses
- This version did not have the FM tuner
- the two songs are not ones I liked
- The navigation lever only steps in series, so you need to flip through your whole catalog to find your song. They are in the order you stored them.
- The ear buds did not stay in my ears. This is a general problem for me, not necessarily a flaw of the player.
- The sound was not loud enough to be heard in anything but a quiet environment. The tiny amp is powered by one AAA battery, so this may be part of the problem.

Like I said, after a week I accidently crushed the LCD display when I put it in my long winter coat pocket, along with a Shrek toy from McDonalds, and sat on the pocket in the McDonalds chair.

I found out that the USB drive functions still work, but it is not really a USB 2.0 higher speed device. It also cannot be used as a Windows Vista Readyboost drive, which was my plan after it bit the dust.

Otherwise, it is a little bulkier than the typical USB drive, so it is going to serve as a backup. I may buy another one at that price. {BB}

Added: November 21st 2007
Reviewer: BB
Score:    [17]

Related Link: Centon Electronics Inc.
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