Low Price MyMusix PD201 Portable MP3 Player

This is a review of the awesome little MP3 player that might have been. I love this little player... okay, I COULD love this player. I really didn't expect this review to be a gripe session, but unfortunately this player isn't what it could be.

I specifically wanted an MP3 player that would work with SD cards because they are inexpensive and reusable should my MP3 player ever become unusable. I almost bought a 4 Gig SD card for this but 2 GIGABYTES IS THE LIMIT. This limitation is unfortunate, but not a deal killer.

The sound is great, especially on the "Rock" equalizer setting. I would have thougth Jazz or Live might be better, but to my ears and my wife's ears all of the settings but Rock sounded a bit tinny. Again, so far so good.

This leads me to this player's first fatal flaw: You can't save any of the settings. Another reviewer said that this only matters for books. Wrong! EVERY TIME you turn it on you have to set the Equalizer (unless you like the tinny standard setting), then you have to set the song you want to start on (because believe me, you WILL get sick of the first 10 songs in the list). This is a bigger problem than it sounds like, because the player shuts off after only a couple of minutes. Answer the phone, set the settings. Get a drink of water, set the settings. Bio break, set the settings. You get the idea. It's excruciating.

And you know that big disk in the center that you see in the photos that you obviously use to switch songs? It's just decoration. That little tiny "nib" in the center is a "joystick" that you use to select settings/songs. It is a delicate operation that will make you stop what you are doing in order to tend to your player. Definitely not a one-handed operation. I tend to use the tip of my fingernail because it's just too easy to select the wrong thing because pressing down on the joystick is the select button.

But wait, it gets worse. If the player EVER touches ANYTHING it suddenly loses its mind and says "no card." The only recovery from this situation is to shut off the player, REMOVE THE CARD, re-insert it (carefully because other reviewers said it wears out) and--you guessed it--set the settings again. I can't imagine that the person who said it was good for working out has ever actually tried it. I got a "no card" within 30 seconds.

Again, I really wanted to like this player. As it is I think I'm going to hook it up to a Sonic Impact T-Amp and a power supply so that I can leave it on FOREVER so that I don't have to set the settings every time I want to listen to a song.

Finally, the shuffle function doesn't work. It repeats the same songs just a few songs apart, and if you ever skip forward to a new song and go one too far ("oh, I like that one...") if you press the back button it's just a random song, not the one you just saw.

If this player didn't have an unreliable SD card slot, if it could handle cards greater than 2 Gig, if it saved settings and had a real shuffle function, it would be great. As it is it's just not worth the trouble.Get more detail about MyMusix PD201 Portable MP3 Player.