Filed under: Portable Audio

U.K. record label Hed Kandi is looking to extend its reach from the dance floor to your pocket with its latest offering, a self-branded MP3 player pre-loaded with a few of its own tracks. It’s hard to see anyone but the most devoted fans throwing down the pounds for this one though, with the player demanding quite a premium for otherwise lackluster specs. For £69.99 (just over $130), you’ll get 512MB of built-in memory, an OLED display of unspecified size, voice recorder functionality, and support for MP3s and WMAs (DRM, too), with a promised 12 hours of playback from the rechargeable battery. If that doesn’t dampen your Hed Kandi obsessiveness, you can snag one of these right now.

[Via Shiny Shiny]

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Chinese manufacturer Aigo has let loose a new digital audio player in its home country, the Patriot MP-F986. Weighing in at just 1.5 ounces in a pocketable 2.6 x 1.85 x 0.6-inch form, this one’s available in both 512MB and 1GB varieties — each packing a 160 x 128 OLED screen for some pint-sized AVI viewing — and supports MP3, WMA, and OGG files on audio front; you’re also getting voice recording and an FM radio for good measure, because, you know, to be an iPod killa you gotta load up on the bells and whistles. Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be any word on pricing just yet, though we wouldn’t recommend holding your breath for the F986 to show up on this side of the Pacific.

[Via I4U News]

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Gaming, Portable Audio

Music-hungry Nintendo fanboys in Japan have already been able to get their fix in the form of the Play-Yan adapter for the DS and Game Boy Advance/Micro, but it looks like the rest of us might soon be able to rock some beats between bouts of New Super Mario Bros as well if this latest bit of info pans out. According to a brochure that reportedly surfaced at the Leipzig Games Convention, Nintendo is set to release an MP3 player adapter for the DS and Game Boy Advance this fall — October 6th to be specific (in Europe, at least) — and like the Play-Yan, the add-on will use SD cards (up to 2GB) for storage and have its own headphone port, although it apparently lacks the Play-Yan’s video capabilities. Price is reported to be €30, or just under forty bucks, although there’s still no official word from Nintendo, which we’d guess would be coming fairly soon if that release date is solid.

[Via Joystiq]

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Filed under: Portable Audio

Archos is no stranger to the portable audio player market, and while we’ve known about its 104 for some time now, PCMag has finally given it a good once over in the testing lab. Apparently designed to compete with other miniaturized devices like the iPod mini / nano and Cowon iAudio 6, the 104 sports a 4GB hard drive, 1.5-inch OLED display, and an enclosure that’s about twice as thick (though just as tall) as the nano. Available in black, silver, or pink, the relatively bare-bones DAP didn’t have a whole lot to showcase aside from its decent design. Reviewers noted that controls and menus were simple, yet effective at navigating through libraries, and did allow bookmarking to keep your place in those lengthy audiobooks. The inability to play any flavor of lossless format was a bit of a letdown, and although its “playlisting functions” were said to be “excellent,” the included headphones were anything but. The unit took some serious criticism when the review team attempted to view pictures on the color display, and found the results to be “terrible,” as “jaggies” distorted every photo they tried, even turning attractive faces into “scary sights.” The biggest dig, however, came from the lackluster battery life — by keeping the tunes rolling for only 11 hours, 50 minutes under “normal listening conditions,” it fell several hours of short of expectations. The so-so player earned a well-deserved “average” rating, as the lack of extras (like an FM tuner) and poor display / battery performance really put a damper on things. But if your primary interest is keeping it simple, and you don’t mind finding a charging port every 12 hours or so, you can snag the Archos 104 for a very competitive $159.99.

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Filed under: Portable Audio

These days, you can find a digital music player in just about every shape and size imaginable, but we should have known the Europeans would find a way to incorporate a favorite pastime into a modern day music maker. The Naf Naf Hyp joins the ranks of odd, yet refreshing, digital audio players that offer the standard fare we’ve come to know and love, but this keg features an unexpected extra that sadly we have little use for. While this little barrel can playback MP3s, display ID3 tags on the circular LED display, spin standard or MP3-loaded CDs, and pump out the jams through the 2 watt stereo speakers, the oddball here is the built-in cassette player — yes, cassette, also known as a tape. Aside from that little dash of history, it rocks a graphic EQ, AM / FM tuner, aux-input, alarm clock, multifunction remote, and even a “foldaway carrying handle” to take it back for a refill. Although the quality here is really anybody’s guess, it’s still going to be mighty hard to resist such a fitting party ornament, and with these available now in red or black for 759,00 DKK (about $130), you can keep your MP3 collection (or 1985 mix tape) on tap.

[Via Red Ferret]

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Filed under: Portable Audio

Japanese manufacturer Sun Connection has emerged from years of painstaking research and design, today announcing its Music+ MP3 player. Unlike some other totally different digital audio players, the Music+ relies on SD/MMC cards for storage (topping out at 2GB) and also seemingly only plays back music according to the file name order. The unit itself measures about an inch and a half square and weighs less than an ounce, with its battery promising some eight hours of continuous playback. Sun Connection’s also managed to keep the price low enough, just 2,980 Yen ($25 US) — of course that also means you’ll have to supply your own SD card.

[Via AV Watch]

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Filed under: Portable Audio

Clearly it was the name “Pebble” which caused the EZAV EMP-700 music player to come up short in its attempt to usurp the iPod from its DAP dominating position. Oomi, yeah, duh, that’s the change that’s needed. That and support for PlaysForSure WMA, MP3, a 2GB capacity, voice recorder, FM radio, and a reported 12 hour battery life will almost certainly, uh, make no difference whatsoever. Here’s a hint: think ecosystem. This Korean product, made in China can be yours in the UK for about £70 or $130. Now you know.

[Via Stuff]

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Filed under: Portable Audio

It might have been a little more appropriate if their T2 came fashioned in Liquidmetal (sorry, had to), but Cowon‘s latest iAudio player comes in 512MB, 1GB, and 2GB sizes, and features MP3, OGG, WMA (sorry, doesn’t look to be PlaysForSure), FLAC, WAV, and ASF, and your usual OLED color display, 12 hour battery, FM receiver / recorder, and voice recorder; all in a diminutive 0.5-inch thick shell that smacks more of an old school Walkman than an anti-iPod, if you ask us.

[Via iAudiophile]

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Boy oh boy, we knew the Toshiba Gigabeat S was good after our initial hands-on at CES, just not this good – according to CNET’s review anyway. See, they just snagged a 30GB model which sports Microsoft’s “super-intuitive” Portable Media Center (PMC) 2.11 software and is almost identical in size, weight, and battery life to the 5G iPod it’s gunning for. The FM tuner and dedicated controls along the side were found to be a bonus and that cross-hair controller was both “tactile and delicate” allowing for “fluid and responsive” navigation even while multitasking. It also comes with a USB-conversion cable for transferring snaps off digital cameras without additional accessories. The only real drawback is due to the Gigabeat S’ support of Microsoft’s Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) over USB Mass Storage — a choice that limits its use to XP systems, only. When the swooning was over, CNET bestowed their Editor’s Choice and an 8.7/10 rating on the S – easily besting the scores of both Apple’s iPod with video and Creative’s Zen Vision:M. But the accolades didn’t stop there. See, according to this CNET review, the introduction of the Gigabeat S in combination with Windows Media Player 11 (now in beta), MTV’s URGE music and the Vongo movie subscription service has “wiped out” any advantage the “iPod/iTunes ecosystem” had over its WMA competition. Maybe, but we’ve seen so-called iPod killers come and go many times before, so we won’t be issuing a deathwatch just yet, dig? Still, if you’re running Windows Media Center Edition (or thinking about it)… what’s keepin’ ya from dropping the $280 or so required to bring this mutha home?

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Filed under: Portable Audio

Just a few weeks after the launch of their Microsoft-supported music service Urge, MTV has tapped European company Mini Media to produce two MP3 players emblazoned with branding from Viacom franchises such as South Park and Pimp My Ride. The lower-end MIVI-P1GB sports 1GB of storage (expandable with SD), WMA playback, an FM tuner and a voice recorder, while the higher-end MIVI-P1GBV1 adds photo/video playback on a 1.5-inch CSTN screen. Yeah, the specs are nothing special but MTV is hoping the wacky rubberized finish and cheesy graphics will be enough to separate consumers from their cash after the European release slated for September. No word on price or plans for a US release yet, but we’re betting we’ll see these before we ever see that other MTV player again.

[Via I4U]

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

If you like to buy products described by seasoned reviewers as "very good," "great," and "excellent," then you'll certainly want to check out iRiver's 2GB Clix DAP if you're in the market for a player that screams "iDon't." Everyone who's gotten his/her hands on iRiver's rebrand of followup to the U10 seems to be in love with the little thing, citing audio that's both accurate and loud, easy-to-use, intuitive controls and interface, its crisp, clear screen, a plethora of options for photo viewing, and even good video playback despite a maximum of 15fps. Other nice touches include relatively high bit-rate options for in-line, voice, or FM recording, a good selection of digital equalizer presets, and better-than-average earbud headphones included in the box. Out of all the reviews that we've seen, the only major knocks on this $200 player are for its use of MTP (as opposed to UMS) file transfers and its supposedly short battery life (at least compared to the U10), although PCMag managed to squeeze a respectable 27 hours out of their Clix in testing.

Read- PCMag
Read- Anything But iPod
Read- Cnet

Filed under: Portable Audio

To be honest, we didn't really see it at first glance, but apparently this new X31M player from Oppo is shaped like a musical instrument of the guitar variety. Funny, no? We're not sure on capacity, but the player does support the usual MP3 and WMA files, promises 11 hours of battery and can play FM radio. There's an OLED display, USB 2.0 connection, and, uh, a headphone jack. These China-bound good times can be yours for some undetermined price, at some undetermined point in time.

[Via DAPreview]

Filed under: Portable Audio

We can always trust Memorex to liven up the party, and here they come now with three new music players that pin down the low-end of the market fairly well. The players are headed by the MMP8565, which features 1-2GB of flash memory, a monochrome LCD, and busts out the MP3, WAV, WMA and WMA-DRM tunes. It's a fairly small unit, at 0.6-inches thick, and manages a respectable 12 hours of battery life. Rounding out the trio are the MMP8550 and MMP3774 players. The simple-as-it-gets disc shaped 8550 has a mere 256MB of storage and not much else. The gum stick shaped 3774 has a bit of a "me too" form factor, but spices up things a bit with a SD card slot to augment the 512MB of included storage. It also has an FM tuner. There's no word on prices or availability for these things, but they're supposed to show up at Target.

Filed under: Cellphones

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Filed under: Handsets, Multimedia, Sony Ericsson, GSM, GPRS, EDGE

Sony Ericsson has yet another Walkman phone lined up for Q3 launch with the W710 clam for active types. As such, the W710 features a motion sensor and slew of fitness applications which can be managed from both the internal 176 x 220 TFT and 128 x 128 external STN displays to measure running speed, distance and time, or simply count steps back and forth to the Twinkie source. It ships with a 512MB Memory Stick Micro card (expandable up to 1GB) and features a standard 3.5mm jack, RDS FM radio, 2 megapixel shooter, MusicID service, Bluetooth (A2DP stereo audio not specified), and measure in at about 1-inch thick and 3.6-ounces. And just in case you'll be using it to make calls, it goes quad-band GSM with EDGE support meaning this device is also a US athletic supporter. More snaps after the break.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Filed under: GPS, Portable Audio, Transportation

Personal Tech Pipeline got a chance to tour around with Mio's C310 portable GPS receiver with built-in DAP that we first spotted at CES, and claim that although the unit is a pretty good value, its performance is a bit underwhelming. Rather than building a product from the ground up like the Garmins and Magellans of the world, Mio has assembled a Windows CE-powered unit featuring software from Destinator Technologies and maps from TeleAtlas -- which, while not necessarily a bad thing, means some of the features aren't as polished as they are on vertically-integrated products. For example, PTP found that many important options were buried under several sub-menus, which made simple tasks like changing to night mode or selecting a new destination while driving more difficult than they should be, and probably more dangerous. The C310 seemed to perform its navigation duties fairly well, though, and even ships with ActiveSync for loading up your Outlook contacts' addresses, but little annoyances like a cluttered 3.5-inch screen and awful built-in speakers might be enough to convince most folks to put their $600 towards a more expensive model that operates a little more smoothly.

Filed under: Portable Audio

hspace="4" border="0" alt="" src="http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/05/iriver_e10_1.jpg" />

We won’t deny
that we’re a little jealous CNET Asia got their chance to fool around with href="http://www.engadget.com/search/?q=e10">iRiver’s 6GB E10, which we’ve been eyeing with lustful eyes for a
little while now. Sounds like interfacing with the clicky buttons wasn’t always expeditious in navigating the UI, so
iRiver added some programmable shortcut keys; the 32 hour battery life and Flash Lite video support are also niceties.
Unmentioned was codec support, PlaysForSure compatibility,
etc., but what they weren’t too fond of was the proprietary connector (so what else is new?), the non-user-programmable
182 TV brand IR remote function (which if you ask us kind of seems like a haphazard feature thrown in from the concept
device heap), as well as the fact that while it does also support MPEG-4 video, that’s about all it supports. Yeah, no
device is perfect, but we’re not about to give up on this thing yet, no sir.

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

We see a lot of digital audio players pass through here, but Teclast is one of the first manufacturers we've seen to incorporate a separate processor for audio decoding. Just weeks after we spotted their first so-called "dual core" DAP, the C150, comes another PDA-esque model called the T19, which has the same dedicated Wolfson WM8750 decoding chip as the "C" but adds a 1GB option into the mix. Besides MP3 playback, the "T" features MPEG-1 video support, and sports extras such as an FM tuner, line-in recording and voice recording, along with an eBook reader, dictionary, and calendar. Probably only available in China for the time being, the T19 costs 77 or 90 dollars worth of yuan for the 512MB and 1GB versions, respectively.

Filed under: Portable Audio

iRiver Japan's the only region of Reigncom we've seen announce it today, but they've got a 2GB version of their lime green T10 due out there for ¥19,980 (about $170 US). Doesn't look to different than the MP3, WMA, OGG, ASF playing, FM tuning, voice recording device we're well used to otherwise, but it's still got that same damned single-cell AAA battery, making it one of the more capacious players to take said cells. Expect them to start selling the 26th of this month over yonder in the land of the rising sun, and who knows (if and) when elsewhere.

Filed under: Portable Audio

vspace="16" hspace="4" border="0" align="right" alt=""
src="http://img.engadget.com/common/images/0143716515082462.JPG?0.9843368278537992" /> href="http://www.engadget.com/search/?q=iriver">iRiver Japan’s the only region of Reigncom we’ve seen announce it
today, but they’ve got a 2GB version of their lime green
T10 due out there for ¥19,980 (about $170 US). Doesn’t look to different than the MP3, WMA, OGG, ASF playing,
FM tuning, voice recording device we’re well used to otherwise, but it’s still got that same damned single-cell AAA
battery, making it one of the more capacious players to take said cells. Expect them to start selling the 26th of this
month over yonder in the land of the rising sun, and who knows (if and) when elsewhere.

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Filed under: Portable Audio

We know oddly shaped DAPs are hard to come by, so we thought we'd run this whale-influenced unit by you, just in case you've been scouring the market for a marine mammal that can pump the tunes. The Toshiba Dynabook IPCZ100A sports 512MB of storage, stores a USB 2.0 connection in its tail, and has a small LCD display in its belly. There's no WMA DRM support or really much of anything, but, well, it's a whale, so let's cut it some slack.

Filed under: Portable Audio

Not that we really had any doubt at this point, but those new Sony E-series flash players from last week? Yeah, they're real. No new info on Sony's official site though, not so far as we can tell: same 512MB / 1 / 2GB capacities as before with optional FM tuner, MP3 and WMA playback, and a 28 hour battery (using ATRAC, of course) with a 3 minute quick charge for 3 hours playback (again, probably using ATRAC), and black, violet, pink, blue, silver, and the "very exclusive lime green." Yeah, whatever. So where are our CE-Ps, Sony?

[Thanks, Colin]

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

It's been a while since we last heard from M-Bird, but it looks like maybe, just maybe, they've shed their egregiously awful stylings for a milder, more Cingular 8125-ish looking enclosure. Their XZ-22 media player features 2.2-inch 260k color display, USB On-The-Go, and 512MB / 1 / 2GB capacities in 1.9 x 3.5 x 0.6-inch body. Nothing mind blowing, but it's an aesthetic step forward for one of the worst habitual offenders of taste in the audio player world, that's for sure.