{"id":1777,"date":"2009-02-20T21:59:28","date_gmt":"2009-02-21T04:59:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/?p=1777"},"modified":"2009-07-20T18:14:40","modified_gmt":"2009-07-21T01:14:40","slug":"generic-4gb-mp3-player-ipod-shuffle-clone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/2009\/02\/generic-4gb-mp3-player-ipod-shuffle-clone\/","title":{"rendered":"Generic 4GB mp3 player (iPod shuffle clone)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Let’s put this one in the “travel accessories” category. <\/p>\n

Today my fourth mp3 player arrived in the mail. My first was an RCA Lyra RD1090A. It worked great, still does, but it is a bit bulky and requires an armband or a pocket. The on-board memory is meager at 256MB, but you can insert SD cards which is really nice. The problem is that the RCA unit has problems reading my cards larger than 2GB.<\/p>\n

My second mp3 player was a 1GB Apple iPod shuffle. I loved the size of my first shuffle and the ease with which I could just clip it on. I could have lived with the shuffle forever were it not for the storage capacity issue–1GB is not nearly enough if you listen to lots of music. Apple recently came out with a 2GB version, but for $69 I passed. I would pay $69 for an 8GB iPod shuffle–not for a 2GB shuffle. <\/p>\n

I sold my 1GB shuffle and purchased my third mp3 player, a 4GB generic shuffle on ebay for $36 a few months ago. My third mp3 player was horrible, defective even, so I returned it.<\/p>\n

Today, the following package arrived:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I purchased it from mall.hk for a mere $17.47 which included free shipping. Here are the pros and cons:<\/p>\n

Pros:
\n– Price!
\n– 4GB of storage (vs. iPod shuffle with a max capacity of only half or a fourth as much)
\n– Transfer speed (between 1.6 and 2MB per second–the last generic shuffle I had transferred files at 200-400k per second)
\n– Headphones actually work well (unlike the ones I received with my third mp3 player which were complete garbage)
\n– Wall charger included (iPod shuffle doesn’t even include a wall charger)<\/p>\n

Cons:
\n– Although it looks like a shuffle, it doesn’t shuffle (randomize) the songs; songs are played in the order copied–I got around this somewhat by copying the songs randomly so I won’t have to hear the same artist’s songs back to back
\n– Shipping takes forever from mall.hk; the mp3 player pictured above took an entire month to arrive
\n– Picture on mall.hk is of a real iPod shuffle; as you can see from these photos the button layout on this knock-off version is different
\n– Unit is slightly thicker than a real iPod shuffle (not a big deal)
\n– When unit is turned on, first song is always played, followed by song #2, etc. This is a big pain in the ass I’m hoping the company can send me some software to fix.<\/p>\n

I will comment on battery life once I’ve drained it a couple of times. Right now I’m somewhat happy with this purchase. Unfortunately, I’ve already filled up all 4 GB. It won’t be too long before I’m longing for an 8GB shuffle.<\/p>\n

48 hours later update<\/strong><\/em>: I found a work around for the first song always being played on startup problem. I don’t turn the unit off. Instead I just hit pause. The battery doesn’t appear to be used when the pause is on and it starts right were it left off when I hit pause again hours or days later. The battery has not been used up so far. I’ve listened to probably 3 hours of music and had it on pause for another 24 hours+ so the battery life appears to be good. <\/p>\n

With the workaround and at least decent battery, so far, I have to up my review from “somewhat happy” to “happy.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let’s put this one in the “travel accessories” category. Today my fourth mp3 player arrived in the mail. My first was an RCA Lyra RD1090A. It worked great, still does, but it is a bit bulky and requires an armband or a pocket. The on-board memory is meager at 256MB, but you can insert SD […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[10,9,75],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1777"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1777"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1782,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1777\/revisions\/1782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}