What I have on my hand is an example of a surplus of “China” portable media players (PMPs) locally called “MP4 players” which are ’surprisingly’ cheap entertainment systems. However, these “China” PMPs are underrated especially when compared to Apple’s iPod or Microsoft’s Zune.
I stumbled upon my friend who bought this, I grew curious. And here’s what I think about it.
It plays standard MP3s (standard 3.5mm jack) and AVI files (converted using an AVI converter software bundled with it) and the sound quality is great and video playback is amazing for a “China” PMP (since the video file is in AVI format). This also lets you play NES and SNES games, although the SNES emulator built in the device isn’t up to speed with the hardware (thus making the gameplay slower than NES). It has an e-book reader (actually, you have to convert your ebooks to .txt; in other words, it only reads text files) which sometimes doesn’t display the whole book (or text, in this case). It has a decent camera (similar to a web cam) and is expandable up to 2GB(unsure). Also, compared to other “China” PMPs, this doesn’t look that cheap. It looks decently presentable.
This device isn’t perfect. Navigation can be tricky and slow especially when moving files around or looking at photos. I hate playing SNES on that thing but playing a few NES games was pretty fun. Battery life isn’t great. The stock battery lasts around 6 months before you need to replace it. My friend recently replaced the battery himself with a cellphone battery which costs him only Php250.00. After replacement, his PMP lasted much longer than before. It does feel a bit cheap, but hey, for the price it is cheap. This could go for as low as Php1,400 to as high as Php3,000.
Would I recommend it? Yes. Definitely. This could serve as your main portable media player or your secondary PMP. However, if you are the type who doesn’t want to be seen with these “China” PMPs, then this isn’t for you.
