Shiny Over Sound

• Kaser Mambo Flix 4GB:  No, that's not Kaiser, it's Kaser.  The player was shiny and purty in its box.  This was the first el cheapo Chinese player I got.  The specs were definitely good.  Screen was 2.4" diagonal with 65k colors; 4GB of storage; built-in speakers; expandable storage; and FM radio.  What else could one ask for?  Well, usability for one thing.  This thing was horrible when it came to usability.  It took me 30 minutes to figure out how to get around since there was no dedicated "OK" button.  The orientation of the screen was landscape, the controls were not.  So to go left?  You'd hit up on the control pad.  Doh.  What is worse is that to adjust the volume, you had to hit the Volume key until the "Vol" indicator flashed, only then could you change the volume.    The "Play" button was also the "Cancel" button.  The "Menu" button was the "Enter" button.  The case itself was a cheap stainless steel case that felt half-empty and the texture of metal was odd.  The expansion slot only accepts microSD cards and not microSDHC cards-- this means the largest capacity of expansion card compatible is 2GB.  There was no MTP support for this device and listening to music meant surfing through a directory structure.  The sound quality was on par with the iPhone/iPod touch that I had previous:  In other words, there was sound and it was pretty muddy.
• iVO Sound m850 4GB:  This one was number two.  Specs were on par with the Kaser.  Screen was same size, same storage, had speakers, expandable storage and FM radio.  The UI was a little bit better in that it was able to index the music based on metadata.  The storage expansion was again limited to 2GB.  The actual unit was very pretty on the face, but had the same cheap stainless steel on the back.  The expansion slot had no cover and since it was a miniSD slot, it left a gaping hole in the side of the unit.  The problems?  Well, the one I got had a cracked screen (and when I went to exchange it, there were none left), the sound was muddy, and while better, the UI still sucked.  Also, the speaker was not loud and sounded tinny when the volume was pushed to max.
• iriver lplayer 4GB:  I actually really liked the lplayer for its innovative d-click system.  The whole face of the device was the control.  You click the screen in the direction you wanted to navigate.  It was brilliant.  The screen on this guy was smaller (2"), but that was OK as the unit itself was tiny.  The UI was a marked improvement over the previous two.  There was no expansion slot for this device, but that is OK.  I loved the dedicated buttons on the device:  Power and Volume.  The sound quality of the unit was better than the iVO and Kaser.  It was lacking some though:  The highs were not bright and the mids were not warm.  What drove me nuts was the fact that the lplayer did scan for metadata in the music files:  But it did not do anything with the data in terms of sorting.  If you looked in Artist or Album, the order of all of those things were random.  Not very good when you are trying to look for something to listen to.  This unit did support MTP, which was nice.  This was the only unit that I tried which supported OGG and FLAC.  I really wanted to like the lplayer since its sound was a step up when compared to the iPods, but the way that it handled metadata drove me nuts.  Oh, and for you who actually got this, don't install the iriver plus 3 software.  It is bad, very bad.
• Sony NWZ-E436FBLK 4GB:  Sony has to really do something about their naming convention.  So, before I continue, I have to admit I'm a Sony expatriate.  That being said, I have not owned any Sony Walkman MP3 players before -- other than my old SonyEricsson w810i phone which carried the "Walkman" moniker.  I was reminded about the quality of sound that Sony products put out when I was playing around with my Sony Reader and tried out the MP3 playing abilities of it.  The sound was rich:  Highs were crisp, lows were smooth, and the mids were warm.  The Sony Walman is the media player I am keeping for the sheer fact that it does everything right that the previous three did not.  It reads metadata and sorts accordingly.  It sounds fantastic.  Even though it is Sony's entry level player, it feels like a high-end player.  The menus and UI are easy to navigate; and I was able to get around without having to read the manual or futz around.  I also like the fact that Sony added an "Option" button that pulls up contextual menus, instead of forcing me to wade back to the main menu to change options (like play mode or EQ).  Also, the Walkman has a dedicated hardware rocker for volume.  That is a huge win.  The screen is 2" diagonally and is a widescreen.  I'm not going to be watching videos on this thing much, so that is not a big deal.  The Walkman works in MTP mode and also works with DRM'd stuff -- the free digital copy of The Dark Knight I received from Amazon when I purchased the Blu-ray, it works great on the Walkman.  I can use the Walkman with Overdrive, which is fantastic.  If I ever felt inclined to use Rhapsody or Napster, the Walkman will work with them too.  And the put a big win on the device:  Single charge results in 45 hours of audio playback (nearly twice as much as the iPod nano's 24 hours).  My only complaint is that Sony went with a proprietary connector (whereas the previous three used a standard mini USB jack).  Oh, wait I have two complaints, the other is that the device indexes music each and every time it is disconnected from the USB -- whether if there were changes or not.  The iriver could detect changes and only reindexed when there were changes.

• Songbird:  What I don't get is if you're going to try to create an awesome new media management piece of software:  Why would you copy the ass UI of iTunes?  I mean, copy it almost to a fault.  That is not the thing that drove me away from Songbird though, I could almost live with that.  The thing that drove me away from Songbird was the fact that the MTP synchronization module was complete crap.  It kind of worked, but it ate up all my CPU and it kind of just ran -- meaning that it was there, it was doing something, what it was doing, I had no idea.
• Windows Media Player:  Not the greatest thing in the world, but not the worst either.  I could not get myself in touch with the WMP interface.  Also, it did not have a persistence on which playlists were synced to which portable media player.  So, each time I plugged in a device, I would have to drag over the different playlists to get synced.  That was a pain.
• Winamp:  Winamp was actually pretty cool.  It reminded me of the old days when I used it solely for playing music.  Winamp works just like WMP when it comes to syncing though.  That sucked.  Otherwise, Winamp is awesome.
• Jriver Media Jukebox:  Media Jukebox was nice, but the interface was really, really (REALLY) convoluted.  It took me a while to figure out how to even update the ID3 information for a song.  Otherwise, Media Jukebox was OK.
• Media Monkey:  This is the one I'm going to use.  It is fast.  It is powerful.  And it syncs things perfectly.  It handles podcasts very well.  There is so much power that I have yet to start using it all -- but, it is put into a nice UI that is easy to use and quick:  If I wanted to do more, I could.  If I just want to do the basics, that works also.