Pricelist of MP3 Player 2008

A Good Exposure MP3 Recorder
This is my 1st exposure to the world of MP3. There are so few FM radio recorders to choose from so I purchased the lowest costing one. I am hooked on the benefits over casettee and CD's for listening and recording lectures. However, a month later I am searching for something that works 2 times in a row, the same way. There are so many anomalies I can't list them all.

It does record voices in a room but only mine is loud enough to distinguish.
The output volume to an external amplifier is far far to low of voltage.
It has an inactivity timer of 10 minutes but I would rather have a sleep timer of 30 minutes.
The ear phones are sized for a horse and useful only for an FM antenna.
The battery indicator never gets to 1/2 before the recorder goes dark and you loose the voice recorder. Therefore, you are safe for about 2 hours after charging.
It has an audio equlizer but I can't hear the difference using the built in speaker with my FM lecture recordings.
It decides to go into repeat mode at will.
The select knob has 3 functions. It does 1 thing if you bump it for 0.10 sec., another at 0.50 sec., and another at 2.00 sec. you are never sure what is going to happen.
You do have to force ON the display 100%. Forget about battery life--you want it to record without shutting itself OFF.
I need to record a 3 day convention in July. This is April. I would not trust this recorder battery wise for the job at this point. I'll need to find a 2nd FM recorder soon.

Not Great - but not bad
I got this so I could download audiobooks from the library (iPod doesn't support). It's fine for that purpose. Audio quality is good, but the controls are very small and somewhat difficult to manage. This is definitely not a device for people with large hands or coordination problems.

Looks Good, But could sound better
I bought this player as a "last-minute" christmas stocking stuffer last year. I guess I bought it for the looks. I was a sucker for the colour screen and the seemingly easy navigation button.

This player is charged via USB. Whilst some persons may see this as a con, I see this as a pro because I have another mp3 player that uses AA batteries that get sucked dry within minutes of continuous play. Furthermore, the charge on this coby lasts fairly long.

The drag and drop feature for transferring files to and from the player is efficient and organizing media files into different folders is great, however I hated the fact that when I am ready to play back my music files within a folder, they are played back in alphabetical order instead of the order I copied them. If there is a way around this, I haven't figured it out as yet.

I hated the fact that the navigation button did not have a standard function. It had a different function depending on the screen you are in and can be pretty frustrating. In one screen the left button meant go back one screen whilst in another screen it had absolutely no function at all. In another screen the right button meant go back one screen. It was pretty frustrating trying to figure out how to turn off the unit in a screen other than the MAIN or startup screen. Turning it on and off was the biggest headache.

The easiset function was the voice recorder. I liked the one click recording from the side button however this doesn't allow you to continue recording. One click starts and one click ends. Any other recording option would have to be executed from within the Record Screen.

I also liked the equalizer being accessible from the click of the side button.

The headphones that came with this device is sturdy but hard on the ears. The ear pieces are a pain!! But ofcourse this can be substituted with your favourite headphones.

Another nice feature was the LOCK button which prevented the unit from either turning on or off by "itself" or engaging in other functions inadvertently.

I mainly use the music screen. Dont ever use the video, e-book, photos or FM tuner and the other screens. But with all the functions that this player has, it would have been great if it was easier to use and the sound was better. It sounded a bit "tinny" at times without the headphones but with auxillary devices it sounds decent. I use it with a FM receiver in my car and sometimes with my home stereo.

I say it is still a pretty decent mp3 player for the price.

Slightly Disappointed
I had purchased a similar coby mp3 player in the store and a friend of mine liked it so much I purchased one for her.I tried and tried to get the exact same one - I thought that this was it - well its not .. no where near it. This one has a very annoying font on it that is almost something I would expect to give a child,it has very limited graphics and is a little hard to maneuver. Ok deal for the price but to me I will spend a little more next time and make sure I get a gift worth giving.

Gave up after three faulty players
I bought this as a gift for my son and were reasonably very pleased at first. He loved listening to stories and music. However the menus were not that user friendly and the buttons were frustratingly unreliable, often requiring several presses to get a response.

We eventually returned the first unit when we purchased a SD card and discovered the memory card reader would only work whilst holding in the card.

The replacement unit did not function at all, right out the box. The third unit worked for about an hour, before the switches stopped working, though the backlight would turn on. We finally gave up, but were pleased to get a full refund.

Unfortunately we've not been able to find anything similar, which is a shame as we really liked the general concept of a mini MP3 boombox.