Customer Reviews

COBY MP-C341 Portable MP3 Boom Box w/256 MB Flash Memory & SD Card Slot

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I was looking for MP3 players for my 3 and 5 year olds. Wiggles and Disney CDs don't have a long lifespan with kids that age.

I wanted them to be fairly kid proof.. no docks, moving parts, headphones, etc.

These were exactly what I was looking for, and the price was right. The kids love them.

If I had to pick on a couple things... the LCD display could have better contrast, and they'd be much better with 512MB.

We had a standard boom box (CD and tape), but it stopped working and we needed a replacement. I initially looked for a boom box that would play MP3 CD-R disks. Besides being very difficult to find and rather expensive for what they did, my wife hated the size and color options. I then decided to find an MP3 player that had speakers (I didn't want to have separate speakers), sleep (so it turned off for the kids) and was easy enough for the wife to set when exiting the room.

I purchased our first COBY MP-C341 on clearance from a local music store. The COBY fit our needs very well. The four integrated speakers sound fine for the volume we need at bed time. It accepts standard SD cards full of music. Comes with an A/C adapter. 1GB cards give us enough room to provide a very good selection of music. The orange carrying strap is removable and the little clock display works nicely in the room.

Some other nice features of this unit are that it can connect up to the computer through a USB cable, record through a microphone or line-in jack AND encode to MP3 and receives FM radio.

After using the COBY in my son's room, my daughter's CD player gave out (it was mechanical and played every night.) I ordered one from Amazon and was happily filling up another SD card with Disney and children's tunes.

About a week later, trouble hit. The player seemed to freeze whenever the play button was pressed. I checked the manual and found nothing describing the condition or possible remedies. Calling COBY, I spoke with a representative fixated on a non-existent reset button. After looking all over the unit and declaring it reset button free, she asked a colleague and had me hook up to a computer and format the internal flash memory. Worked like a charm. Everything is back up and running and since I never stored anything on the internal memory, no loss of music.

Down side? Well, it does take a little to get used to all of the button clicks to start the music then set the sleep. Once you have it down, things work very smoothly.

The biggest up side? No more hunting for my daughter's requested music in a pile of CD's shoved in her nightstand!

My expectations were low - and it exceeded them. I give this item 4 stars for the idea: an mp3 player that actually has speakers built in, wow! No messing around with external speakers and wires, cradles or seperate sets of silly little AA batteries, etc.

I've been using my MP-C341 to listen to talk-radio podcasts at work for over 6 months now. Using rechargeable NiMH C cells, it lasts an entire shift. It's easy to carry around, and I only need to bring my MMC card back and forth to work with daily podcast updates.

There are some problems. Seeking forward and backward in an mp3 is only about 2 to 3 times faster than normal playing speed. That means, if you push the buttons slightly the wrong way, or the batteries shake loose for an instant, you're listening to a 3-hour podcast from the beginning again. Changing the batteries resets the clock and any customized settings - so don't bother.

I've never tried the FM - that's not what I bought it for, and I've got other radio's that I'm sure do that way better. The mp3 audio quality is surprisingly good though, considering it's compact size and speakers, and I've frightened unsuspecting co-workers with Mark Levin's rantings and ravings.

Unfortunately, it appears that instead of perfecting this product, Coby has discontinued this and it's successor model, MP-C351. That's too bad. With so many brands making so many different shapes and colors of seemingly identical Ipod-like players, and so much technology without a purpose, they could set themselves apart with this unique concept - as obvious and simple as it ought to be.

I'll probably buy another one of these while I still can, unless I can find something else like it - which I haven't found yet.

After wearing out two CD players from playing lullabies continuously, this machine was a godsend, and has the capability of growing up with my little one. No moving parts, I can put the MP3s directly on an SD card or load them into the device's internal memory. When she's older it can be an alarm clock radio or she we grab it and take it with her on a trip to take familiar songs to any hotel room.

Perfect for our needs!

With the low cost of this MP3 "Boombox" item through an alternate Amazon dealer, I was really expecting very little.......but out of the box it did more and easily then I ever expected. I am pretty MP3 savy and this was a mojo simple plug and play. You just drop the songs over the USB and it plays, no trouble at all. The 256 will hold at least a good 1 1/2 hour of play anyway but the best part is that it actually plays pretty dang loud. I was expecting a tiny tin sound but you can hear it playing three rooms away, no problem, no rattle. It has a fairly good base sound and if your files are simple medium bit downloads or rips, the sound is good. The FM radio has a pretty cheap reciever I guess but I didn't buy it for that. If you want something to haul around with you, this is prefect for size and with just 4 c's in it, not much wieght. I will update my review if this "thang" goes bad after a while.

After reading the above review from the gadgetaholic, I decided to give this little bugger a try, based on his mention of the record-from-aux feature. I, too, have a record/tape collection I'm dying to make home grown cds from. I'll admit, at first it took some trial and error runs, but at my age (crusty, and might I add this is my first player of this sort, as well) that's not unexpected. After said break-in period, I have to agree totally, the only reasons for not giving it 5 stars is that, while certainly not flimsy, I don't think it will dribble well, and the radio reception isn't the best out here in the boonies, but the point is to bring your own anyway, right? I don't know how many 1 gig cards it'll take to hold my collection, but I do know 1 gig holds a LOT! of songs. For the price, hard to beat.

This is a great unit. Very portable and loud enough for use outdoors. The covers could be a little better fitting and I couldn't detach the rope. Overall, I am very happy with this unit.

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.

I have had nothing but troubles with this boom box. The concept is great but it just doesn't work as advertized. Right now it is not working at all and it has been too long since I purchased so I don't think I can return it. I tried to get in touch with Coby but they don't have a phone number listed on their web site. I sent and email but got no answer. I wonder how some companies stay in business. I regret buying this product and I do not recomend it. I won't buy anything from Coby since if there is a problem there is no way to get support.

It's been a long time since I've had an brand new electronic product that died within the first half hour of use. I've always stayed away from low-end brands like Coby like the plague, but I started noticing nicer-looking products from Coby while cruising through stores like Walgreens and Target, so I decided finally to give Coby a chance when my wife needed a simple MP3 boombox (no CD) that has a flash card slot, to play tunes for our baby. And it just so turns out that Coby is one of very few brands that makes such a device (strange but true, as of Dec 2007). When it arrived, things were looking good. My wife liked its appearance, and it generally felt like a semi-quality piece. So I dropped several dozen songs onto an SD card and slipped it into the Coby's CD slot. I browsed through some of the settings in the menu, which were straightforward and effective, and setup the radio with my preferred presets. All of this took 10 minutes or so. Then...after playing 3 or 4 songs, it froze. None of the buttons worked. I unplugged the device from the power socket, replugged it in, the LCD came back on, but none of the buttons were responsive. I unplugged and replugged it in several more times. No luck. It won't turn on. None of the buttons work. I'm RMA'ing back to Amazon the very same day I got it. Thank goodness for Amazon's return policy. And...I will not touch Coby again.