Customer Reviews

Coby MP620-4GBLU 4 GB Video MP3 Player with FM Radio (Blue)

5 star:		(332)
4 star:		(270)
3 star:		(96)
2 star:		(71)
1 star:		(127)

 

 

I have been using ths device for about 3 weeks already, and the following are the pro's and con's I encountered while using this device:

Pros:
-Cheap
-looks good, nice sleek and proffessional design
-nice UI interface
-radio
-battery life (all day non-stop playing and quick charge)
-light and slim

Cons:
- horrible headphones (no ear bud broke within an hour of first using it, the other 3 weeks after), but average sound quality. Recommend buying separate durable ear buds.
- Takes a few seconds too load and shut down, but this is a minor inconvenience.
-Organization, if you are looking for a specific song, you must either know the album, or know the order. Haven't tried other mp3 players before, but it is not that fluid. Feels like you are looking at your songs folder in your computer. (no search function)
-Video ( can only accept a really low quality format (.MTV), which you need a video converter for 99% of all of your video files, which is nearly impossible to find a good one. At the end, it will not be worth it converting.
-Pictures, really low quality, looks like something out of an old cellphone or gif.

Conclusion: If you are looking for a simple, cheap, straight forward mp3 player, I recommend getting this. If you want something extra, look for something else.

Sound quality is great. Good battery life. Very light and thin. Has a nice little screen, and rubber backing. Loads of features for [...] bucks (normally retails for [...] - rightly so), and nice 4 gigs of capacity! Obviously it's not an ipod touch, but I'd take this over a classic ipod or ipod shuffle/nano ANY DAY.. I also like that I don't have to feel like I'm handling glass when I use it. I owned an ipod touch, and I was almost afraid to handle it because it felt so delicate. This product actually feels light and durable. Also, it makes for a great flash drive, as well as having excellent reception in the FM tuner.. I highly recommend this product for anyone who wants a good mp3 player at a great price.

I bought this to replace my other coby. I like it. Very light wich surprised me and good picture and i just dropped it and it still works which is a plus.

Pros
-easy to read
-easy music transfer
-portable
-sounds awsome especially with skull candies
- puts your music in order and even has album/artist order as well

Cons (nothing big)
- hard to find music when you have alot since you only have a push button but just hold it and it goes by kinda fast
- when you want to search for a new song you have to start from the beginning everytime which sucks but o well
- takes a few seconds to turn on and shut off but aging no biggie

Over all, good player and is well recomended

This review is meant to be helpful for potential buyers. I aimed to get an MP3 player that would play mp3s and audio books, while I was traveling; I was not making an investment in buying a showy new mobile device. The product first arrived on time. The packaging was great. Tightly sealed and protected. Most importantly the product did what I wanted it to do. The sound quality was decent. I didn't have much of a problem uploading audio tracks onto the device, but then again that might vary depending on one's familiarity with technology. It's fairly easy, taking about 4 steps. Any concerns about not getting what one pays for: this would have to include the radio function. It didn't work very well in doors for me. It's antenna must not be that big. For me that's fine since I don't plan on using it much. I think that the functionality and price match the product. I do not feel as though I was gipped in any way when making this purchase.

I was definitely not up with the times. I finally decided to get an MP3 player. I honestly knew nothing about them. I didn't want to spend a lot of money and make a mistake so I chose this one. For $30, if it didn't work well, it wouldn't be too much of a big deal. To tell you the truth I didn't really have much faith in this player's quality, because it wasn't an expensive brand or an Apple Ipod. I really wasn't expecting much.

When it arrived I have to admit I was excited to get started. I had loads of songs I wanted to hear that I didn't have on cd. I felt like a kid in a candy store. At first, I found a site I could buy MP3's from and tried to get my songs on the device. Since this was my first time uploading songs on an MP3 player I didn't know what I was doing and had lots of trouble. The directions it came with were not very helpful to me because of my ignorance with technological things. Finally after fiddling around for over an hour I finally figured it out. I bet a lot of you are thinking I am a real dummy, lol!

All I can say is I am thrilled!! This little piece of machinery is amazing to say the least. Once you get the knack, it is so easy to download your songs and add them to the playlist. When I saw how easy it was to upload songs from my computer to the device, I felt stupid for not figuring out how to do it sooner.

I bought a mini stereo cable and connected it to the headphone jack and the other end to my stereo's audio jack and I was pleasantly surprised at how loud and clear it sounds with my stereo system. The earbuds it comes with are a little uncomfortable and hurt my ears, so I am using my Sony Walkman's head phones and it is much more comfortable. My husband and 9 year old daughter liked this device so much, they want their own too. I will buy two more and highly recommend this item. It is well made and looks expensive too.

Thank you Coby for making a high quality, great sounding, good looking device for such a low price.

I have only had this for a few hours, but I believe I can make helpful comments.

First, I did not buy it from Amazon. I trust Amazon, especially with books, but I often find electronics cheaper elsewhere. Since this is Amazon I won't name where I got it ($20 on sale in a store).

First, the sound quality is good. It's better than my 1gb iPod Nano, second generation, in that respect. The headphones that come with it are adequate.

Second, it's easy to install media. First, you'll need to install the software that comes on it, there are no CDs; all you need to do is plug it in with the USB connector that comes with it. Then let the software scan your computer for media, or add specific files and drives. You can then sync the files to your player. All of the files that show up for Itunes does show up for the Coby software. It's not necessarily fast in adding it completely but you can add things simultaneously in each content area; they are separated in the categories, but you can view them other ways as well.

Third, the radio can be slow or choppy, but it will work. If you hit the middle button twice, you can switch it from Manual mode to your presets. It's easy to switch between modes and add to your presets. The presets will jump in the order that you made them, not according to frequency on the scale.

Fourth, the video is, obviously, small but I like it. I don't plan to watch movies on it, just shorter content such as news podcasts. The software will convert the video file from the kind it is in. Watch out, the file converted might end up bigger what the software shows.

Fifth, if you pause the player, or go to another feature and it auto pauses, you can hit Now Playing when back in the area and resume playing whatever you were listening to or watching.

Sixth, the photos are small, and you should really only use it as a place to back them up, if that.

Seventh, I have not tried the text mode, so I cannot comment on that now.

Eight, it charges with the usb, and mine came fully charged out of the box.

Lastly, it has no clip. So if you're running or working out with it, you'll need to have it in your pocket or get an accessory that is compatible.

Overall, if it doesn't get buggy or freeze, it's worth the money. Even if it only lasts a year (dividing the $22 I paid, that's tax added, by 365, would mean I paid 6 cents a day for its use), that'd be worth the price paid.

Extra:

If you have something that lasts over an hour (I specifically have a NPR All Concerts Considered podcast playing that is that long), for the showing time played and time left featured, you cannot tell your exact time. This is because it shows minutes and seconds but not hours, 59:59, instead of 1:00:00, would be what gets seen. But there is a bar and you can see where you are at in relation to the beginning and end.

You can listen to specific artists or albums, but it's not necessarily intuitive. The first track for A Love Supreme, by John Coltrane, is fourth in the list, and it goes backwards. But, again, it's cheap and worth the price.

Ok, so I know there are a lot of reviews. I also know that a lot of them don't cover everything about this product.

I received this product as a gift from a friend, in exchange for books.

--------The Good--------
[The Price]
It's fairly decent, to me. $33 for one, free shipping, and you get about twice the storage capacity as most others in this price range.

[Battery Life]
I have seen a lot of talk about the battery life. Let me tell you that I ran a test yesterday. At 9:18am I started playing music. I ran it until 5:00pm. Yes I was using the buttons to jump around at least moderately to select different songs.

As far as I could see, the battery icon remained full and it played great. At 5pm I cut it off and put it to charge. It took 1 hour to get back to full. That is very good, in my opinion.

--------The Bad--------
[Warranty Scam]
As cheap as it is online, you are taking a risk with this. I'm not sure if a seller would take it back and replace if defective. If not, you are screwed. The fine print in the warranty states that you are required to send a defective product back to their facility. (That's $2-$3 for shipping.)

You are also required to send a money order for $6 for them to ship a new/fixed product back to you. Can you say money scam??

Their customer service is a joke. They don't care if you get a defective product. They will quite happily bilk you out of $10 to get it fixed.

[The Earbuds]
They keep wanting to slowly work their way out of my ear. Frankly it is annoying.

[No Playlists]
This is important. Read it carefully. It's not in the documentation or ad above AT ALL. If I had known, I probably would have gotten a different mp3 player.

You can create 1, count it, ONE playlist. You have to manually add/delete every song on said playlist. Which is a pain in the ass, to say the least.

You cannot use playlists from Winamp or Windows Media Player, though if you access the player from those programs, they will create a playlist on it. (Seems stupid that the developers could have support for the playlist to be created, but not used within the player...)

Note: There is a slight workaround for this that I will list later.

[Repeat]
You cannot repeat a single album or set of songs, as far as I can see. When it hits the end of the album, it jumps to the next album/folder in the line. Which is just idiocy.

[Media Manager]
It would not install when I plugged in the mp3 player. I had to manually open the folder drive that appears in my main hard drive through My Computer. Then select the installation file.

The Media Manager itself locks up and freezes, and glitches half the time.

[Track Listing]
They sort it alphabetically by the title of the song. How retarded is this? Do not use the Albums, Artists, or Genre to select your music, unless you don't care about order. If your album is supposed to be in a specific order, continue reading.

--------Helpful Hints--------
These are some things I have learned in the few days I've used this player.

[Properly Organized Albums by Track Listing]
To do this, first upload some songs to the player.
You should notice that a "Music" folder is created when you do this through the Media Manager.

The best way I have found do organize this is to do folder trees, the same way I do the My Music folder on my PC.

First create a Folder named after the Genre of your music. (For example, I use Anime for anything from an anime, Celtic for my Celtic music, Country for all my country songs, Gothic for my gothic stuff, and Rock for my rock music.)

After you create the main Genre folder, you must create smaller folders within to further sort by artist or group. (In this example, we will talk about Dragonforce. I simply put a "Dragonforce" folder inside the "Metal" genre folder.

Finally, inside the artist/group folder, you want to create a folder for the name of a particular album. (Going with Dragonforce, I create a folder named Valley of the Damned.)

Ok, so by doing this, you should have the following:

Metal -> Dragonforce -> Valley of the Damned

The Metal folder gains you access to Dragonforce (a metal band), and that gains you access to Valley of the Damned, one of their albums. Naturally, inside the Valley of the Damned folder will be all the mp3s for that album. ((Make sure they are listed as "# - Title.mp3", so the first would be "1 - Invocation to Apocalyptic Evil.mp3".

By doing this to all your mp3s, despite it taking some time, there is method to this madness.

When you access the music option through your mp3 player, an option exists at the bottom, called Browser. This lets you explore the Music folder. And you will see all those nifty folders you just created.

So say I want to listen to Dragonforce. I just go to Music, select Browser, then Metal, Dragonforce, and lastly the Valley of the Damned folder, which will open to a list of all of the songs in the album. Just click on #1 and it will run through the album for you, in correct and perfect order. ((As long as the file names are ordered correctly by name.))

[Creating a Custom Playlist]
So you want to create a custom playlist. But wait, I said above it doesn't handle custom ones? How can this be?

It's a trick. It's not a perfect trick. But it will let you do custom tracks.

This requires a bit of edit work BEFORE YOU PUT THE SONGS ON THE MP3 PLAYER!!!!!!!!

I cannot stress this enough. If you are going to do this, do not put the songs onto the mp3 player first.

You cannot edit them once they are on the player. Not in any way I can see.

So, how do you do it? By albums.

Go into the Media Manager, and the Music tab to see all your mp3s on the PC.
Select the songs you want on a custom playlist, and choose to edit them, and change their album.

The album name should be something starting with 0 (zero) so that it stays at the top of the album list, and you can find it quickly and easily when selecting the albums option.

Just gather all of the songs you want in a custom list, and change their albums to the same thing.

So say I want a custom Dragonforce mix.

I track down the DF songs I like in the music area, then I alter their albums to read as "0 - DF Faves" since I assume DF means Dragonforce, and Faves would be favorites.

It's incredibly likely that the songs will be jumped to alphabetical. In most cases, this simply isn't going to matter, so let it slide. In the case of some tracks that lead into one another, rename the title to something similar.

Invocation to Apocalyptic Evil leads directly into Valley of the Damned. It's a huge gap from I to V, though. So the best thing is to rename them as "DF - Invocation" and DF - Valley" or whatever, as long as you can remember what they are. And with both as "DF" first, they will organize properly in alphabetical form.

Like I said, this is not a perfect fix. You can put each song into only a single album. But it's great to set up some custom mix albums for the player at least.

Just make sure you change the album stuff back after you unplug the MP3 player, so your media library remains well ordered.

For those of you complaining that the custom album may mess up an existing one. Do not worry!

By putting the music into folders like you did, you preserve the main albums.
I can now use Browser to find the Valley of the Damned folder, and all of it's songs are still there.
But with the custom Album design, I can go to Albums instead of browser, select DF - Faves from the list, and songs from Valley of the Damned will appear on this list, but still be in the Browser folder.

The custom thing I have described is mainly for custom songs from different areas. Say I want a custom Japanese one. I can take songs from Kumi Koda, Akira Sudou, or Ayumi Hamasaki, all in different folders, but with them listed as the same album (0 - Japanese Faves), I can listen to just my favorites from each girl.

So remember, the Albums trick is for listening to music from multiple folders or locations. If you are listening to a full album that is in the same folder, just use Browser to reach it and start it. Don't waste the custom album trick on that.

I hope this review has helped those who already have one of these players, or those planning to get one.

I received this Coby MP-3 player about a week ago and am completely thrilled with it! This is my 4th MP-3 player, and by far the best I've owned. I hesitate to review it, since there are already so many reviews. But there is also much confusion about it, so I thought I could clear up a few issues for potential buyers.

1. The media manager software that "synchronizes" with you PC and converts media files is located INSIDE the player. When you first attach it via USB to your PC, if you selct "Open with Coby XXXXX" , the software will be installed on your PC. Personally, I have no use for it yet, but may in the future. I hope this clears things up for people who can't find the software for converting files to the correct format.

2. It works just great using your Windows Explorer directly without the media manager software. Simply create folders named any way you choose, in a logical manner so that you can locate your music easily. In operation, choose the "browse" option, and direct the player to the folder containing the music you want to hear. If you shut the player down in this mode, play will resume where you left off if you select the "browse" option after boot, and then accept the defaults.

3. Personally, I will use this player for mp3 audio files only since the display is so small. The screen is big enough to give very easily read menu items and control options.

4. It takes only a few seconds to turn on or off, and a few more to set itself up after changing the on-board files, but takes nowhere near as long as many complain about, as long as you use the "browse" mode, which is the most useful mode anyway.

5. All mp3 players come with poor ear-buds, so just fork over another $5.50 for a really good set of Coby ear-buds, which work great.

6. The design of this player is excellent. It is very thin and light in weight, with very well thought out controls and menu structures and a very easy to read display.

7. The audio socket is very tight with most of my earbuds/earphones, so I will be careful when plugging and unplugging.

8. Durability is not so important when you buy a player that cost so little, and it's too early to know, but my feeling is this is a really good unit. My last one, a $75 RockMee, lasted only a year before it's charging system failed.

My only negative criticism is that it's shape is different from my other players, so I will need to get a new carrying case to fit it. I would have gladly paid a little more if it came with a good carrying case! Buy this mp3 player!

I got this MP3 player after looking for one at a reasonable price mainly for just playing music. After reading some of the reviews on how it was difficult to get music onto the player, I was dreading a long and drawn out ordeal putting my music on it.

But to my surprise it was super easy transferring my music over to the player. I simply plugged it in, registered it, selected which music folder on my computer that I wanted it to read from, then boom, there's a list of all the songs in MP3 format on my computer.

Then I just choose synchronize for which songs I want to add and that's it.

For the money this is the best deal I have found. It is hard finding an 8gig music player alone, much less one with pictures and video options.

This purchase was made as a present for my dad. He has wanted one of those "music thingies" for a while now, and has found them all much to complicated to use. so I told him to pick out music he likes, and after some review bought this.

For someone who knows enough to plug in and play with some new software, it takes about 2 minutes maybe to figure out EXACTLY how this device works. for my dad he doesn't even really understand were the power switch is on the computer.

However he is able to operate this pretty well. the Text is large enough and the screen well enough lit that he can easily make out were he should be going, the buttons are very easy to click, without accidentally selecting stuff.

walking through it, I'm not letting him touch the computer side of loading the music, but I organized the playlists for him and setup the albums.

once the music is on the player, let it refresh the library. yes it take a small amount of time to do this, but dad's ok with that. he doesn't need it to be instant. teaching him how to maneuver wasn't perfect, but he understands it. once it refreshes you can select an album, or artist, or all, but selecting a playlist is a little more work, and the songs are not in the order you placed them. Again, not perfect, but still, it plays the music he wants to hear.

he likes the sturdy feel of the player, doesn't feel like its going to break on him, and it hasn't died when he's dropped it yet.

we did have to get him better headphones, the earbuds didn't work for him. he just needed something more solid for when hes doing work around the house or yard, and got him a armband for if he decides to go jogging.

so overall, it is a pretty sturdy player for moderate use, for someone who isn't very tech savy the use of the actual player is very easy. the program isn't very hard to use for adding music either, but you need to be able to work around basic computer programs, its not quite as simple as an ipod is.

so far no issues with overuse or the product not working correctly.