Customer Reviews

D-Link DMP-HD610 Roq-it MP3 Player and Hard Drive (10 GB)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I purchased the D-Link Roq-it two months ago. It worked flawlessly until I found the screen flickering and the unit unable to work properly. After sending back the product D-Link replaced my battery and I have had no problems since. While I have heard of other problems, this is a very functional unit: using a 10 GB IBM Travelstar 2.5" laptop hard drive and 2 MB buffer it plays thousands of tracks without skipping. The player has an IR remote (like your TV) for home use and a 5 hour Li-ion battery for portable use. The unit has both line out and headphone jacks and fast USB 1.1 800 k/s transfer. The unit has a bright, large LCD to display ID3 track information and can be used as a portable hard drive. Unfortunately it is as large as a CD player and has good sound quality but poor bass response. This player, however, beats all on the market as of 4/1/02. Here is why:

Archos players: Ni-cd batteries, no true line out, small LCD.
Creative players: Ni-cd batteries, poorly designed, no hard drive functionality.
Ipod: less memory, Mac compatible only.
Treo: no hard drive functionality, dim backlight, no ID3 support.
XP3: same as Treo

You be the judge. You'll find smaller players, but none as functional as the D-Link Roq-it 10 GB.

I bought this unit about two months ago. For the most part, it has lived up to my expectations. The user interface is a little bland, but it works efficient. The OS is a little slow to respond at times. It is very easy to download/upload songs or files from the device. For WinXP and Win2000, there is no need to install any drivers. Just plug the device in and it is instantly recognized. Even though others have stated that play-lists are not supported, I have no problem using them. Although it is a portable device, it may be too cumbersome for jogging (about the same as portable CD player w/o the skipping.) Some of the firmware needs to be updated (maybe they should have a patch) as I have gotten it to lock up on several occasions. The buttons are sensitive so the can be inadvertently pressed when in the travel case. The sound quality out of the line out is excellent, but the headphone out lacks bass even with good headphones. As a portable hard drive, it is excellent. Given reviews of other devices, I would still pick this one over the other hard drive based MP3 Jukeboxes.

We bought the ROQ-IT primarily as a substitute for a 300 disc CD changer, not so much for as a portable device. I like the large display screen on this compared to the tiny screen on the Archos Jukebox. Copying files over is a breeze and the files are transferred at a rate of about 40 megabytes per minute. The only software you need to install is the USB driver and it is less than 550K in size, which is nice if you want to take the Roq-It to another PC and use it as a portable hard drive. You can leave the installation CD at home and just take a floppy with the driver on it. Everything the player does it does well.

I read many of these reviews (and the info at the D-Link web site) before buying the Roq-It and there were still questions I had that were only answered by trying it. So I'm here to fill in the gaps for you. First of all, there are two shuffle modes. You can play random selections from the folder you are currently in or from files throughout the whole hard drive. It would have been nice if there where a third shuffle mode to shuffle through songs in the current folder AND it's sub folders but there is no such option.

In regular continuous play mode, there are a few options. You can play a folder then stop, play a folder then repeat, or play one folder after another until they have all been played. There is also a mode to continously repeat just one song. It would be nice if you could find songs strictly by track title like you could with the Creative Nomad Jukebox. But if you have your songs organized, it's really not hard to find the song you want. And frankly, I expect that most of the time we will just be playing this in Random All mode anyway. The Roq-It does look at the ID3 tag information while a song it playing. It displays the track title, artist, album, total time, and current time index simultaneously. But it does not use ID3 tag info for finding or listing songs. If it did have that ability and a Playlist feature, I would have rated it 5 stars.

And just think: only a couple of years ago you would have paid this much for a 10GB hard drive alone. By the way, it's not really 10 GB, it's about 9.35.

I recently purchased this D-LINK 10GB USB mp3 player and can only say good things about it. Before I purchased this specific player I had a D-LINK 32MB mp3 player that performed perfectly. I decided to invest a good amount of money into another D-LINK product and I can only say good things. Use of the player is very easy. Its a drag and drop format. Of course having two thousand MP3's as I do, organization is a major issue. All I had to do was organize my mp3's into different folders. For example, I had 7 folders. ROCK, R&B, CLASSICAL, JAZZ, ITALIAN MUSIC, FOREIGN, 70'S etc. etc. All you need to do is open up a folder and fing your song. The sound of the player is amazing. What more could you want?? I would say that the only bad thing about the player is that it looks like the first release of the Nintendo Gameboy. Its ugly, plain and simple. If you have a lot of mp3's and you like to travel (without taking your laptop with you) get this player. Do NOT get the ARCHOS just because it "looks better". It may look much better but the reliability of the D-LINK is unsurpassed. TECH support is A++. My advice: if you have money to spend on a 6GB-20GB mp3 player GET THIS ONE!! (DON'T BE FOOLED BY ITS UGLY APPEARENCE!!)

Just purchased the D-Link after having spent some time reviewing other jukeboxes. Like a lot of people, I would have rushed to have bought an iPod if it a) worked with Windows and b) was, at least, a hundred bucks cheaper. Given that none of the above applied, I was left with what, at this stage of the year, are still slim pickings.

What attracted me to the D-Link was the fact that it has a relatively large capacity for it's price and can function as an external hard drive. Add to that the remote control and the sheer simplicity of transferring MP3 files (just drag and drop - no proprietary software needed) and there's no question that it's a great bargain.

Yes it's large in comparison to other players, but so what? Like a lot of people who buy jukeboxes, I use it primarily as an external music library for my home stereo or in the car. I could care less that it doesn't fit in my shirt pocket.

I do have two gripes, though. First, that because of its small memory buffer (2 megs), this results in more frequent calls to the hard drive - when things are quiet I can often hear the hard drive spinning which is annoying. Second, it seems to me that the D-Link is actually made by SSI America which makes the Neo. The two jukeboxes are the same. However, D-Link won't admit to this and tell you that no accessories (car kit, spare battery etc.) are currently available. So if you want to purchase any accessories you have to track down the people who make them for the Neo. D-Link could be more helpful in this matter.

If people can wait a couple of months and are prepared to shell out around 4 hundred dollars, then it would seem there are a few jukeboxes coming out that will match the iPod. If not, you could a lot worse than the D-Link.

I bought this product...for my brother...He wanted a way to transfer files from his desktop computer to his laptop from work...it failed to install on his laptop. The instructions say it works with the default drivers from Windows 2000, but when it was plugged in, a driver installation wizard appeared because it couldn't find the drivers. We tried a bunch of things with the supplied driver disk to no avail. The USB-to-IDE adapter inside the unit is a ScanLogic SL11 chipset so we got the development kit installation off the Internet (which was the same as the drivers provided by DLink) but got no further. We gave up on the laptop.

I took a crack at it and successfully installed it on my PowerBook G3 and uploaded a song to it to try it out. It seemed to work okay. I went back and deleted all the files I put on it but apparently took some of the driver files as well by accident. The unit was now crippled and wouldn't work at all. I think there's a way to reload the software from a PC--except that we couldn't get it to connect to a PC. I was pretty disappointed that the "firmware" in the unit was so frail that a little overzealous deleting and you end up with a paperweight.

In all the process a nightmare. I did get a refund and eventually got him a USB powered hard drive instead. The selling features are very strong--a battery powered USB hard drive that can be expanded with larger laptop hard drives and also doubles as a portable MP3 player. Pretty cool ... if it only worked.

I first bought one for my little brother. The player's driver was easy to install onto Windows 98SE. We didn't bother with the Windows Media Player application, we just use the player as an external hard drive. I just bought one for myself! I love it! It's so easy to operate, and it keeps my files in clean order so I can play Mudvayne one second then play Enya the next. Here are my tips: When downloading music to the player, don't overwhelm it by downloading way too many files. I'd say keep it at a maximum of 20 files at a time. And, when you just downloaded them, give the player about 20-30 seconds...then you can unplug the USB cable. Also, when you have added lot's of music onto the player, defragment the players hard drive. It's a drive, right! It needs defragmenting just like a normal computer. It will elliminate the possibiility of the player stopping while playing. Enjoy...

This is the third MP3 player I've purchased. I've had two RIO products (the 500 and the 800), both of which I've really liked. I decided to move up to a jukebox unit and shopped around before deciding on the DLink Roq-It. From a price perspective, it seemed a good choice -- but the price only matters if the product works. My unit was defective out of the box. The battery contact was soldered in an incorrect location, making the unit not function at all on battery power.

In addition to that, I was surprised at the size and weight of the device (even though I had considered this before purchase). It is HUGE and is completely impractical for use while working out. Although, in fairness, that is probably true of all the devices in the jukebox category. The controls are very cheap and the operating system itself is very slow to respond to the controls.

The worst of this device, besides the simple fact that it was improperly manufactured, was the programming capability. There is no playlist function on the device itself. When you're dealing with 30 or 40 songs on a 128MB device, that's not such a big deal. Random play etc. is sufficient. But for a device that stores hundreds of tunes, a playlist capability is essential. Don't believe the advertising hype: this unit DOESN'T have this capability. They say it handles M3U playlists, but not on the device, only on the software on your computer.

For what it is worth, the machine worked flawlessly (when plugged in), being recognized in Windows and then showing up as an additional hard drive on my system. But it gets a one star rating for the defect, the documentation, the controls and the technical support. Technical support was rude and very unprofessional. I've returned it and will wait to buy a RIO Riot when it comes out.

D-Link says this is a 7.7 ounce player, but check the specs. It's huge. The 7.7 ounces is without the battery, carrying case and harness you'd have to buy to run or exercise with it.

Yes, it's half the price of the Apple iPod, but it's twice the size. Again, this thing is HUGE. It would be better advertized as a portable hard drive that also plays mp3s. But if all you want is a portable hard drive, you can do much better in terms of size.

It does work well, installs easily, and at 10 GB it has twice the storage of the iPod. But the iPod also doubles as a portable hard drive and with the firewire it does downloads at about 40 times the speed of USB. Do you really need more than 5 GB in such a small package anyway? If you can switch to Mac conviently, iPod is the product you'll want.

If you're stuck in the PC world, then Roq-IT seems to be the best alternative for now, but you just know that won't last long...

I have bought this mp3 to be use in my car and home stereo. It is small but it does not fit in a pocket; Also it is a little heavy. The day I recived it, I have started to charge it and at the same time to move my music to it. Then by accident, I unpluged it from the power. The consequences were very bad. It stopped working. It could not access the hard drive. I am not at the US to return it so I hire somebody to fix it. He had to format the hard drive again and to repair a small pin that makes contact with the battery. Now it is working but sometimes it stop working and I have to reset it every time at least once per day. Also It does not organize your songs on the hard drive so it is a mess and If you have a large collection of songs. it will be very boring. The letter case is not very nice. The only good things are the capacity the speed to change songs and the Super screen very nice. (...)