Customer Reviews

Ectaco iTravl NTL-9C Talking 2-Way Multilingual Communicator & Electronic Dictionary Black

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2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I purchased one of these after carefully researching similar devices on the internet. I have found that the speech aspect is not nearly as effective as they advertise it to be. The dictionary is more limited than I expected as well. My main complaint however is that the internal battery charging system is very poor. I wanted to use this over the weekend so I plugged in the charger for the specified time. When I turned on the device I received a warning that my battery power was extremely low and that I needed to charge the device. I then used the 12 volt charging adaptor for the car, the charging light came on for several seconds and then went out and only briefly lit up when I plugged the charger in (several times) again. It would not continue to charge. When I tried the device I received the same low power warning. I then changed batteries and the charger worked on the newly installed battery and the device showed almost full power. I continued charging that battery and then swapped batteries so I had the original supposedly uncharged battery back in it. That battery now showed almost 100% power. What is up? I had this problem when I first bought the unit and the company would have let me exchange batteries, but oviously the problem is with the unit, not the battery. The problem seemed to have gone away after just removing and replacing the battery.

Bottom line, don't buy this thing, it is harder to use that we are led to believe and, at least in my case, the charging/battery connection is faulty.

Its real, the batery never charge, started when I received the pod
I read the other review, and I agree and I remarck I have the same problem with the batery.. ? or is the palm?

Seen some advertising on this product and the claims of easy translation. Ordered it to try it and that I did. Nothing near the quality that was advertised. The product is poor quality, requires much upfront training, and thus I have shelved it instead of taking it with me on my travels.

Well, first they advertised $550 for this "incredible" piece of equipment, so I waited till after Christmas, and got it for $350, thinking, I was getting a deal. Was I ever wrong. First, it comes with a dead battery (they don't give you any troubleshooting information at all!), and I couldn't get it to function properly; alot of error statements and crashing. So, the only option I had was to let the battery charge and see if this was the problem. Yes, and again, no troubleshooting help in the manual. It took me hours to get this thing working properly. The processor is very archaic. I have an HP programmable calculator that is 22 years old, with the same processing power. And when you factor in inflation over 22 years, I actually paid less for my HP than this translator!
So, I'm overseas, and about to board my flight into the country of my destination and I use the translator to communicate with my first citizen, and the fully charged battery dies within 30 minutes. Now I'm concerned, because I don't speak the language, and I still have to go through customs! When the battery level shows 3/4 charge, it's dead.
Then they started sending me emails to trade in my translator for a new one at $800. I was offended.
Finally, they sent me an e-mail to download and update my sd card. I'm thinking maybe they they have worked out some bugs and this would improve it. But I also decide to save all of the old data just in case (they don't tell you to do this). And after a 3.5 hr download and install, it crashes my translator to the point that it would't even come on. I formated the sd card and reloaded the old data and it started working again.
The idea of this translator is great, but, there isn't one sophisticated component on it; and it will take another company to perfect the idea.

The product does not work as advertised and there is no support from company. They maintain that the battery problem was unique to me so I fianlly never used it on a single trip! IT IS TOTAL JUNK and the company is a JOKE!

I made a mistake purchasing this product...I've experienced all of the negative reviews...Beware, don't waste your money...

Don't waste your time and money on this product because it just cannot do what the manufacture states and it's a piece of junk that needs constant reseting and the attachments don't work properly. Also, the company has a terrible customer service departmant, lousy refund policy which charges you a restocking fee regardless of their defective product and charges you to pay for returning their defective products. Then they take their time in refunding your hard earned money minus all their charges against you! So if you just want to pay them money for junk even after you return it then that's what you will be doing!

The battery life has been about about 15 minutes. The pronunciation feature is inaccurate; it told my native-speaker Spanish professor that her pronunciation needed practice. She was not amused. It is very slow to translate; try having a conversation when it takes 15 seconds to translate a four word sentence. I do not trust the translations; due to the puzzled response of the other party; also when it translates from English to another language and then back to English as a test, the result is often gibberish. You'll be better off with phrase books and dictionaries.

unit has features not needed, such as the travel video clip and the on screen keyboard can be hard to use when in a moving vehicle. To play MP3 audio an optional unit must be purchased.