Ectaco XL-1500 Partner Multilingual Talking Dictionary

by Ectaco

Product Details

• Item Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• ASIN: B000J1VA2C
• Item model number: XL-1500
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #11 in Electronics > Office Electronics > Electronic Dictionaries, Thesauri & Translators > Foreign Language Dictionaries
• Date first available at Amazon.com: October 2, 2001

Product Description

Enjoy the whole world in your hands. The newest addition to the world-famous Partner range is also one of the most sophisticated. Featuring an absolutely unique combination of language pairs and voice output capabilities, it is the only handheld dictionary to contain synthesized TTS (text-to-speech) functionality in English, Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish within the same device. A giant leap forward for modern electronic translation, the ECTACO Partner XL-1500 Multilingual Talking Dictionary is absolutely one-of-a-kind. Never before has it been so easy to communicate in so many languages. Thanks to its advanced synthesized voice output capabilities, the Partner XL-1500 makes traveling almost anywhere in the world enjoyable and all your communication effective. Its ability to speak translations aloud using the latest TTS modules lets it act as your own personal language assistant and interpreter. With an astonishing vocabulary database of over 3,367,000 words, you will always find something to say. And the inclusion of a 14-topic phrasebook containing travel-related words and phrases means that it can also speak 31,000 phrases in 15 languages to help get your message across in almost any situation. All the features are accessed via an intelligent, user-friendly interface and are located quickly using the fastest and smartest search functions yet deployed. Exceptionally powerful, effective, and affordable, the Partner XL-1500 is the first choice for outstanding international communication. Phonetic transcription for English and Romanization for Chinese (Mandarin), Japanese, and Korean Metric and currency converters World time clock Slang lock External power jack for AC operation Headphone jack Number of words - over 3,367,000 Size - 5.3 x 2.3 x 0.5 in Weight - 4 oz Battery Type - 2 x

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars R2D2 is easier to understand, December 4, 2006

By 

A. M. Jacobson (Seattle, Washington United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ectaco XL-1500 Partner Multilingual Talking Dictionary (Electronics)

I was so dissapointed by this product. I had hoped to use it to identify and translate Japanses words and practice pronouncing them correctly.

It takes many steps to do simple translations. This was frustrating in a relaxed atmopshere. It would be near impossible underpressure.

When you press for the talking translation it sounds like a tired robot in a large can. Extremely difficult to identify what it is saying let alone try and duplicate it.

The other deal breaker was it only uses batteries. There is no way to charge it when not in use. You would need to carry around a case of batteries while traveling in order to use it throughout a trip.

The size was compact and light, that was a nice feature.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars works very well for a translator, August 20, 2008

By 

Asteriskx (Kansas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ectaco XL-1500 Partner Multilingual Talking Dictionary (Electronics)

This is everything it says that it is. It translates and it speaks.

Its translations are fine. I'm not quite sure what the previous reviewer meant when they said it gave them wrong translations. It gave me plenty of choices when I looked words up in German (and a couple other languages), and then checked them out by looking up the given German word or words. If you cross-check its quite easy to find the precisely-nuanced translation.

The speech function sounds robotic, but it is definitely pronounced correctly.

This device functions very well, it easily switches the direction of the language, and has a fast lookup with easy lookup of the defined words. If you switch applications, from dictionary to games to dictionary, you'll have to change the language back to what you were using. It takes a little bit to get used to-ten minutes reading the manual and you're fine. It's annoying to change the batteries, but mine came with an AC adapter, so if you're near an outlet, you'll be fine. Those are some minor issues, but what sets apart this translator is the sheer amount of entries that it has(450,000 per language, plus 200,000 phrases)--nothing else in this price range is even close.

This is easily the best value for anything you'll get in the $100-250 price range.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars does what it says, January 1, 2008

By 

C. Morris "chricm77" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ectaco XL-1500 Partner Multilingual Talking Dictionary (Electronics)

My wife is German and I am learning polish. This model had the most words out of the others that I researched for the price. Once you put an hour or two in on the manual usage becomes easy.