Customer Reviews

Entempo Rubato 20 GB MP3 Player

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I bought the Rubato for one reason and one reason alone: it was the cheapest 20GB MP3 player I've come across in my quest for portable music. Others writing reviews on here seem to expect to pay Geo Metro prices and receive Rolls Royce quality, and whether consumer electronics or cars, this is simply not the case.

The good:

* 20GB of capacity, not much bigger than an iPod, and much cheaper

* NO drivers or proprietary software to install (unless you really want to, it does come with MusicMatch and a few other programs)

* USB 2.0 makes for *fast* transfers. (Anybody complaining about transfer speeds when copying 20GB of music needs to go look at th average sustained transfer speed of a modern hard drive... it's about 5MB / sec... the drive is the bottleneck here, not the USB connection.)

* Aside from a bit of background noise (from the screen backlight, hdd spinning up), the sound quality is amazingly good, especially when played through a good-quality set of headphones (I'm using Sennheiser HD-497's).

The bad:

* Looks and feels cheap (what do you expect, you spent < $200 on a 20GB MP3 player?)

* Player takes a while in "index" songs after transferring (this is the price you pay for not having to install software on your PC, the player does all of this instead of your fast computer)

* Background noise, more/less noticable depending on the medium that its being played through. Certain things (tape adapter in the car, cheap headphones) tend to bring this out more. The noise is almost unnoticable on my Sennheisers.

Conclusion:

All in all I feel this is a solid buy in the sub $200 range for those looking for capacity but without a lot of money to spend. I haven't had mine long enough to comment on long-term durability, and from initial impressions I don't think I'd want to drop it from more than about 6", but only time will tell. If cost and capacity are your main criteria and you don't expect your player to see much abuse, this is the player for you.

Well before I start I want to say something to the ignorant users that used this review system to dispute the meaning of the products name or maybe to show how smart they think they are, jerks, you mess up the ratings by adding your stupid comments about the name of the product. Who cares about the name , if it is called the Entempo Dog Poop I guess we will argue that it actually translates to the Entempo Canine Feces!

Ok,

Well I recieved my Rubato expecting it to be the best MP3 player I ever had, wow what surprise.......

I started by charging the player for 3 hours like the manual says, what the manual doesnt say is that the player will never stop saying that it is charging and say its full while it is plugged in.

Then I loaded my music onto it with the regular windows explorer , yes it is just like a hard drive so if you want to add music or take music off of the player to put on your PC just plug it in and open My Computer and drag & drop your files (other players should take note of that feature!) It took 1 hour to load 2600 songs.

Ok then i unplugged the USB cable only to find out when you unplug the player from usb it updates (indexes) which is painfully slow it took about 1 hour 15 minutes to finish this.

Ok so the music is on, How do i play the tracks? (other players i have had have just been load on the music and press play to play all the tracks randomly )O my god I wanted to trash this thing, after many hours of messing with it I finally figured it out, you must hook it up to your pc and make a playlist including all the songs and on the player load the playlist then choose tracks and then play (it all sounds so simple now)

My next problem is the noise, there is alot of faint background noise in your headphones stuff like the harddrive spinning up or the backlight coming on or the shox technology kicking (whenever it senses a bump you can hear a faint beep) I have never had player with background noise like this, I have had many players, mp2go , nex ia , nomad i , ipod mini, they have all been excellent compared to this one.

My next gripe is the time between songs, sometimes it not bad 2-5 seconds, other times its 5-10 seconds that is painfully slow (go ahead and count to 10 slowly)especially when during that time you hear the faint background noises i descibed.

My conclusion would be that this is overpriced for the quality, O did i mention the cheap plastic? it feels like a cheap walkman from the 99 cent store. Mine is a little loose , I geuss the scews arent quite tight enough, theres gaps on the case edges that go together when i lightly squeeze it.

Audiophile's definetly look elsewhere, other's if want a player like this one dont choose this model I would recommed the Entempo spirit 20gb over this because of the price $100 cheaper. But I would think it probablly has the same noise issues.

For me it is all about the sound quality and

this is by no means worth the money, Look elsewhere

Cons: Did not like the very, very small characters on the display. You have to squint to read the display. The radio has terrible reception. The forward button does not forward fast enough for Podcast forwarding. Does not allow you to bookmark a spot on a Podcast. The nylon case does not have a belt clip. The side buttons need to be pressed too hard to use.

Pros: I like the price and the capacity. But had to send back because of mainly the small character display...

I purchased the Rubato Entempo about 2 weeks ago. I already

knew from looking at pics online that it was basically a bare-

bones "no frills" player. However, I wanted something simple anyways

. I've already waisted money on a Rio HP-310 and various Creative

mp3 players that eventually crapped out on me, so the Rubato

couldn't be much worse. The good points about the Rubato is

that has decent sound, easy navigation, and musicmagic mixer

- the latter of which gave me the impetus to get it. The drawbacks

are many! The LCD graphics are drab and basic. The play/forward/rewind/pause

touchpads are on the front making them awkward to get to. It's not

very attractive, gaps are too long between tracks, etc.

However, I'm pleased with what I got for the 200.00 bucks I shelled out.

If you're a very decernable consumer who wants everything but the kitchen

sink in your player, you've come to the wrong place. Check out the lastest

model from Cowon that looks like a good buy for the extra high price.

Now, to be fair, i purchased this player less than a month ago on e-bay for $50 so i know i got my moneys worth compared to every other review here, because you cant buy a 20 gig laptop hard drive for $50 and therefore the fact that this brick plays mp3s and radio is well.. irrelivant in cost to me hehe. i am unsure of the firmware with this one, and the primary issue that anyone should have is the fact that the company is now long out of buisness and there is no access to any of the firmware updates (if anyone has the firmware .zip write me or something please!) otherwise, this machine is worth the price, it looks uncannily like an 80's walkman, and honestly feals like a walkman: cheep plastic over some heavy metal. this player packs a punch once you get used to its quirks, but heres the bottom line: no DRM issues thus far. it IS compatable 100% with windows media player, but installs live like a portable hard drive, it does "compile" the files once they are copyed over and this can take an incredably long time, but remember the primary advertised feature? that special little bit about being able to use a beat and rythem algorithm to generate playlists of similar songs? what, you think the machine was psychic?

despite the freezing issue (on bad mp3's which no one else mentions was their songs not their player...) there is the cutest little paperclip reset button on the bottom, and this machine has already sustained a heavy beatin on more than one occation (i am an overnight stocker, this thing has met alot of pallets) and keeps going. its ugly and clunky but i think the best possable word to describe the entempo rubato:

Industrial.

The Good:

Loads of space for a comparably great price. Thorough menu.

The Bad:

IT IS SO UGLY. For some of you, this wont matter. But if you care AT ALL about aesthetic appeal, do not go the Entempo Rubato route. Every time someone sees me with it, they laugh and think I'm using a cassette player! I swear, this thing was a BRICK in a past life.

Also? The font on the screen is garbly-looking and difficult to read. The fact that the font is also extremely small doesn't help.

I thought it would be easy to use because it's a drag-and-drop type of thing when it comes to adding songs. WRONG. This thing is a PAIN IN THE BUTT to use, especially the first time. It does this awful "indexing" thing after you put songs on it that takes a ridiculous amount of time. Why does it do this? I don't understand. I've used cheaper piece-of-garbage MP3 players that never had to do this. I thought quickly getting the songs on was the WHOLE POINT of a hard drive type of MP3 player?

Also? It really SUCKS if you have good hearing and you use this MP3 player. Why? Because I listen to music on the lowest possible volume...anything higher than that hurts my ears. This is BAD when using the Rubato, however, because there's always this awful electronic sound in the background. It's harder to notice on louder songs, but on quiet or acappella songs it's so frustratingly bad I want to cry. Also, everytime I bump it into something...it makes this little beepy sound. Yeah, great.

Lastly? The buttons and "scroller" are disgusting. I'm only 12, and even *I* think I could design buttons better than that. How about a clickwheel? Or a scrollwheel? No...instead we get this horrible twitchy little slider button that you have to push far too hard than is convenient.

My final statement? Lots of memory for a cheap price. But that's no big deal, when something is this crappy and sinfully ugly. Seriously. It is SO ugly.

I got this unit on clearence, of course i am on my own if it fails, but for the price it was hard to pass up. I had an RCA lyra 20gb, which was great for ease of use, playlist etc, but unfortunately had an early end due to a short out (car adapter problem dang it, invest in a really good one). Again, i like the software and the ability to set up a playlist on the player itself. I also have a 30gb toshiba Gigabeat, which is nice, but using window's media player to put songs on stinks, and takes forever to set up a playlist. yes, the LCD light does have some wierd interference in the playback sound, but when it drops out after 5 secs it plays great. Overall, a great second player for me on my downstairs stereo. I hope it last, so far after now about 4 months so good.

First of all, this is not a beginner's product. Stick with big name brand mp3 players for kids and folks who do not like to "Tinker" with electronics. For fist time owners or early beginners, stick with the 16 gig or under flash memory drives, and not this hard drive based technology. This product is not leading edge technology by anymeans. It's bulkier than the ipod and Zunes, but for the price and for 20 gigs of storage space, you can not go wrong. Even if you just need it for a hard drive, the price you can buy these for currently makes it worth while. It is only as complicated to run as you want to make it to use. For me it is pretty intuitive, but for those who do not deal well with a lot of layers to menus and controls, put this back on the shelf.

Advantages:
1. Drag and Drop-you plug it in and can drag any WMA or MP3 format file to it and you can play it.
2. Software: This comes with predixis software, which has worked really well for me on setting up playlists for this player. I hate using windows media because it wants you to sync it up all the time, and then half the times throughs errors. this one works fast and well with the rubato unit. I may try it with my coby unit soon
3. Playlist set up: you can actually create a playlist without hooking this up to a computer. It has playlist editing right on the unit
4. FM radio built in: No additional add ons required
5. Built in Mic for recording: nice if you need it
6. Price: I got mine for for seventy five bucks, great price for what this does.
7. Simple menu's to follow: clear lcd black on blue led lit/lcd screen, nice toggle controls and buttons to push. easy to use

Disadvantages:
1. It is an outdated product: Currently, I can find no active website left of this product (as of 6/22/2008). You are on your own if this goes bad.
2. Background noise: The LCD screen backlight creates background noise when unit is not playing music. It appears to diminish when unit is actually playing. A problem on some other units (RCA lyrica and COBY products)
3. FM Tuner reception: This is hit and miss at times. Outside on a walk, most stations are pretty crisp, but some that should be are not. not a big deal since I purchased this for mp3's.
4. Somewhat cheap construction: at times, feels like sub par plastic, but thus far, no issues if you treat it right.

Otherwise, this unit is what you pay for it. low cost and so far reliable music file playing. This unit is very similar to a polaroid unit I purchased 2 years ago, with excellent firmware and support software, but hopefully more durability. There are a lot of these around in ALCO stores in the midwest area, so if you want one, they are possibly going out on clearance at this time, pick it up if you can. Mine was seventy five dollars, but MSRP and original price was two hundread dollars. Again a deal for me. Hope you enjoy this player also.