Customer Reviews

Go Video Rave-MP AMP128 128 MB MP3 Player

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4 star:		(4)
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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I got this mp3 player for Christmas and having used it for a few days now, I can say I am pretty happy with my first mp3 player. I have been looking at getting one for a few months now and was doing a lot of research on all mp3 players in general.

I wanted to shy away from any hard drive players because, well, they cost a lot of money and other than Apple..... So that left flash players and they can be expensive as well. So when I say this item at a certain big box retailers web site I liked what I saw and what few reviews I could find.

For under a hundred bucks you get a mp3/wma (including protected files), fm tuner, fm/voice recorder. Not bad, the controls are pretty straight forward and easy to use, once you play with it a bit. It was so simple that within 5 minutes I was transfering music onto the player. One of the best features is that it shows up as an USB drive and NO music manager software in site. On mp3 files you can use your windows explorer to transfer the files over just drop and drag. For your protected files you can use Windows Media Player 9 or 10 (if you don't have WMP 9 it comes on the included disk) and select copy to cd or device and transfer away. Simple, Simple, Simple that is how I like my stuff, I am tired of having to be an electronics expert. I want to plug and go and with this you can.

It also have a slot for extra memory (it includes 128 mb worth) you can go up to a 1 gig secure didital card which is a lot of music. I am using a 128 mb card now and that with the built in memory gives me 58 songs (about 3-4 hours worth). Which is not a problem with the battery, one AAA batery gives you about 14-16 hours of music. (buy rechargeable batterys)

The only real complaint I have is the volume, I like my ears to burst, if you are in an area with a lot of noise, they may be a bit hard to hear but in my office cube, they are just fine.

Bottem line I would recomend this to anyone who is looking for a good entry level mp3 player that is easy to use and does not cost a lot.

I got this MP3 player for christmas as a present from my wife. I knew she had gotten it from Wal-Mart and I was at first a little leary of the quality. From day one though I was highly impressed with the bang you get for the bucks. Mp3/wma player - voice recorder-fm tuner - and you can also record from the radio, which is great when recording the early morning mix. I love the compact size and the headphones and armband it comes with for running.I run about 30 miles a week and this is a great companion for me. Im not a young buck and the sound is plenty loud for me. I also have expereienced the lock ups that can only be resolved by removing the battery. I have however found the manufacturers web site to be very helpful. Originally I was a bit disturbed because I could only get about 23 or 24 MP3 songs on it. But Ive found that using Windows Media Player 9 I was able to compress those MP3 songs each time I record them to the player into WMA format which has allowed me to get roughly 65 songs on it which has made me very happy. Next I will try a memory card to increase that even more. I love this lil MP3 player thus far and hope it lasts. I recommend it to all.

PROS:
- small, portable size
- ease of use
- compatability with windows media player
- accessories included (earbuds, armband, battery included)
- battery life seems to be longer than advertised
- full function display

Cons:
- Lock ups requiring battery removal reboots
- occassional crash
- display could be more vibrant
-

Got this just before Christmas and it does have all the features I wanted. Pretty easy navigation for playing songs and FM tuner. No need to load any crappy adware/spyware software since XP immediately recognizes it as a drive. RAVE-MP.com is promising flash updates when available. The unit has locked up occasionally but always recovers after pulling the battery. It's now having trouble turning on, but pulling the battery (sometimes several times) gets it back to ??normal?? (may be related to battery life). High volume could be greater and in some cases the eqaulizer settings can help a little. The unit is a little slow when powering up and this seems to be directly related to the number of files it has to read from memory. The $58 Walmart price was hard to beat, just glad I didn't spend $100. I recommend it mostly because it seems that all of these devices exhibit the 'Windows' syndrome (unexplained lock-ups and quirky operation). Its got all the 'right stuff' but it's operation needs to be a bit more consistant
UPDATE 11.23.05
Goto www.rave-mp.com and get the latest firmware update. This improved the volume control and a number of other little quirks. One thing that did change is that the internal memory and SD card memory are now completely separate when playing songs. You have to choose one or the other. I still recommend this little player, I bought two others (for relatives) and they're all working good.

There are only two reasons for having an expansion slot, one is to be able to quickly and easily change the songs you can access, the other is to be able to listen to more songs at a time. This player doesn't support that second feature because there is a limit to the number of songs it can access at a time. Using only songs that I tested, and verified would play with the device, I found that it was impossible to to have the player display over 180 songs, This is a serious unforgivalbe deficiency in the product. I found that this problem persists even if all of the songs are in the flash memory, and not on the expansion card. This deficiency in not mentioned ANYWHERE in the documentation.

Spend your money on a product that will work. My Rave-MP did not perform well.

I bought this unit because of the great portability, good looks, and low price. Unfortunately, the performance has been lousy. It frequently refuses to "boot-up," and I have to remove the battery constantly to get it to reset itself. Also, the LCD screen keeps going out - coming back on - then dying again.

I'm a Mac user and had counted on this player being compatible, but it's really not! You can't drag and drop files to the player like you're supposed to be able to do. I have to open Disk Utility and do a complete Erase of the internal memory (make sure you choose MS-DOS format), then drag files back on to the player. This is a huge inconvenience.

I've had my AMP 128 for about nine months and while it's no ipod, it's not a bad deal either. The sound is good with a decent pair of earphones and battery life is usually about 5-6 hours, depending on how you use it. Out of the box, the AMP 128 isn't set up to work real well, you need to do the firmware upgrade available from the website - it makes a huge difference in how well it sounds and operates. I haven't had any lockups or operating issues since doing the upgrade and the sound quality was noticeably improved.

It does not meet even your minimum expectations. The player keeps "hanging" for no reason. And the only way to make it work again is to remove the battery and insert it again. It always starts from the first song in memory, not from where you stopped it previously. Even if you stop the player for just a second, you have to listen from the first song later! The menu is awful. You have to do quite some research to get familiar to it. The battery lasts for 1 hr only. So need to invest in rechargeable ones.

Plus points: Sound quality is good and you can upgrade the player's memory by adding an additional smart memory module.

The good news the battery lasts for a long time, the bad news the battery lasted longer then the unit. The unit died within 3 weeks.