Insignia Pilot 4GB USB MP/MP3/FM /Bluetooth w/2.4" LCD (Black)

by Insignia

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• ASIN: B001AH8RPW
• Item model number: NS- 4V24
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #54,014 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)

Product Description

Enjoy your favorite music, webcasts, videos and FM radio without the wires!This Insignia Pilot NS-4V24 digital media player features a built-in 4 GB storage capacity to hold your favorite MP3 files, photos, videos, webcasts and more! Plus, this Pilot has a Secure Digital card expansion slot to expand your capacity, it supports both standard SD cards and large capacity SDHC cards. This versatile media player is compact and lightweight making it an ideal travel companion, and with the built-in Bluetooth technology you can enjoy your favorites without wires. Watch all your favorite videos and photos on the 2.4-inch high-resolution LCD color display with wide viewing angles. This Insignia player has a built-in digital FM tuner with 20 presents and allows you to remember songs you hear by saving track and artist data from FM stations broadcasting RDS data. With the included rechargeable lithium-ion battery you can enjoy up to 25 hours of playback time from a single charge! Don't get tied down with another media player, order your Insignia Pilot NS-4V24 Bluetooth digital media player today!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best dap you've never heard of, feature king.., June 15, 2008

By 

Dallas Electronics Fan (Dallas,TX.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Insignia Pilot 4GB USB MP/MP3/FM /Bluetooth w/2.4" LCD (Black) (Electronics)

I bought the 8gb version about a year ago based on features only. I was a little skeptical about straying from more established players from Cowon, Apple, iRiver, Creative and others but took the plunge. I've owned two iPods, a Rio Karma, Rio Carbon(s), an iRiver something, Audible Otis, Rio 500 and several others.

The Pilot has them all beat on features and most on performance. You won't find a player that 'does it all' like the Pilot. As a long time Audible subscriber, the Pilot is perfect. Hard and soft bookmarking, timer and plenty of storage. With an sdhc slot, storage can be increased by at least 2X. Better yet, the Pilot integrates the card completely so you don't have to mess around with annoying navigation from one drive to the next.

Sound quality is a solid B to B+. CNET just chose it as one of their top five audiophile mp3 players. They tested the players with an audio analyzer to eliminate personal bias. Music sounds every bit as dynamic as my iPods (a 2nd and 4th gen).

Battery life is a pretty standard ~20 hours. The FM tuner is surprisingly sensitive. I'm actually able to walk around outside without an unreasonable amount of static or drop out. It's an RDS tuner. You can see song and artist info on the screen from compatible radio stations. You can record FM or from an external, line-out source. There's a video output(or secondary headphone jack depending on how you set it up). I haven't tried it but apparently you can load a video in the Pilot and then connect it to a television.

The Pilot is a ums device so you can plug it in, drag and drop, no drivers required. I bounce back and forth between a mac and pc so having a player that is seen by both as a mass storage device is very convenient. Standard mini usb plug too. No proprietary cables. Video playback isn't a priority for me but I tried a couple videos and in spite of a small screen, was pleasantly surprised by the quality. Very smooth and about 30 fps.

It has stereo bluetooth which I don't use but it would be handy if your car stereo has bluetooth connectivity. Mine doesn't unfortunately. Fast forwarding is audible which makes it much easier to find what you're looking for. The Pilot has proven to be virtually scratch proof. I never use a case and always carry it in a pocket. I've had it in a pocket with keys, change and grit. No scratches. Pretty impressive. It supports several different formats but I use mp3, wmv and aa exclusively. It can display jpg's and txt files as well.

It comes with a pretty good video conversion program but I use Handbrake, a free, open source program that is a lot more capable. The only downside to this player is a somewhat less polished feel than class leaders from Cowon, Creative and Apple. Not to overstate it but the controls could be smoother. The jog wheel is a little cheap feeling and the bookmarking button is a three way design that can prevent a smooth bookmark sometimes. I wish they would have used a single button.

Another nice feature with bookmarking is that when you delete a file with bookmarks, the bookmarks are deleted too. Seems like a no-brainer but my Rio would retain the bookmarks even when the file was deleted. On the other hand, the Rio would let me overwrite bookmarks automatically so old bookmarks weren't much of an annoyance. The Pilot doesn't do this so if you run out of bookmarks, you have to manually remove them or the file to make room for more. Fortunately, you can do all this with the Pilot without having to connect it to your computer. The Pilot has proven to be completely reliable with almost daily use. The only glitch is occasionally (twice I think) having to reset it. Both times it locked with Audible files. I'm willing to give the Pilot the benefit of the doubt as I've had issues with Audible files before with other players. Fortunately, resetting this is a snap. Simply pull back the power switch for about ten seconds and you're done. My Rio Carbon needed a small paperclip inserted into a tiny hole. Not convenient if you're outside without a small paperclip handy.

Bottom line, if you want all the bases covered, this is an excellent choice. Probably the best choice in my opinion. This player has to be the most feature rich dap out there. If you only want to listen to music, this may not be for you. If features, Audible, podcasts, audiobooks, video, file management, expandibility, sound quality, intuitive controls and reliability are priorities, the Pilot is a great buy. The 8gb Pilot frequently goes on sale for $99.00 at the Best Buy website so keep an eye out. Great value, outstanding performance.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding all around PMP and recorder, July 19, 2008

By 

Drive-In-Freak - See all my reviews

This review is from: Insignia Pilot 4GB USB MP/MP3/FM /Bluetooth w/2.4" LCD (Black) (Electronics)

Outstanding performance on all levels and loaded to the gills with every feature you could possibly want. At long last someone finally did it right! The only two things this little wonder doesn't do is voice record, or tune in AM radio.

Sound quality: Outstanding! So good in fact that you may notice some of the imperfections of your recordings/files that you may not have noticed in your other player/s. It's output is very full and clean across the entire sound spectrum. The 5 band user adjustable EQ is quite effective as it actually has some gain instead of just attenuating every band that's not maxed out as many others do. Also worth nothing is that it has the best S/N ratio of any PMP currently available.

Line in recording: Duel VU meters and an adjustable recording level as well as the ability to code in CD quality PCM (as well as several levels of WMA) make for a recordist's dream come true.

Battery: Decent run time. It's also user replaceable, but not that easy to replace on the fly as the battery has wires and a plug and the access door is held on with a small screw.

FM: More sensitive and selective than most other PMPs. Pulls in fringe stations with ease. Local stations do not overload at all. Less than great signals can be cleaned up do to the ability to manually switch to mono. Setting and recalling presets (as well as recording) is a breeze. It even displays RDS information form stations that transmit it.

Video: Good picture quality and sound. Video line out works well and has about the same quality as a well recorded on good tape EP or LP mode VHS..i.e not the best, but not half bad.

Photo: again good quality reproduction. Adjustable sideshow options...I just wish you could separate the photos into different groups. Perhaps in the next firmware update?

Folder browsing: Yessssssssssssssssss!

SD card slot: A nice touch. IMHO much better to deal with than MicroSD....and yes it will read SDHC (available up to 32 GB at this point in time!).

Bluetooth: Ok... so this I don't exactly get the point of. Why bother with wireless on a portable device? Nevertheless it's capable if you so desire for whatever reason to use the feature. Haven't tried it myself.

Yes, I could just go on and on about it, but I'm sure you get the point by now. I really like it a lot....like ya couldn't tell...8)

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome Player - Especially for the price, February 26, 2009

By 

Mad Cow "mooooooo" (San Antonio, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Insignia Pilot 4GB USB MP/MP3/FM /Bluetooth w/2.4" LCD (Black) (Electronics)

After dishing out a few hundred bucks for my wifes nano, I became frustrated with having to transfer anything and everything through the proprietary i-tunes, so I vowed that I would not get an i-pod. I started looking at Sansa Views since they play the h.264 format, are feature rich (more than i-pods), but were still on the expensive side. Then I cam across the Insignia Pilot. After reading the specs, I couldn't believe what they were going for. So I picked up 20 of them for about $30 each. I kept a few , gave a few out as gifts to family and resold the rest. I had to send a few back because they were defective, but got back some good ones. I use one for my movies, hard core music and photos, and the other one for audio books. (yea yea, I know I don't need two of them ,but what the heck.)

Now for the review:

The Pros: Features, Price, not an i-pod
The darn thing is feature rich. The FM radio works very well. It has two line outs - so I can share what I'm watching with someone else. Or one of the line outs acts as a line-in - perfect for my dad who wants to record from his 8-track or record player or mic. I purchased a set or bluetooth headphones, works like a charm. The sound quality is very good. Movies look just as good as my wifes nano. I was able to throw the SD card from a camera with dead batteries into the player to view the photos for visiting in-laws - awesome feature. I love the drag-and-drop / included Archsoft media converter/ Windows media player/ real player/ win amp.... you get the idea - there's plenty of ways to get stuff into the player. Do you need to get junk from different computers? No problem, just hook it up and drag-and-drop it. Unlike Apple that doesn't let you take your friends stuff from their computer to add to your existing play list.

Now for the Cons:
I filled a 8GB SDHC card with movies - they work great but every once in a while the sound is slightly off - simple fix is to pause the movie and press play and the sound syncs up again where you paused it. That doesn't happen if you have the movie in the on-board memory.
Get a screen protector of some sorts because it scratches easily - like most players.
It does not play H.264 MPEG4 (i-pod), not that I care about the quality or anything, it's just that I already had a ton of movies converted for my wife's i-pod- easy fix - I threw them through the included Arcsoft media converter and converted them into WMV - looks just as good.
If you don't use the Arcsoft Media Converter - you better get the conversion size right in whatever else you're using or this player will not show the movie - easy fix - use the included software - it's fast.

Overall:
I don't only recommend this player, I've sold a bunch of them to people who saw mine and said "I want one of those!" Don't get me wrong, I think the i-pod is a great player, but it's overpriced and I hate that i-tunes is the only way to get things in and out. The only thing i-pod has over this player is that you can throw in any size MP4 movie converted in any which way and it'll play it, and it never gets out of sync with the sound. I consider it a minor issue when the Insignia was nearly 1/6 the price of the nano.