Customer Reviews

KB Gear JamP3 - Digital player - flash 16 MB - MP3 - silver

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

This is a very good mp3 player, but it has only a little bit of memory. It even says in the booklet it comes with that it can hold up to approximately either 67 minutes of radio quaility music, 34 minutes of FM quality music, 23 minutes of "near-cd" quality music, and 17 minutes of cd quality music. But that doesn't mean of each, it means in TOTAL. So I recomend either getting the 16 or 32MB memory card, which is expensive, or getting an mp3 player with 32 or 64MB built in memory, which are most oftenly more expensive than getting a card memory card with the JamP3 player.

The JamP3 has been quite frustrating since I received it as a gift. My main beef with the unit deals directly with the Multi-Media Card memory (MMC). I purchased two Viking 32MB MMCs in order to up the ante on it's onboard 16MB memory. Once installed, the memory was not recognized by the MP3 loading software. After reading the manual several times and searching the KB Gear's website, I found that only SanDisk memory is currently supported by the manufacturer.

Click on - Adding Memory - MultiMediaCards

After writing e-mails back and forth to both Viking and KB Gear, a support specialist at KB requested that the memory be sent to his company so he can format the memory card.

Me: "I tried to format the card but the player (software?) does not recognize the add-on memory. If I buy more memory from Viking, will I have to send every card to the person below?".

E-mail from KB Gear support technician: "On your computer; yes. You may have better luck on another computer since it's configuration may be different. Every computer varies a bit and sometimes it is those small bits that can be the culprit."

The initial formatting of the memory would allow the player's loading software to recognize the card in order to load songs onto it. After spending $12 to have the memory shipped and insured, it arrived functional (after being lost by FedEx for a week).

Other Beefs: While you are loading and re-sampling music (to increase playtime) the unit remains on, draining battery life.

While listening to a song - you cannot fast forward nor rewind through a song.

The software that is supplied for loading and re-sampling MP3s (MusicMatch) is not very user friendly and has crashed several times while I've attempted to load songs.

The support techician at Viking seemed genuinely interested in resolving the issue and asked that he be kept in the loop at all times. I suspect that Viking is trying to resolve this issue with their memory.

Given that my player was absolutely free to begin with, I give it 4 stars. If I would have paid full price and experienced the same headaches with the expandable memory - 1 star.

I bought this for something to listen to and move around with. The volume is so low - at 100 you still can't hear the music. I tried to call the number that is on the user's guide and it is out of service! Not a good sign. Wish I had never bought the thing!

Let's be honest. This has to be the worst piece of electronics I have ever purchased. It was trouble from day 1. First of all, this baby drains Enegizer Titanium E2 batteries in less than 2 hours. Second, I never got my sandisk MMC card to work with it. The player would recognize it but wouldn't play anything on it. Third, KBGear.com is dead so forget about support. Please don't waste your time, money and energy on this MP3 player. Spend a couple of dollars extra and get a decent one.

I originally bought this at [a local store] for $... I didn't know much about mp3s then and I figured that 16 mb's was alot but it isn't. The second this bad about it was the battery level. After playing about two songs the battery life is almost dead. I bought two brand new batteries and they were dead by the end of the day. If i were you I would avoid this mp3 player.

i must say that i was really discouraged when i read the reviews on the jamp3. saying that "it was the worst mp3 player ever". so i finally got a hold of my very own. i had never had a mp3 player and i was happy when i got it. a little scared because of all the bad reviews, but happy. so i loaded it up and started playing. the volume starts off on 50 but i guess the other people never saw the volume buttons on the side cause it went all the way up to 100 and it was laud. i mean i'm a musician and i deal with laud music every time i perform (so laud it makes the ear drums rattle) and even i say its laud. i have an aiwa xp model cd player and the jamp3 is just as laud if not lauder.
now about the batteries. it does drain batteries. i have rechargeable batteries and they do get drained quickly. i don't know if it drains any faster than my cd player though. i think about the same. i bought some regular sony batteries just to check and i'm still using them. they have gone about 3 days now.
software is good and pretty easy to use. i don't think this mp3 player is for kids but definitely for teens and above. the only problem is it does ask you for a code key when you are installing which i couldn't find anywhere. they say its on the front of the cd but i don't see it. that doesn't mess up the install though and everything works pretty good. doesn't take very long to download either which is good.
the only thing i would have liked it to have is a power adapter plug. i don't know if other mp3 players have that, and they are probably not made for that. i mean what would be the point in doing that when you can just play a cd? the mp3 player is for when you are on the move and don't want to haul around cds, cassettes, 8 tracks, or even 4 tracks. can't forward through the song either. that's not bad because you have all your favorite songs in there anyway. can skip the song though so at least you can do that. memory is not too bad. if you listen at 32 kbps it sounds like an old cassette... so i don't recommend that you use that. i use about 64 kbps and it sounds so much cleaner. i got about 9 songs on my jamp3 on just 16mb of memory. i will be buying the mmc card soon though.

First used item with windows 98, it worked ok but volume is very low and will not go very loud. I returned item and new Jamp3 has same problem. I just upgraded computers, I now have windows XP, I cannot get software to work with XP. I can find no support from KB gear. Item way overpriced on this web site.

Theres three things wrong with this thing.
(1) It's not loud at all, u will need a amp to listen to this player.
(2) Only 16MB, I could only put up to 8 songs on it.
(3) IT EATS YOUR BATTERIES UP IN AN HOUR. (Get rechargeable batteries)

But the main thing is the sound, too low, u will not have a good time with this. But for $40 retail, U cant ask for much.

I got this today and couldn't wait to load all my songs. Well, I got this at noon, and barring work and a math test, I'm still trying to get the thing to work. I've managed to download two songs! Don't get me wrong, I like this product, but the software is irritating. First it wouldn't load. Then it refused to recognize my MMC. If you want an MP3 player, this may be it. But you may need loads of patience!

This may be a little short on the memory side but I find nothing wrong with this at all. The sound is equitible to the portable CD players I have had, which are all broken. This has been dropped from about 30" several times and no problems, supports the marketing to kids. The software is OK, but once I read the directions everything was smooth.