Customer Reviews

Lexar MPC-231 JumpGear MP3 Digital Music Player for JumpDrive Sport (No Memory Included)

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I got this player from amazon a month ago.
I have a Dell Jukebox 15gb too. So my comparisons would be based on that and clarify some other reviews on this website. I try not to repeat saying stuff in other reviews.
* This player uses a directory tree structure for navigation. So you can have any subfolder in the folders.
* You can have data files in the same folders as the music files or in seperate folders. These data files won't be recognised by the mp3 player, hence reducing the hassle of having to find out "playable" files.
* The sound with the stock headphones was good (better than the dell player)
* You can't get a better deal for an mp3 player as of now. I got a 1gb mp3 player for less than 100 bucks!!! The only competitor is Sandisk but they don't have a 1gb usb drive. But that player looks better.
* You want to FF a song (Keep press the FF button)
* You want to jump to the next song (press the FF button once)

Things not explained in the user guidelines.
* You can add 1 bookmark to each file. The way to do this is not described in the user guidelines. ITS NOT IN THE MENU either. You have to keep pressed the volume button for a few seconds till the bookmark menu pops up.
* To go to a bookmark - Play the file and then keep press the FF button, it will find the bookmark.
* If you are inside a menu and want to return to the main screen - press the play button once.
* If you are inside a menu and you want to come back one step out, press the REW button.
* To power off the device, keep the play button pressed until the shutdown screen comes up.

Temporary feedback......
Now in between I get an error message saying "jumpdrive not inserted" or "searching root directory" . I will come back and edit this and remove these lines once I get some answers rather than just post a bad review about this. Thanks

Update on the above problem : The customer service told me to format the jumpdrive once and see if the problem comes up again. I didn't format it yet as I didn't face the problem after that day.

It's a great little device for simple MP3 playing.

***Earphones***
The earphones are metal, very good quality, and sturdy. They fit snug enough to stay in my ears for jogging, but their nice, solid weightiness seems to give them enough momentum to come out during bouncing activity for some people. They should have made the plug L-shaped instead of straight so that it doesn't stick so far out from the unit.

***Strapping It Down***
There is absolutely no place to clip, strap, or string the device to secure it, so pressure on the earphone plug is a potential problem if kept in a pants pocket (pressure and bumps could make the connections in the jack come loose). But if your pants pocket is roomy and not tight against your thigh, it is not a problem. I have bumped it a few times and it is still a very study jack and plug. For the adventurous, a hole could be drilled in the plastic port for a string (necklace).

***Bookmarks***
A bookmark is set by pressing and holding the volume knob for a second, which isn't in the instructions. The Lexar's bookmark function only works for the first 6 MB of audio because that is its memory limit when loading a file. For example, a voice MP3 (32 kbps quality) can be bookmarked anywhere, but it only works for the first 30 minutes (30 minutes is 6 MB at 32 kbps). The fast-forward goes at a rate of 15 minutes per 1 minute of holding down the fast-forward button. The button is very firm and I can barely hold it down for a minute without having to change fingers. It's a barely-tolerable situation for audio books, unless you break the files into 6 MB files using an MP3 splitter - do a web search on "mega MP3 splitter" to find a free program that will split large files. If you want to read books from the internet, Textaloud is the program to convert them to big or small MP3 files. Reversing will not start at the end of a file. For bookmarks within the first 6 MB, you have to wait 5 seconds after pressing play before the bookmark can be found because it takes 5 seconds to load the 6 MB. It's finished loading when the green light stops flashing.

The idea of this MP3 is great, memory card and player are totally separate, so you can upgrade either. It servs as a MP3 player and a portable drive at the same time, no cable, no software needed.

One note, you do need to use a software like Media player or MusicMatch to export a playlist to make sure the tracks are played in the desired sequence. Otherwise it plays the tracks based on the time of the track file, it may not be what you want.

The price of this MP3 player is unbeatable, I paid about 100 bucks for this and a 512MB card, if you buy other flash MP3 you can not get 128MB. Yes the display is small, and it does not have any bell and whistle, but it gets job done. It is best suitable for audio book listening because of the simple menu, for music it is not as easy to navigate as Rio but still OK. For the price it is a no brainer.

Now the bad things:
1. though you can make bookmarks, they are for each file, you still need to navigate until you reached the track to use the bookmark, there is no way to jump from the beginning of a play list to the bookmark directly.

2. the case for the jump drive exposed a big portion of the card so it looks kind of bizarre, I'd prefer there is a cover and do not mind to pay a few bucks more.

First of all, I have an iPod, but don't like to exercise with it as I'm always afraid it's going to drop. I have an iRock 520 which I love - it's light and sounds very good. But it requires proprietary software and a special USB cable. And with an additional SD card, it only has 192 MB.

So now I have an MPC-231 - and to go with it, I purchased a 1 GB JumpDrive Sport. Here's what I think:

Good points: pretty light (2.6 oz. with batteries). It's plastic but pretty well built. Takes up to 1 GB jumpdrive Sport, I encode stuff for this at 128, so it holds a lot of music. Uses AAA batteries instead of proprietary battery. And of course, it's only $40.

Bad points: Jumpdrive sport is a bit loose when installed, but that should not be a problem. Headphones that came with unit are pretty bad. Buy a better pair of earbuds. EQ function limited, no extra bass or loudness control.

Did I mention that it is only $40? Combined with the 1 GB Jumpdrive sport at about $80, I have a 1 GB MP3 player that also holds other files which I transport back and forth to work and needs NO additional hardware or software.

This sounds like a winner! Good job, Lexar.

Sometimes the most useful things are the simplest ones, and this little guy fits that category. The controls are simple and straightforward, the buttons are rugged rubber, and the battery life is exceptional if you turn off the backlight. The earbud headphones that are included are sturdy but may lack a little in reproducing bass sound; I plugged in a larger pair of Sony headphones that I use on my computer and the sound quality from this guy was equal to listening to MP3s on my PC. I could fit about 50 songs on a 256MB card, which is enough to last me a week before I want to change them. And reloading songs from a PC is *so* easy with the USB technology. Make no mistake, this isn't an iPod, but it's very small, easy to use, and very practical.

This item is very useful. You pay $40 for the mp3 player, and then as many of these USB drives as you'd like- and they're more and more affordable. Dollar-wise, it's an EXCELLENT bargain. $80 for 256MB. $120 for 512MB, and so on- do the math.

You can even store other data on the drives- the MP3 player won't complain.

And there's NO annoying software. You just put mp3s on the drive just like any other drive.

This item is about the size of a small flip-size cell phone, and very light. You can go jogging with this and not feel the weight.

The LCD screen is small, so hard to read. The operation is simple, but not very intuitive. Unless you pull it out and look at it, it takes some time to get used to it- all the buttons feel the same. The volume lever is nice though.

Battery life is good- 2 AAAs will last a good 15 hours easy, unless you run large headphones, backlight, and constant fiddling.

The major problems are:
- It's designed for easy, casual use (like jogging), but there's no CLIP or even a hole to string a cord through. Pocket or hands only. The headphones are just barely long enough.

This is the worst, worst problem. If you can deal with this, this thing is perfect for you.

- As someone else has noted, the headphone jack is exposed. It's possible that you can get it caught and ripped out- but given that it has to go in the pocket anyways, it's not a huge problem.

Overall, I paid $80 for this and am very happy- no other $80 mp3 player comes close in the flexibility.

The idea of an mp3 player that uses removable storage is great. You can take a half-dozen jump drives with you in your pocket and have access to enough music for an entire vacation.

But the Lexar media player has some problems:

1) The USB drive seems loose when it is plugged in. Also, it seems to be getting looser - wearing out (as a previous reviewer has noted).

2) The interface is terrible - very clumsy. The navigation wheel is also a button, but pushing it has no effect most of the time. I end up having to push the button a dozen times to get the song to play.

3) The preset EQs are not very effective - none of them have emphasized bass, for example.

4) Some mp3s play with a lot of background noise - like a low-level white noise or static. There is nothing wrong with the mp3s - they play perfectly on my iRiver player, in winamp, Windows Media Player, etc. Only the Lexar player has trouble with them.

5) WMA support is very very poor. Most of my WMAs (encoded at 192Kbps) pop and skip when played through the Lexar media player. I have pretty much given up trying to play WMA files with it.

6) Surprisingly, battery life isn't very good. The player takes two AAA batteries. I use 750mAh rechargables and get about 8 hours of playing time with them. By comparison, my iRiver player takes a single 2100mAh AA rechargable and lasts more than 20 hours. I am guessing that accessing the jump drive is expensive in power terms - not navigating around a lot (i.e. just letting the player play through the whole drive sequentially) could lengthen the battery life.

Overall, I am happy with the price of this player and with the convenience of being able to load media to it without special programs (such as the iRiver players require). I am hoping that the player is flashable (though I don't have any reason to believe that it is) so that when Lexar works out the bugs that cause some mp3's and wma's to play poorly they can post a patch.

Overall I'm really happy with this player. It's very inexpensive, expandable, and having the separate jumpdrive makes it extremely flexible. This player is great.

I only have two complaints about it.

1. The files you copy onto the jumpdrive aren't necessarily played in the order you expect. It turns out that the files aren't played in the usual alphabetical order. They are played in the order they were copied onto the jumpdrive. If you copy entire folders, the files aren't necessarily copied in the right order. To get around this bug I wrote a short Perl script that sorts the files and copies them in the correct order.

2. There is no really good way to bookmark stuff (yes there are bookmarks, but only per file). I listen to a lot of audio books and it would be nice to be able to set a bookmark per directory in addition to per file. I have to write down where I left off and skip to that spot the next time I listen.

While these issues are somewhat annoying, I would still buy this player if I had to do it over again. It's a great little device.

I bought this as a low-price MP3 player, crossed my fingers, and discovered a gem. The memory-sticks are coming down in price everyweek and I use my 512 to carry huge documents to and from work, in addition to a 100+ songs. The player is durable, beautifully designed, and burns two AA batteries every 20 days, based on an hour a day. Even better, I don't feel paranoid because my headphones are marking me out as a potential mugging victim. If I lost this one, I would be out $35 dollars and I would buy another one tomorrow. Just perfect for what I wanted.

I am a poor college student trying to save all avaliable money for a laptop, so I did not want to go spending much on a mp3 player.

The user guide:
http://www.lexar.com/mp3/JumpGear_Quickstart.pdf

Suggests that one may drag and drop music onto their jump drive in order to add music. Well, it doesn't work, at least not for mine. I sent my first Jumpgear back b/c of this problem. It just keeps freezing up.

They sent me a replacement (and btw, the only proof of purchase you need is a print out of your order history from Amazon with your name on it) and it is having basically the same problem. I finally decided to try the alternative method for transferring music to my device (via sync on the Windows Media Player) and it seems to work just fine. At least for now.

My only remaining complaints:
1 - The display on the lcd, when you transfer via sync, shows file names such as 06Reme->.WMA and 05Trah->.WMA instead of entire file names, so unless you are just good at guessing, you really don't know exactly what the song is that you are selecting to listen to.
2 - The off button is hard to fine unless you have done your research, I just let mine die through the power save for the firtst few weeks. You can turn the device off by holding down the "play" button and waiting for the message "goodbye" to show up on the screen
3- I wish I could drag and drop!!! :'(

Pros:
1 - Does exactly what you need it to do- play music. I will probably get a more expensive mp3 player one day, but this will definitly satisfy my craving until then
2 - Ultra Portable- More portable than an IPod. I can easily put this thing in my pocket with room to spare.
3 - Good customer service. I had lost my original packaging, and receipt, but they still took my first one back and replaced it promptly.
4 - Cheap, Cheap, Cheap. Great for the penny pinching college student.