Customer Reviews

MEIZU MP4 Portable Video & Music Player 2GB (Black)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is an excelent media player. It's a copy of the Nano, yeah, but improved.

First of all is the big, brilliant 2.4" TFT screen that is a pleasure to watch. It's the only media player that has a touch strip besides the Nano itself. But it also has FM radio, voice and radio recorder, and video player. None can be found in the Nano.

It's also very beautiful. The Meizu is shiny and looks like a black marble. The back of the player is like a mirror (surprise) and it's very scratch resistant thanks to a protective film layer.

The Meizu plays MP3, WAV, WMA with DRM, Ogg Vorbis and FLAC, with good sound quality. Video is in AVI format and is converted with a software included, looks nice in the screen, together with pictures. Files are transferred by MTP or drag and drop. Battery life is indeed very good. Charges with any USB port, including USB chargers like that used by the Nano or the Motorola RAZR.

On the downside, it has some quirky interface details that are not difficult to get used to, and could be solved with the next firmware update. I'd buy this player anytime over the Ipod and in fact I've bought many of these already.

The sound quality is pretty good. It has many options to modify the sound, which is a good thing is you are an audiophile. I was especially surprised by the PCIe feature. It gives your music a warm, pleasant sound quality to it. The touch thing to navigate is tricky. You need to work at it for a while till you get the hang of it. For some reason, music takes a little longer to load from playlists than from the main menu. The video quality is just ok.

Real piece of Chinese made French Crap (Dane Elec). I bought one and it was screwed up from the "get go"... the touch screen ran constantly and the reset feature didn't work. Worst of all there was absolutely no technical support...zip, nada, none. No way to contact Dane-Elec!

Don't waste your money!

(updated, see below)Bought this for my father for his birthday. He is older (in his late 50's) and we wanted an easy to use MP3 player for him. He loves it and I downloaded all of his favorite songs for him. I like that you can download a movie on it it. I also downloaded family pictures on it for him. He says it is the best gift anyone has ever given him. Easy to use, easy to download. (UPDATE) My father took this with him on vacation and suddenly it stopped working. I went directly to the Meizu website and it said I needed to download new Firmware, which is software. After looking at a few forums around the web, this is pretty common, and is kind of technical (something my father would not have been able to do). Okay, so you have to download the new software onto your own computer, then use a specific program to "unzip" the file(which I didn't have and had to download yet again on to my computer), then add it to the MP4, which will cause it to reinstall the new software, thus erasing everything you had previously on your device. Researching, downloading, etc. took about 3 hours. And now I have to replace all of the songs, etc. for my father.

I've been using this (probably a much earlier version)'for 4 years and I never had a problem with it.

Unfortunately I dropped it on the floor for quite a few times (can't remember how many times tho, around 10? ) and after the last time I dropped it, the battery is half-broken. The mp3 is still working good, just the battery life is reduced to only 1 hour, it used to be much much longer. I think things like this do happen to batteries( same thing happened to the battery of my laptop), so I don't think it's the problem with the quality of the product.

All in all, I'm very satisfied with this product.

ps: the one I have is actually 4G.

I bought this about six months ago and had mixed feelings about until I actually read the instruction manual and learned how to overcome its slight flaws. The sound quality is great, the overall quality is fine. The video quality is great. It's quite user-friendly and moving music files is as simple as click and drag. It's a great size and is easy to carry in the tiniest of pockets. The video conversion software is a snap.

It does have a couple of slight flaws, though. It seems to get confused easily. If I'm at all inaccurate while scrolling and accidentally touch multiple buttons it locks up. It's easy to remedy by holding the enter button for ten seconds, which resets it. Also, if you use Windows Explorer to delete files, it doesn't rewrite the file allocation. If you fill it up, then use Windows Explorer to delete the files, it still thinks its full, even though the files aren't there whether you look in explorer or the Meizu's intergral browser. Also, the accessories on the Dana-Elec website are all 'Available Soon'. I've been checking since I bought this thing and 'soon' doesn't seem to have come yet.

I highly recommend the Meizu, mostly because I recently purchased a Zune, which greatly annoyed me the first day I bought it. The Meizu is plug-and-play right out of the box. It even came fully charged and with a couple of sample videos and some music already installed. After buying the Zune, and paying a considerable amount, I still had to download the software, which I am unable to do because I'm in Iraq and our internet connection won't allow the transfer of the 33mb software program. The only software you need for the Meizu is the video conversion. When I pay hundreds of dollars for a product, I ought to be able to pull it out of the box and use it right away. Not so with the Zune, which is useless for people without internet. The Meizu isn't as capacious, but it's still 100% better. I own the 4gb now. I'm going to return my piece of garbage Zune and upgrade to the 8gb Meizu.

ADDENDUM:

By far the best feature is the internal browser. I bought a Zune. Hated it. The Meizu doesn't need to be plugged into anything in order to manage files. Also, although the purpose built Meizu cases have remained 'available soon' on the Meizu site, I found a case that fits like a glove in an unlikely place; an Orvis shop. The case is intended to hold fishing lures, but it fits the Meizu perfectly. Also, the USB cable is easy to find and replace. I do lots and lots of traveling and the standard USB cable is easy to find in even the most backwater locations. Try to find a Zune cable in, say, Durres, Albania.

I researched this player for months before finally making the purchase just a week and a half ago. In fact, I loved it so much, I bought another one just a week later. I got two 8gb Dane Elec M6 SL players from Ega (Ebay), one for under $80.00 the other for under $[...] in two seperate bids. Some people are still trying to get at much as $[...] for the 8 gb version.

Just so you know, the Dane Elec and Meizu products are the same. Meizu uses Dane Elec to sell their products in the US for liscensing reasons. When you need to update firmware or get help, you need to use the Meizu site. I suggest you also use the [...] forums as well as mp4nation.net.

Do not expect this thing to be too great on videos. It only plays at 20fps, but the videos do look sharp. You might have sync problems with some. You need to convert the videos to avi files. But you do not buy this for videos, you buy it for unsurpassed audio quality! It even sounds great with the stock headphones, which I changed only because they were too big for my tiny ears and I generally do not like in ear phones. I replaced them with a pair of sennheiser px 100s and get this, I read a review on the meizume website about a $[...] pair of in ear phones called Kanon MD 52. Supposedly, they would sound at least as good as all of the high end brands. For $10.00 I had to give them a try... and let me tell you, I use them more than the Sennheisers and have to keep the volume down because it seems like these things tripple the volume output without distortion!

I put over 1363 songs, 3 videos, one text file, and about 8 pics on it before the Miniplayer became full. Pics are beautiful. Text font is small, I have not seen an option to change this. Album art CAN be added to this player. The touch pad is very sensitive and takes getting used to. You add files to the Miniplayer by simply dropping them in their respective folders! There is a 10 band user defined equalizer as well as a spatializer and some other special sound effects options like Virtual 3D, but you will need all of that!

One of my favorite features is the sleep mode. The player will turn itself off at a predetermined time. Oh to avoid confusion, just know that if you plug the player into your comp. while it is on, it shows up as a drive, and that is when you can add files. To charge it, plug the player into the comp. when it is off. The radio is crystal clear and does an auto scan to find the best setting. It has a voice recorder, and if I am not mistaken you can also record the radio. For me the only drawback so far is that when you turn it on (remember to hold the on button for about 3 seconds) it updates the music library almost every time even if you have not made changes. This takes a while when you have a lot of files. Also, mine just will not keep the correct time.

The major differences between the M6 and the M6 SL is that the SL is slimmer of course and has a wolfson audion chip that is supposed to enhance the sound. Some people with both playrs say that the sound on the M6 is still actually slightly better and the screen is better as well. As someone who has the SL version, I cannot imagine that this little thing can have even better audio quality. Some say the SL has a shorter battery life, which is about 20 hours for music.

This is a great player! If you are thinking about getting one, but are not sure, do what I did, which was go to the forums and ask a lot of questions. Look for deals as well. Since Meizu is about to drop a new player, the price of the M6 and the M6 SL should drop over the next couple of months.

In some reviews, people have said that this is the size of a credit card. I was very happy to find out that it is not even that big! I would not pay more than $[...] for a 4gb and $[...] for an 8 gb although, the player is truly worth more!

I just received the player in the mail today. I went to turn it on, and the clicking sound you get while scrolling just started going on its own. It would NEVER stop scrolling. I formatted/updated about 3 times, no help there. I also checked google and meizume along with all of the other forums, and they said it was a hardware defect.

This player really is a waste of time and money: the list of glitches and bugs is too long to get into, suffice it to say that it cannot even play an album's songs in the right order (a known, unfixed bug). The interface is also shamefully crude and it lacks gapless playback.
There's no excuse for a gadget like this in the 21st century.
Save your money.

I guess in China, they have never heard of Macintosh (They only build them), because this product does not work with a Mac. I imagine after spending more money on really sophisticated video converters might help. The disc that they give you with the install/video converter is a 3Inch disc that will not work on any side loaded iMac, which is pretty much all of them, and it wouldn't work anyway because they are exe. files, which Mac's don't read. When I did get a video to work, it was after trying over a dozen files. The player is very picky about what files it decides it will like.

The interface takes a bit getting used to as well, but at least it looks really good. However, not good enough to waist your time.