Customer Reviews

Machspeed Trio 512 MB MP3 Player

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

Bought two of these and they work fine and sound pretty good. After the rebate they were a great value. However, Mach Speed's customer service is absolutly lousy. I have email back and forth with them close to ten times just to get a rebate. They don't respond quickly and don't appear to have any idea what they are doing. I can say that I have spoken with their tech support a couple of times and they seemed to be an entirely different company. I wouldn't recommend them however because they just haven't got it together. Without the rebate there are much better brands.

I challenge you to find a 512MB player with LCD screen, EQ, etc. cheaper. It's impossible. It has all of the features you'd want and works as designed. However, the unit has some issues as follows:

* Terrible battery life. I've tried a handful of different NiMH and Alkaline rechargables. Battery life is a handful of hours. Batteries drain fairly quickly while the unit sits unused.
* Terrible sound on a weak battery. Once the battery meter indicates anything less than a full charge it emits a background hum and distortion mixed in with the audio. I have to recharge the battery after every trip to the gym to negate this.
* Headphones cord 1' too short. There's no accessories for this so you're stuck with it in your pocket. But the headphones cord is too short to stick it in your pants. Terrible.
* Won't skip randomly in random play mode.
* Is thick due to the use of a AAA battery.
* No tech support. I emailed the company about some of the issues I had, and asked how to use the 1" string as a lanyard (must be some joke) and never received any reply, autoated, scripted, or otherwise.

If it weren't for the battery issues I keep experiencing I'd probably give this 4 stars purely due to the price and features. However, it's annoying me to the point where I'm ready to get a different player. Something with a built-in battery that charges on the USB like an iPod.

I purchased the 512mb unit. I have gone through three and still do not have a working unit. The first one I purchased, the left channel of the ear bud gave out. The second unit had power up issues and would not turn on. The third one also has the no sound ear bud issue. I would have returned this one also but the problem occured after the return period. The problem occured 35 days after I received the item. Now I'm stuck with this piece of junk. I have spent additional money to return the items in addition to the original purchase price. To top everything off, I sent in the rebate and after 18 weeks I'm still waiting.
I have requested a status update of the rebate but no response.
I purchased the unit because the rebate made it an attractive buy. Now I regret ever purchasing this inferior product.
BUYER BEWARE!!!
Bill Howells CEO of Mach Speed if you are reading this, "Send me my rebate and while you're at it, send me a product that works!!"

I bought this three weeks ago, It is built cheap, the buttons are low grade plastic. The first time I pressed the play button it got stuck inward and I had use a bent staple to pry it back to the regular position. after one week it would cut off for no reason, I tried to lock it in place hoping that would fix the problem, I also bought new batteries;It still did it, any sudden movements like running or walking would turn it off. After 10 days the power would not come on at all. This item is poorly made for the price, I should have paid a little more for a better product.

I bought a Machspeed Trio 512mb nearly 2 years ago and it is working just fine - STILL! So, to the reviewer who thinks the people giving a good review are probably reviewing after just taking their product out of the package and reviewing with one days use, I think you are not being fair and your comment is out of line. Maybe this device works differently than others (?), but it does work!

I just purchased another unit for my adult daughter to use when she works out and bought the larger memory, same unit. Since I plan to give her a "gadget basket" full of modern technology for Xmas (she still uses floppies...) I was trying to keep the prices in line and why I chose this device. I wanted to set it up for her and load it with MP3 files so that when she opens, it is all ready to play. I suppose the saavy factor should be the other way around but ironically, I am an older person who has had experience with gadgets and my daughter - d/t her lifestyle and studies, is only just beginning, and why I wanted to get her set up.

Upon opening the package I plugged the unit into my PC USB and opened as a removable drive. Amongst the software and such pre-loaded onto the drive, there were 2 pre-loaded songs that played on my PC just fine. Next, via drag and drop, I loaded up the unit with MP3's, closed the drive, removed from my PC USB, added a battery to the back of unit, turned it on and proceeded to set up the device. Additionally, I chose the white background as I find the colors make the text difficult to read.

Maybe I should have read the directions (and I am female, lol...sorry guys) but I did not and relied on my intuitive skills... Initially, I was a bit frustrated until I discovered how to use the rocker switch atop the unit but after that it was smooth sailing!

I don't care much for the sound quality via the supplied earbuds, they lack the features of a decent set of buds - but that seems commonplace with "almost" any device with supplied earbuds. With that in mind, I purchased better quality buds for a reasonable price and resolved that issue; said and done. Of course it would be nice to have quality buds come with the device, but this is not an iPod and that was not to be the case, plus, I liked the inexpensive pricing! Better buds come in an assortment of pricing that is not outlandish.

It seems to have a bit of a delayed start-up and the menu took a bit of patience to scroll through, learn and set up - but if old me can do this, I would venture to guess most anyone can tackle this too.

This player is all plastic and feels like you'd want to handle with care and hope to not drop. Maybe even get some kind of a clip or velcro fastener strip for carrying. With my older player, the USB cap lost it tight grip and would easily slip off and I suspect this device will do the same. A piece of masking tape holds my end cap on (ugh). My older player has some scratches in the casing, but otherwise, plays very well and lately, I have been using it as a portable storage instead of dedicated music player only b/c my cell phone conveniently has MP3, FM and voice record. This device works both ways if you outgrow it's memory size, or whatever... Also, with both players, I find it too easy to erase songs, thus keep back-ups loaded on my PC just in case that happens. Or you could say that I only copy my songs to the device verses moving the file.

Additionally, there is a "hold" switch on the "bottom" of player for lock and unlock that can easily be bumped and one might want to keep that in mind. As well, upon set-up there is an option to how your files will play, so make sure you have that set to your choice so you aren't left wondering why another song won't play, or not playing in order.

Optionally, one can plug this device into a portable speaker unit to enjoy your music while in the bathroom, fixing your hair and getting ready, or whatever may apply!

Overall, this player does exactly what it claims to and with better buds, sounds even better. I like it and don't understand what all the fuss is about. For this price, I'd give it 5 stars if it came with better quality buds...but then the pricing would go up!

You are probably looking at this item and thinking the same thing I was thinking before I bought this: It's very cheap, doesn't look so bad, and what can possibly go wrong. Boy was I wrong. After the first week, the garbage headphones that it came with stopped working. After a month, the sound kept on going on and off and stopped working the next week. It is also very hard to navigate around this thing. Save yourself the time and money and buy yourself something like the SanDisk Sansa m230 which is a little more money, but probably worth it. Now I'm stuck with a broken mp3 and I am going for the m230. Trust the reviews. The people that gave this a good review, probably rated this a day after they received their mp3 player. I should have trusted the reviews before buying this. Don't get stuck with this like I did. I only rated this 2 stars, since it lasted 5 weeks.

Great little unit, no software required to use it, just plug it in to the USB port and drag songs on to it! As for actual use it was kind of mystifying until i called their tech support (who spoke english!) and they explained that the little toggle switch on top fo the mp3 player is also a mode switch to get between menus. All in all a great buy, good sound, good price, and easy to use (once i figured out the mode switch).

I have two of these.
They both had the same problem. They play the first song and then shut off. I tried all sorts of batteries, to no avail. Changing the name of the songs, la di da... why the hassle?
You get on your bicycle and press play. Then at the end of the first song it just shuts off. You have to stop to try and figure this out and nope, it just plays one song.
Intolerable. Not worth even the $30- Useless player.
The two players sit in the drawer until further notice.

This little unit is great for on the go music! I love to take it with me when i go jogging or working out period! LOL! I took me a while to figure out how to get songs on them, but i realized it's JUST LIKE A FLASH DRIVE! So all I have to do is drag and drop! IT'S SOOOOOO SIMPLE! lol

I've purchased a numerous of mp3 players and have been disappointed time and time again. I recently purchased a Machspeed Trio off of amazon and have been very satisfied with its performance. The quality, the sound is all up to my liking.