Olympus m:robe MR-500i Digital Music Player with Digital Camera

by Olympus

Product Details

• Item Weight: 7.4 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0006TLR1G
• Item model number: 210010
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Take in the sounds of MP3's, WMA's and other high-quality digital music and capture the sights with photos of friends, family, and more with the m:robe 500. Then put the two together using one of four included templates via the cool Remix mode and create dazzling mini movies with transitions and all. A large 3.7" VGA touch screen makes it easy to use. A hip design makes it cool to carry.

Jam to tunes and snap photos with the built-in 1.3 megapixel digital camera to print, transfer to your computer, and share with friends.

3.7" High-resolutionVGA Touch Screen Check out your track information, view album cover art and digital pictures, and navigate through the m:robe 500's menu with ease via the large 3.7" high-resolution VGA touch screen. Twice as large as the common 1.8" LCDs found on many digital cameras, this cool, flat 3.7" touch screen grants you amazing access to every incredible feature and provides enormous freedom to view and share all of your files wherever you may be. Remix Music and Photos Blast those tunes and check out those photos in a whole new and exciting way with the Remix mode. Watch your photos jam to the beat using transitions and cool templates - including "Birthday" - and turn any song and any photo into its own music video for you and others to enjoy right on the 3.7" LCD or on a TV. Then save your "videos" for future viewing or select a new song and new photos to create entirely new remixes. Not only does the m:robe 500 sound great, it also makes everything around you look fantastic, too. With the simple touch of the LCD screen both your music player and digital camera are at your service. Jam to tunes and snap great photos with the built-in 1.3 megapixel digital camera to print, transfer to your computer, share with friends, or put to music with the hip-hoppin' Remix mode.

Features

• Transfer and listen to approximately 5,000 songs or store approximately 20,000 photos with 20 GB of internal memory.
• Shoot, view and arrange photos in albums, including a Favorites album if you desire. (Photos can be set to 1280 x 960 or 640 x 480 resolution.)
• Enjoy Remix mode where you can combine music and images in a remix template to play them together using cinematic effects, motion and more. m:tripTM Music/Photo Organization software (included) for easy music and photo file transfers to/from your PC.
• Print photos directly from the m:robe 500 by directly connecting it to any PictBridge-enabled printer via the included USB high-speed 2.0 cable. Touch screen lets you effortlessly operate the m:robe 500 with the light touch of a finger.
• View track names, album cover art, elapsed track time, length of track, mode being used, lyrics to the song and more.
• Use the supplied remote to play music, add tracks to your Favorites list, switch listening modes, adjust the volume, and more.
• Photo light provides increased illumination when taking pictures in dark or poorly lit conditions.
• Connect the included headphones to enjoy your very own listening party. Listen to music, view photos, and watch remixes on a television using the supplied AV cable.
• Adjust picture-taking settings, set the date and time, choose a language and much more.
• HOLD function lets you "lock" the m:robe 500 so no unintentional use occurs while it's being carried in a pocket or bag.
• Transfer photos already stored on your PC to the m:robe 500 using the supplied m:trip software for viewing or use in Remix mode.
• Connects directly to your PC via the dedicated USB high-speed 2.0 cable. Or connect it by placing it in the supplied cradle and connecting the USB cable from the cradle to your PC.
• Select music tracks for playback from Favorites, Recently Played, My Top 20, Tracks with Lyrics and Unplayed Tracks categories.
• Play tracks in Repeat mode or in Random order.
• Choose among 16 pre-set Equalizer settings or customize your own and listen to your music in the desired fashion.
• Easily find the specific song you want to hear with the Search feature, allowing you to find the track by simply entering a keyword.
• Synchronize your Music/Photo/Remix database between your m:robe and your m:trip software.
• Battery indicator keeps you on top of the m:robe 500's power supply so you'll always know whether you're ready to rock or ready to recharge.
• Use the m:robe 500 as an external hard drive for your PC.

20 GB Hard Drive The m:robe 500 includes a 20 gigabyte hard drive so you'll never be at a loss for music or images. Upload nearly 5,000 songs to groove to at any time or capture and store close to 20,000 digital photos you can check out or share with friends and family anywhere. Or enjoy the best of both worlds by combining your tunes with your pictures using the Remix mode and feel an experience like no other, over and over again. m:trip Software The included m:trip software allows you to quickly and conveniently transfer, store and organize your music and photo files. You can also synchronize your m:robe and m:trip so each contains the same music, photo, or remix data. In addition, m:trip allows you to utilize your PC as your very own jukebox and entertainment center. You can customize playlists, create remixes using the various effects provided, and even locate the specific music you want to hear with the search feature, which also lets you search via the song/album's release year or by keyword. Importing Music from CD Upon inserting an audio CD in your PC, m:trip automatically starts up and connects to Gracenote's CD Database (CDDB) to retrieve track information. Once the information is displayed, simply click the "Import from audio CD" to begin importing music files. m:trip automatically starts up once an audio CD is inserted.

With m:trip users can sync music with their PC, customize playlists, and combine music and photos in Remix mode.

Importing Music and Photos from PC
Once you power up your m:robe, connect it to your PC using the USB high-speed 2.0 cable, either directly from the m:robe or by placing the m:robe in its cradle and connecting the PC to the cradle's external USB port. Once the connection is established, m:trip software will automatically run. Then just click Start to begin transferring files.

m:trip supports both WMA and MP3 audio file formats; and JPEG, TIFF, and PNG image file formats.

Product Description

Take in the sounds of MP3's, WMA's and other high-quality digital music and capture the sights with photos of friends, family, and more with the m:robe 500. Then put the two together using one of four included templates via the cool Remix mode and create dazzling mini movies with transitions and all. A large 3.7" VGA touch screen makes it easy to use. A hip design makes it cool to carry. Print photos directly from the m - robe 500 by directly connecting it to any PictBridge-enabled printer via the included USB high-speed 2.0 cable Touch screen lets you effortlessly operate the m - robe 500 with the light touch of a finger, or use the supplied wired remote Photo light for taking pictures in low light conditions Listen to music, view photos, and watch remixes on a television using the supplied AV cable HOLD function lets you lock the m - robe 500 so no unintentional use occurs while it's being carried in a pocket or bag Connect to your PC via USB 2.0 cable or use supplied cradle Categorize your music Repeat/Random modes Dimensions - 4.38 (w) x 3 (h) x 0.84 (d) Weight - 210g (7.4 oz.)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great picture viewer: noone till date has a better picture viewing screen ~210dpi 640X480, August 26, 2005

By 

RLR (UGA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Olympus m:robe MR-500i Digital Music Player with Digital Camera (Electronics)

Let me first say that I've used a lot of digital multimedia devices, so I know what I'm talking about. Most of them are 3" and 320X240 even the PDA's available are of that resolution. So getting a 640X480 on a 3.7" screen is simply amazing, the pictures are very sharp, clear and vivid. I haven't seen any PDA, jukebox, multimedia device show better pictures. So naturally I've used this as a portable album, and with 20gb of storage I transferred all the pictures I've ever taken!!
Other than using this a picture viewer, the music jukebox is great with a novelty feature of being able to make remixes (motion based picture effects). Having said all this I'd like to summarize the pros and cons, so hopefully in the future they can make this into the IDEAL product and you buy it for the right reasons:

PROS:
=================
- best picture viewing device (colors are limited maybe ~65K)
the screen is so sweet, i've tagged this along as a portable album, and everybody was amazed by the pics
- 640X480 pixels on 3.7" which translates to ~210dpi , rendering very sharp, clear, vivid images on screen
- good music player
- awesome futuristic touchscreen, will make everyone go "wow!"
- music output quality is great, volume is great
- has equalizers, music categories, filtering etc
- headphones are better than ipod's
- included remote with LCD is very convenient especially when you've got this thing hooked up to your car
- digital camera is a bonus to all this
- can be used as portable storage without any drivers on any pc

CONS:
============
- although they advertise the digital camera feature a lot, it's not even better than a cell phone camera, so don't expect much from the camera, you can't take good pictures with it.
- you are bound to using their SYNC software which is a major pain. It would've been a lot easier to do file drag'n'drop
- the SYNC software is very annoying, if you remove something from you hard disk, it will be removed from the device when you SYNC again, so this can't be used to backup all your songs, if you loose it in your hard drive, you'll loose it here as well.
- the SYNC software renames all pictures and music
- If this thing could be used as a usb host for "on the go" (OTG) transfer of pictures from another usb to this device, it would've been perfect, I would've bought 2 of these. This way you could take pics with your digital camera filling up a card, then transfer them here, and view (a lot better viewing because size and res of screen) or delete the ones you don't like.
- cannot be charged using the usb cable, has to use the dock
- battery life with screen on all the time is not good, about
3 hours at most
- limited viewing angle for screen, seems like you're seeing a negative if tilted a bit.

48 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Need some firmware / software updates to be great, February 13, 2005

By 

K. Wu (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Olympus m:robe MR-500i Digital Music Player with Digital Camera (Electronics)

The hardware design is great. Multilingual display, backlit remote also display track info. Camera is at acceptable quality. Noisy as usual in dark environment. Cannot be a digital camera replacement but can be good if you just need a quick snapshot of something.

The mp3 decoding has a little too much noise. Very noticeable when playing certain kind of "quiet" music such as classical or any form of unplugged instrumental, even the mp3 files are encoded at 320kbps constant bit rate stereo. The interface response time is a little sluggish, like one or two second delay after each button click. Honestly I'm not very happy with this product due to these two issues since I spent $420 for this and I'm expecting excellent quality. I hope they can be resolved through a firmware update.

Remix function is fairly neat, but I don't really use it. Quite some work to set up one remix, and you have to do it per track. I wish there is a remix setup per album / playlist function option.

The m:trip software is fair. Need some work as well, such as the playlist order easily get messed up by browsing in other search method list. And some music files fail to accept an album cover image even it's showing in m:trip. Biggest complain is when you have a bunch of mp3s under one album, and if they don't have track no. tagged in their info, m:trip will upload them to the player regardless of the track file names, that is you can have the files in order in winamp (since winamp load files in numeric / alphabetical order), but not in m:robe. I have to go in and type in the track no. to make m:trip place them in order, and I have to do it one by one, no auto numbering functions.

Honestly, I would say, wait for firmware / software update for this pricey unpolished product... It would totally deserve a 5 stars rating if they can fix these issues.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great concept but has its flaws!, October 25, 2005

By 

helen - See all my reviews

This review is from: Olympus m:robe MR-500i Digital Music Player with Digital Camera (Electronics)

The m:robe 500 is a great toy. I got it as a birthday present and think its very useful and fun. I mostly use it to listen to music but sometimes I take quick snapshots with it. The m:robe is great! However it has many flaws. The idea of Olympus is especially creative because I have never found a mp3 player that is combined with a camera with touchscreen! It's even 20 GB.

The pros:
-cameras really fun and handy just for snapshots
-m:trip software (comes with the m:robe) is easy to use
-touchscreens really convenient
-screens huge
-music playback has great sound quality
-remote control is convenient
-2o GB storage
-the remix cube is way fun to play with
-looks way hot
-scratches and dents don't show up well!

The cons:
-screen can only be viewed in some angles
-it takes a while to load after you turn it on
-there aren't very many accessories for it in the market
-it only comes with a pouch
-battery life is only about 5-7 hours long
-its a little heavy
-touchscreen doesn't always respond quickly
-you can't take pictures quickly because it takes a while to get to the camera
-there is only a light and no flash
-photo light drains battery life fast

Overall, the m:robe 500 is a great thing to have. Especially for the price. But if your looking for something lighter, smaller, more compact, and with more features, you might want to look at the Creative Zen Vision. However, that doesn't have a camera. So the m:robe definitely has its pros and cons. If you mainly want a music player and something that just takes quick snapshots for fun, this is a great toy.