Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

If there was one thing that Olympus got right when they made the m:robe, it was style. This thing simply oozes coolness. The screen is large and well lit, the icons glow an almost supernatural white. A m:robe in the dark is quite the sight, it's ghostly. The fact that said screen is operated via touch simply multplies the cool factor. The 20 gig hard drive doesn't hurt either and the sound quality is superb.

Sure, you can spend $250 on a 4 gig iPod nano and be just like every other person in the friggin' world. Or, you can dare to be unique and buy an m:robe.

*BTW I got my m:robe used (refurbished) for a little over $100 on eBay. Take that iPod, you overrated/priced mp3 player of the dim-witted masses!

I read all the negative reviews before the purchase and really only one is true and that is the battery life is weak. For me, I plan on using it in my car and having power in it at all times, so it works for me. Other than that the UI is great, it shows album art which is awesome, basic camera functionality is there if you ever need it, software is easy to understand and the touch screen responds to my touch everytime. Plus, with all the above, a 20GB HHD, lots of inbox accessories and it's only $250!?

In a world with an immense amount of mp3 players.. This one stands out as the 20 gig player that can take pictures and remix them without any extra hardware.. I am really impressed with its build, size, functionality, and quality.. The player on a full charge will last around 9 hours, I suspect the other reviewers did not realize that you need to place this m:robe on standbye for it to conserve energy while its playing music..

I bought the camera/player from amazon and recieved quick delivery. I was very pleased with what i recieved. Its a great device that takes reasonable pictures and plays great sounding music. The only two things that i can find wrong with it is that you have to stand completly still in order to take a photo. The other problem is that at times the touch screen takes some time to respond and you find yourself tapping the screen multiple times. I love this device and recomend it to others. Olympus did a great job

The m:robe 500i is a really cool mp3 player. It has some pros and some cons though.

-pros-
great touch screen
great music quality
great screen quality
large screen
decent camera
looks really cool
nice remote
simple controls
easy uploading software
short battery charge

-cons-
poor battery life unless screen is turned off
no flash only photo light
a little big
takes a while to take a picture because of slow loading

In all, the m:robe is a good choice for a mp3 player and very nice b/c it has a camera. But the battery life really needs to extended in a newer version of the product.

Wow I bought this mp3 player, the 500i, for just $200. It just offers more "special features" than an iPod or Zen series. Overall amazing quality, and here is a part-by-part breakdown:

Looks: Absolutely amazing, very nice, sleek, shiny black. Uber-cool. Slightly bulky, not one you want to take while jogging. You want a flash based mp3 player for that, or perhaps a Nano. But I'm too lazy to jog so I don't have a problem.

Capacity/Hard Drive: 20 GB is quite good when considering all the features that have been crammed in here. But the rpm for the hard drive isn't "up there".

Battery/Charging: What the heck do you expect? It's a full color screen. It's actually amazing battery for that, lasts me 10 hrs (A hold button exists for a reason, people), but if leaving the screen on, it goes down to 2-3 hrs. Max battery capacity is reached by about the third charge, I found. I wish it had a little less wires, and also charged with a computer. But the cradle came free.

Touchscreen: Probably the best part of the whole thing. Very sensitive if you just don't make the mistake my mom makes (lol): use your fingertips not your full finger. Really fun to bust this out on iPod users. Very sweet looking. Also usable as a mirror! :P

Stock headphones: These give some awesome sound! I listen to rock/rap. These headphones give very believable bass, lows, and mids, but not exactly like Sennheisers in treble quality. The reason one side is longer is because it wraps around your head. But a huge problem! These awesome headphones are only around 2-3ft long! They don't even reach from your pants to your ears. Nooooo! Therefore I'm looking at replacements.

Music quality: Absolutely demolishes the iPod or Zen series. Very high signal-to-sound ratio, and instead of just preset equalizers it ALSO includes tweaking by single decibels up to 15 dB in the following: 60Hz, 250Hz, 1kHz, 4kHz, and even 12kHz! Only plays mp3

Remix: Fun little feature to create slideshows, but I found it completely useless. I would just use my computer.

Photo: I believe this is the first mp3 player with a photo. Even though it's Olympus, you do need to keep it very still and it is just 2.1 MP. But don't forget it's just an mp3 player. Another fun little part of this gadget, but it's not gonna replace your Nikon camera. But this baby actually has PictBridge?? LOL

Player interface: This player seems to take longer to start player long songs, leading me to think it preloads the song into memory. The delay for song play is somewhat annoying. The iPod has much faster response, which can be a problem too when switching from gangsta rap to classical. But I'd rather have fast response. Like the new iPods, it does show album covers. Another special feature is that it shows lyrics. Eventually when I'm really bored sometime, I'll put in the lyrics for all my thousand or so songs...

Upload interface: The worst part (sort of) of this player. When I tried to update Mtrip software, it actually crashed on me! 3 times! So I'm just using the original software version. And it takes a long time to transfer songs. You can only run the player on one computer, meaning you can't sync with multiple computers. Problem with this being that with multiple users on one computer, you are forced to clear the player if you update on another user. However, the files themselves are not hidden and can be copy-pasted to other computers, which is a huge asset for when my computer crashed with all my music. All I had to do was rename a thousand files (M000808 renamed to Sandstorm for example) :(

Durability: It has been eight months since my purchase, and I see no scratches on the screen or the camera lens. Even though I don't have any kind of neoprene or any protective casing whatsoever. But I don't think any players are drop-proof and sleek=smooth=sliding so watch out anyway.

I think I should probably stop talking now. Point is, this is value staring you in the face. So what are you going to do about it?

all right i had the m:robe 500i for about a wek now and im lovin it, its a neat lil thing to have. and all i gota say to the people is to stop disin it becouse you expect everything to be done in a second, i bought this thing new for 200 buks with the shipping.

M;TRIP. i would say that its not the best software for uploading the music onto it but its the only one that you could. The encoding takes about 10 minutes per 3 gigs of music (not like u gona do it every again anyways) and the asound quality improves becouse the bitrate is increased.

M:ROBE
PRO:
looks really cool
is very unique (where have u ever seen an mp3 with a camera b4?)
touchscreen that actualy responds fairly well
COMES WITH 20GB OF SPACE!! there are no mp3's on the market offering that much space and a camera for such a low price....

MID:
the camera could use more work as its a litle primative but the pics dont come out that bad (has no flash or zoon but comes with a build in camera light)
the headphones will need some adjusting to due to the wire being short on the remote control side and long on the other side (just a small formality)

CONS:
kinda heavy but perfectly fits into any pocket i have
i have yet failed to make any screteches on it even thou i dont use the pouch but the fingerprints still show

overall i would like to say that its a really good mp3 and a CAMERA ON THE SIDE not the other way around. u basicaly get a lot of space and technology for your buck.