Customer Reviews

RCA Pearl 2 GB MP3 Player with FM Radio and Direct USB (Blue)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

I don't like proprietary stuff. I don't like proprietary software (iTunes, WMP), cables (the iPod dock connector) or nonreplaceable li-ions that have to be kept topped off on the charger between sporadic uses and stop holding their charge within 12 months (see also: Apple).

In other words, I am really only interested in MP3 players that are plug-and-play for file transfers with no particular software or OS required, that can run off of normal alkalines, and that use a standard USB cable of some kind or, better yet, have the USB connection facility right on the unit.

In the last few years I've bought several MP3 players - an old PNY player, couple of Sandisk m2x0 series players and a Creative MuVo v200 - which fit the aforementioned bill but had varying and sometimes serious shortcomings that have kept me looking for the ultimate in practical MP3 players. The Pearl TH1602 seems to be a new contender meeting my two big requirements, and at an even better price than the aforementioned cheapies. But, naturally, sadly, there are still some problems.

A prior reviewer mentions some frustration with ID3 tags on his Pearl not consistently working. I have found that some uploads to the player get corrupted somehow, with the tags to break partially or completely; they will appear with "Unknown Artist," "Unknown Album," etc., and many tracks in such batches will not be accessible at all. (The tags are still intact on the files themselves, as can be seen viewing the player's contents from a file-browser window - the player just seems unable or unwilling to read them.)

Once the player has broken the tags for itself like this, no amount of straight-up deletion and re-copying of those files will fix the broken tags. What *will* fix them - at least with the latest firmware, 1.2.1.0 - is 1) deleting the files from the player, then 2) renaming both the folder they're in (if applicable) and ALL of the files themselves. It doesn't have to be much - omitting or adding a hyphen somewhere in the filename will do it. You can use a mass tagging program to do this in two seconds.

I assume the player caches the actual filenames in its database on the first start after an upload, and then assumes that any filename it's seen before doesn't need looking at a second time. To be fair, I've had many similar problems with one of my Sansa flash-based players; the Pearl actually seems more willing than my Sansa to see the errors of its ways if you just rename the files and/or folder.

Commas in the artist or title tags seem to particularly befuddle the player and can help break the tags on their way to the player.

It seems RCA could fix this pretty easily in one of three ways. They could figure out what's causing tag corruption or misreads into the database, they could provide a "wipe database" option on the player that would force a new read of all files, or they could simply do what Rockbox firmware does (and what ALL mp3 players should be able to do)-- enable selection and ordered playback by folder and filename as opposed to ID3s.

I have also had some problems with the player just getting confused and weird in album or artist listings, which is usually cured with a restart.

News is good elsewhere. Sound quality is pretty decent. The player seems to be very well built and scratch resistant. The interface makes perfect sense and the radio works pretty well. The player is not gapless playback capable, but it's better / less hesitant between tracks than many. I do wish the voice recorder made its recordings at a higher sample rate, but that's par for the course on these players.

I don't know why some people are complaining that the th1602 won't play an album in order or it won't allow you to sort things in any way - I think this is user error or tag corruption. I've had no problems with organization or sensible playback order, once I've gotten it to recognize all my tags. If you go through Music --> Albums to make a selection, it has no problem playing a chosen album in correct order, and the albums themselves are shown in alpha order.

The thing is, this is considered a bottom-of-the-line device and I doubt it will see anywhere near as much attention from RCA's software team as it deserves. They will work this thing just to the point to reduce return rates and no further. But I'm actually pretty serious about my gear, and I look expressly for features that the MP3 player manufacturers consider "low end." If someone *would* bring out an AAA-powered device with a flip out USB connnection, just like this but with 16 or 32gb on it, along with firmware that really works... well, I'd certainly pay quite dearly for it. Get on it, and get on that firmware, RCA!

I have purchased two units, and recieved two under their warranty replacement program. They were all were so buggy that after about 2 weeks, they stopped functioning entirely. Can't even use the radio.
When it did work, I loved it, but it is so frustrating to have to get them to send out a replacement every few weeks....
Tech support via webite and phone line; you'll need it. Judging from the call I made to them today, they are expecting to hear from Pearl buyers....
The product is seriously flawed. It won't shut down, freezes up etc. Yes, i installed the patch from their website. It helped with the freezing up during shut-down.
Tech support told me it would take a SD card up to 2 GB, to answer the previous reviewer's question....

This little mp3 player would be perfect for people who don't need to carry their music collection around with them and like the idea if their player runs out of juice they can slap in a cheap AAA battery. However, two major problems. Well, actually four. But the two biggies, one you can't navigate files by directory. You can't put, say, music in one directory and podcasts in another. This player just presents all files in one big list to you. You can sort them by tags but that's a bit of pain. The real deal killer is the second problem. When you turn the mp3 player off and on the player doesn't remember where you were. That's not bad for 3 minute songs but if you're 30 minutes into a podcast, it takes a while to ff back to where you left off, assuming you remember.

Other minor problems, the SD card reader doesn't seem to read all SD cards. And it really doesn't kick out much in the way of volume. If you're trying to listen to a podcast on a subway or on a busy street, max volume is way too low.

I had high expectation and wanted a player that uses AA battery, but was soon disappointed. Here's what I found:

Innovative power saving: no back light, screen not on all the time like existing models, but bright green led (?) stays on for desired setting time when a button is pressed.

Battery: uses AAA not AA as advertised - this just shows irresponsible care for their own product verging on misleading consumers. The included no name battery lasted 13h. I have not fully tried a good battery (duracel or energizer) but expect extrapolation to about +/- 20h (pls verify). This is about 2-3x longer than existing model.

USB cable: built-in and flips in/out. Not a big deal for me vs a usb cable.

Sound: to me it is basically decent, I happened to listen to mozetich and it barely picked up some fine details at max volume level, but it almost blasted my hearing out when it played a preloaded track (getting out by every avenue)

Ergonomically not so good: this player fits perfectly in a hand of a child <10yrs old), while pressing the menu button on the side it is easily also to accidentally preesing on the other controls, so the player has to be locked all the time. The saving grace is no joy stick and no wheel control.

It is audible book ready.

FM radio reception: virtually useless, no good reception anywhere anyhow (so FM recording is useless).

The worst: the player turns on by itself and freezes on displaying "shutting down". (I shut it off, left it on a table, walked by a few hours later and saw that it was displaying "shutting down"). This happened 5 times in the 1st 15h that I used it. So it saves power while playing and wastes it while not playing.

Took my chance and tried to help the economy...

I use a mp3 player to workout, and prefer to have one that uses batteries, so if I get to the gym and it has run low, I can replace a battery and keep going, rather than wait until I get home. Which is why I chose the Pearl, as it is one f the few mp3 players that uses a battery.

Big mistake.

By far, the most annoying thing about this player is that it never remembers what song you were listening to once you turn it off. You need to go through the menus and hunt down the song. On top of that, once it's through playing an album, it doesn't just go to the next album. Instead, it shuts off. Great. You can't even advance out of one album into another. Sometimes, just for fun, it plays an album in some random order. There's no documentation, so I never knew that it can't deal with an SD card larger than 2GB. It doesn't come with a carry case, and is too misshapen to fit in any other case.

Get the picture?

The Pearl gets tired, real quick. Just ignore the low price, move on, and get something else. Seriously, just move on.

I would not recommend this MP3 player. I have had nothing but trouble with it since I bought it 2 months ago. It freezes. It shuts off when I don't want it to and turns on spontaneously, which wears the battery out. Ripping music to it is difficult, the software that comes with it is horrible. Stay away!

_ The 2 gig RCA Pearl fit my image of a well thought-out design. I love the integral USB plug that swivels shut. I have rechargable NiMH batteries, ro the notion of replaceable batteries seemed eminently superior to unreachable, short lived Li-Ion devices. The Micro-SD upgrade - just a fine idea.
_ But. The software is counter-intuitive. After a week I can make it work, but it is clumsy and slow. [One exception - The module to extract songs from your CD library is excellent.]
_ After a week the switches in the controls are already skipping. I can effectively play random songs by all titles. Only.
Some songs, about halfway through, start playing at double speed. I don't even know how that is possible, but observed phenomena.... Some songs start cutting out as though there were a bad connection to the earphones. That was not so.
_ Many times when shutting down, the player will lock up and never finish shutting dowm. Eight hours until I took the battery out. Occasionally The start-up will also hang up.
_ The volume is non-standard. Top volume is not terribly loud. Sufficient for my uses.
_ When it works, the 2GB RCA Pearl is a joy. Say half the time.
_ I didn't realize that RCA doesn't really exist any longer, so this is really an Audiovox. I did the updates, both od the Player firmware and the software that goes on my computer. Also, like old digital cameras, one cannot just drag mp3's into the device; one must use the proprietary software.
_ So I have a large, expensive USB drive. One I am not sure I can trust.
__ DAB __RCA Pearl 2 GB MP3 Player with FM Radio and Direct USB (Blue)

I have the PEARL TH1602 with the OLED display (as opposed to the LCD). It seems some reviews describe slightly different variations of the PEARL.

The player was buggy out of the box, but the firmware upgrade fixed all the issues that I know of, including the shutdown issue mentioned elsewhere.

It works like a USB flash drive and shows up as a drive letter in Windows when you plug it in. The menu is simple and makes sense to me. It uses the ID3 tags to make it's own database of titles. You can sort by artist, album, genre, year, favorites, etc. It does not care about the directory structure, so if you have a mixed bag of songs in a folder, I'm pretty sure you'll have to tag them all as "favorites" to keep them together as a group. If your music collection does not have ID3 tags, have fun sorting through unknown artists, unknown title, etc. It does not display filenames, only the track name in the ID3 tag.

FM reception is not great, but it works. It's ok if you can position it where the reception is best, but that's hard to do if you're moving. I consider the FM tuner more as an ancillary feature anyway.

Overall, I got what I wanted. It's small and simple and priced around $40 for a 2GB player. I have another 2GB in the micro SD expansion slot for a total of 4GB. I see they offer 4GB miroSD cards now. Anyone tried one in the PEARL yet?

I bought this unit to replace an old Panasonic 128MB unit. All I wanted was a an MP3 player. No jpg support. No video support. No voice recording. Just straight up MP3. That was harder to find than I thought. I settled on this unit because it has the flip-out USB connecter. That's one less cable to get in my way or lose.

The unit itself is light, even with the AAA battery in it. This is good because the only time I use it is at the gym. I use rechargable Ni-Mh batteries and get about 4-5 hours play out of them.

Sound quality is passable. Not much bass to it, even when messing with the built-in equalizer or preset audio filters. But it is clear and strong and doesn't distort until you get near the max volume level. I don't really care about the ID3 tags so I haven't paid attention to the song readout on the screen and don't know if what other commenters have said about broken tags is true. Over the three months that I've had this, I haven't experienced any song corruption.

When plugged into my Linux-based computers, it is seen as a USB memory stick. Adding music is as simple as drag and drop.

About the only gripe I have is with startup and shutdown; it takes longer than my 7 year old Panasonic unit. Sure, it's not 486DX slow but RCA could've done a better job for the price they get for these.

In the end, I am satisfied with the unit. It does what I want: keeps me my mind occupied at the gym.

I bought this as a Christmas gift for my son. We had a very difficult time getting it to work initially, but finally succeeded. After only a month or so, it quit working properly and would only show the 'loading' info when turned on but would never finish or play his music.

When we contacted RCA, they didn't even acknowledge a problem at first. When we tried again, all they would suggest was to 'update' it.

Very unhappy with this product and RCA service.