Customer Reviews

RCA TH1102 Pearl Series 2 GB MP3 Player

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Pro: This compact MP3 player with voice recording is a great and inexpensive alternative to certain I-'s! It connects to the computer and comes up as a thumb drive for easy drag and drop song insertion. No complicated software to learn (or be tied to).

Con: Doesn't come with a belt clip or a case, battery is inside a hump which give the case a bulky look. Should use rechargeable coin style batteries. The unit could be a little bigger with bigger easier to press buttons. For those of us with fat fingers!

The price is right the quality is very good. I own four of them! I am still working on wearing out my first one that I have had for over a year. I am finally starting to wear the paint off of it. The most notable feature to me is the fact that it plays folders. Just pop the songs you want into a folder on your pc and then download them to your RCA Pearl MP3 player and they play in the same order as they are in the folder. Hence for albums there is no trying to figure out where each song goes to the original album. They play in order. People pay for pocket PC style mp3 players or Ipods to get this same feature. To have this feature on such a low cost player is outstanding. Give props to RCA for this well overdue feature on a low cost player. As far as not having the two gigs of space as advertised I had no problem with it. Make sure to format using fat 32 and you will be able to use the entire two gig. I have had the same problem with SD memory cards not using the whole space formated until I changed the format style. I use 15 minute rechargable batteries and I never have an issue with the battery running down. I always carry spares in my back pack just in case. Come on about the size. I have cigarette lighter that takes up about the same space and you can buy a case for jogging for about $7.00 at walmart.

I listen to multi-types of music and I alwasy make sure to create/download my MP3's with at least 160kbs (peer to Peer). When MP3's where first started 128kbs was considered near CD quality and 160kbs was CD quality. The more kbs the larger the file but you get a much better quality. 128kbs to 160kbs is not that much more space per song (about 1mg). Most people now days have at least 120gig on there PC/Laptop and you can always back your music collection up on DVD. 128kbs tends to crackle and pop and give interferance. In order to transfer mp3's quicker the industry simply decided to call 128kbs cd quality. The industry lied to be able to transfer and sale more music to customers(same time frame as DSL startups so Dial up was predominate). Money drives everything. In truth I believe if you get less then 160kbs then you are not getting what you deserve. The point is if you have poor music quality on this player it is probably not the players fault.

I've tried a lot of MP3 players. This is much better than the rest.

The RCA Pearl is super easy to use. It can make 96kb MP3, or even 48kb WMA (and everything larger too), sound like CD quality. Now, that's a winner! It has a replacable AAA battery so you're never out of action to wait on a recharge. Its fully compatible with the common recharable battery kits, so you can have the best of both worlds. Internal sound technology is similar to Creative X-fi, but this RCA product is easier to use, sounds better, lower priced, and more durable. With that technology, of course it can play back highly compressed files with fantastic quality. So, you can fit one heck of a lot of songs on here. For great music, this is just the thing.
For extra fun,
There's a simple cord available at Radio Shack that hooks this up to your home stereo. Aha! No more need to mess with a bunch of CDs. I love this little thing.
Caveat? No caveat, considering its price range. The headphones that come with it are clear and reasonable; however, the Pearl is capable of pro quality sound if you use headphones of that caliber. Don't let that bother you. This is ready to use on the very minute you free it from the box, and it sounds wonderful.

I love my tiny RCA TH1102 Pearl Series 2 GB MP3 Player for listening to audio books. I have two other MP3 players, but it's this one, about the size of a Bic lighter, that goes everywhere with me. It is expandable through a microdisk slot, but has enough built in memory to hold 4 books.

The covered USB plug makes it fast to interface with my computer (no time wasted trying to remember just where I left the USB cable, like with my other players), and drag-n-drop works to quickly transfer large files. I also like the fact that it runs on a single AAA battery, so I don't have to leave the player hooked to my computer to recharge.

Navigation between files can be a bit wonky at times, and I'd appreciate more precise book marking (sometimes it doesn't turn off all the way unless I hold the slider button until it's completely shut down, so I have to rewind to where I left off in the story). Once the player mysteriously reset to the beginning of all books in memory when I replaced the battery, but these are only minor nuisances. I'll be ordering more to share with friends and families.

This little player is a must-have for Audible.com members, who know well how tricky Audible's files and transfers can be. Oh, it works well with all kinds of other MP3 files as well, including music, and has a micro-recorder for quick voice notes (for those of us with short-term memory challenges!). It also allows you to set the background color [HINT: the smallish scrolling title type is most easily read over the yellow or green backgrounds].

Overall, I love this mp3 player, and would definitely recommend it. It's so pretty - looks a lot nicer in person than in the stock photos. The lighter part is a dark metallic grey, the darker part is black with a subtle hint of black sparkles. The backlight can be set to a wide array of colors - not just blue.

That being said, here are a few little downsides to keep in mind, that I didn't see in other reviews:

- There are only 3 repeat modes: repeat 1, repeat all, and off. I'm used to Creative products, which have a good dozen repeat modes to choose from.

- The menu navigation is less intuitive than that of the Creative Muvo Tx FM, for example. The left button moves down, the right one moves up. This catches me off guard every time.

- The on/off button doubles as a lock switch, preventing any keypresses from registering while the lock is on. Sliding to the left turns it off (after a few seconds), sliding it to the right locks it. The problem is that when taking it out of lock, you have to be EXTREMELY careful not to let it slide too far to the left, or it will restart the mp3 that's currently playing. Which makes it difficult to adjust the volume mid-song.

- While it looks flat in the stock photos, in actuality most of the AAA is housed in its own bulbous compartment at the back of the device. Making it quite a bit fatter than it appears.

Again, none of these minor annoyances render the Pearl unusable, but they might be enough to ruin the experience for some people.

Got it as a gift to someone but feel that it is missing some very basic features or updates.
Pros:
+ AAA battery so no need to buy any expensive batteries later on or recharging problems
+ good size
+ basic mp3 players
+ has support for ebooks
+ provides voice recording support

Cons:
- you cannot set up your playlists, it just plays all the files either in standard mode or shuffle. Was really hoping that I could make my own playlists or at least select my own directories to play, but now. This is a big deal.
- could use a FM
- doesn't yet support microSDHC cards. I copied my songs to a standard 2GB microSD and it worked, but when I used a 4GB microSDHC, it hung on "Please wait..." when you switch it on. You have to take the battery out and remove the card to reboot it. Even with a standard microSD card, it seems a little slow in copying files from the computer.

I updated to the latest firmware 2.0 and all these issues are still there. Hopefully RCA can fix the playlist and microSDHC support in the next releases.

Other than these, its a great player.

The design is nice, and I'm really happy with the storage space (but then again, this is my first 2gb mp3, up till now I've had (about) 500MB ones)(I dumped the music from 2 old players into it an a bunch of newly burned cds, and I still have about 567 MB left), but the headphone jack is on the side making is a bit awkward when I carry it around in my pocket, and it's too small for my (all of them) headphones/earbud; and the buttons on both sides makes it kind of hard to hold and navigate though the menus without pushing something you didn't want to.
Then there's the problems with the audio, most of the music works fine (classical and most my techno), but a lot of my fave songs don't work, where you can hear the music just fine, but the voice is barely a whisper, or sometimes parts of it go from being really quiet to really loud. Most of the Rock and Metal just comes out sounding horrible and has a lot of static (though Nightwish actually sounds fine, most of the Rammstein, Oomph!, Flyleaf, and other bands with odd effects or a lot of bass have sound problems), . A lot of the songs also sound kind of echo-y, or Tinny/metallic... I tried out different headphones to see if those where the problem, but the problem stayed the same). Another problem is that occasionaly the music would sometimes skip, as if I was listening to a scratched cd

Then there's the problem with the menu selection.
There's only 2 options for the Shuffle: On and Off, and when it's on, it seems to play the same 10-20 out of the 300-something songs instead of going though all of them... couple of times it played the same song 5 times in a row, or every other song
For the Dsp, there's 5 pre-set options: Flat, Bass, Pop, Rock, Jazz; and all of them have very little difference between them (the only one I noticed was the Rock, and that didn't help with the sound), and You can't choose the settings of it yourself.

Overall I don't recommend getting this if you're a Music Fanatic/Audiophile
As for me, I'm getting another Creative Zen (I had a Nano (512mb) for 2 yrs, but I recently lost it, which is why I ended up getting this), and giving this one to my brother, since his last one's display screen got fried after leaving it in the car (in the sun) during the summer

All in all this is a pretty decent mp3 player that uses a AAA battery. You can add up to a 2GB SD card, but that's it. It will not support any SD HC cards. So you're max'd out at 4GB. (or at least until RCA updates the firmware to support it)

I like the fact that this ues AAA batteries. I can listen for hours without worrying about battery life. One AAA lasts for plenty of time. No playlist to modify, but maybe that helps the price. Folders sort of allow you to separate music.

For a little bit more than the price of a flash drive you can get one that plays music too. I paid $16.95 plus shipping and got a great deal. Yes it's only got a 2 gig capacity but memory cards for it routinely sell for around 8 dollars or less. My main complaint is the small display letters, but then again I have to wear reading glasses for everything else too. It comes with software for transferring DRM material. Since I rip my own files or purchase MP3s, I just drag and drop folders. Here's a hint, if you want an album in a folder to play in the correct order, you have to label the files in the order you want them to play, ie. 01,02,03. If you don't, the player plays the folder contents in some weird sequence.(It wasn't alphabetical)If you're looking for a good sounding, simple device for playing music, give this a try. Even if you're considering paying more for a "name" check this one out. You may be happy without all the "bells and whistles".