Customer Reviews

Sylvania 4 GB Video/MP3/MP4 Player with 2.8" Touch Screen and Expandable Memory Slot

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(46)

 

 

This mp3 is a pretty good mp3. Only $70 for an 8gig touchscreen. The graphics are pretty good too. When I first opened it half of the keys on the touchscreen wouldnt work. I was soo mad and was ready to send it back for a refund. Then i saw a little note in the corner of one of the instruction paqckets i got:

"Before using this product, initial touchscreen adjustment is required.
- Press 'settings' option on the main menu, enter into submenu.
- Press 'System' option on the submenu and choose 'Touch Calibration',
use pen [i use finger] to proofread cross center for 3 tims."

This totally made the touchscreen work perfectly! Do this before you get mad like i did! Very good picture, vid and music quality. While playing a song you can go thru a list of all your songs and pick out one which is much easier than going thru a million songs to get to one like some of my previous mp3s. I would very much recommend this.

I got this for my wife as a small gift. She wanted something with a bigger screen than her Sansa to watch her videos on. I think we paid maybe $50-$60 for it at the time. The unit is decent, but very obviously a budget device.

First the good stuff. The screen is big and easy to see and the touch screen is pretty cool on something so inexpensive. The player uses a standard mini-USB connector so I can charge the device for her with the same chord I use for my PDA and my MP3 player. I also really liked the included software. While it's not as user friendly as the software that came with her SanDisk Sansa Fuze, it has almost never choked on a video file. The Sansa software was big, cumbersome, and often failed halfway through a conversion. The Sylvania software has failed on a total of two weirdly compressed files off the Internet. It can convert most MPG and AVI files without issue.

Now the bad. The touch screen is nice, but often unresponsive. You'll sometimes have to tap a spot repeatedly to get a reaction or push down really hard. Menu items are sometimes not clear, but you can usually work your way through finding things. The overall construction of the device feels a little flimsy, but isn't horrible. The worst thing though is the battery life. Brand new the thing maybe gets 2 hours of run time before it goes dead. The battery recharge takes hours. That's really just not good enough for something with a built in battery. The less capacity, the more charges, and the sooner the battery dies. I personally couldn't take that charge length, but my wife uses it lightly so she can tolerate it.

I'd suggest this if you have kids who want to feel kind of like they have an iPod Touch, but where you think they'll break one of those or just plain don't have the money to spend. If you want a top of the line player with the features this one has, you'll be paying more for it.

Update 2/23/12
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We just got a Windows 7 64-bit PC. Windows reports that it can find no driver for this player. I find this a little odd since it should function essentially like a USB drive, but regardless the computer cannot access it. We can still use a XP laptop and it works fine there. I can't verify this player won't work on *any* Windows 7 machine, since I only have access to the one, but I wanted to put this up as a warning just in case. If anybody has got it to work under Win 7, please post a comment for people thinking about getting it. Thanks.

Ok so I was looking for a decent portable media player with a decent amount of storage without having to fork out $200. I chose to take a chance on this one.

So the first thing you do is turn it on and start messing with the interface - Verdict? The touchscreen does it what's supposed to - lets you tell the thing what to do. It isn't anywhere close to what you get with the I-Touch. One of the little annoying quirks is if you are watching a video and want to stop that video and do something else like say, watch another video, listen to a song, read an "E-Book" (text document), or look at the picture, while it can be done, the little back arrow in the far right bottom corner is the least responsive button on the screen. It just doesn't want to do it. You end up having to hit it a bunch of times and then it works. Sometimes I resort to just turning the player off and back on which effectively gets back to the menu but it's annoying.

OK so now you start loading the thing up and seeing how it does with your media. Firstly the little ear buds that come with it? Junk - get some decent ones with the rubber cones on them.

Mp3s: It plays them - they sound good. It supports Play lists, shuffling, and repeat.

Videos: It plays Avi's encoded to 320 x 240 with the DIVX or XVID Codec. I use Allok Video Joiner to do that (it's used to put together clips into one video but if you just run one through it will convert it only and I can get some really nice looking results at Medium quality and they come out at about 200-400MB depending for a full length film or concert DVD. For me, this implementation is far better than Apples measly MP4 support only approach.

Photo's: I haven't messed with this too much but it will look at them.

E-Book: This is a really cool feature that I use a bit. It will read books but you have to save them as Text. I was having alot of trouble with it just seeing the 1st 3rd of the book and I saved them as UNICODE and it worked.

So now that I'd had discovered all this I decided to peak at the battery life icon. They tell the truth, about 5 video hours, 10 for music.

All in all I love it. It lets me listen to Music, watch Videos, and read books all from a little hand held device. It sounds great (with a decent set of Headphones or Ear Buds), the screen looks good and once you learn all the quirks, it will handle all your files. I don't leave home without it.

Stuff I would like: External Volume Control and Skip Controls for the music, better touch screen, Wifi (for this money, I know, rediculous to even ask, but someday...)

Almost forgot: I've used it now for a couple weeks with no problems before I wrote this. I wanted to wait until I have more than just a first impression.

I found this mp3 player on sale for $50 at a local store and thought what a great deal. I only had it for a week and the screen went blank so you couldn't see any of the buttns. The battery didn't last as long as I had wished and there was no way of organizing the songs on the player. It put them in folders by artist and in the order you uploaded them. So they were hard to find since they weren't in alphabetical order. I played it on random mode but it always seemed to play the first few folders all the time

I've purchased a similar player before by another manufacturer; so I knew what to expect from this one. First, for anyone who is expecting ipod quality, this is not it. It is not INTENDED to be a replacement for an ipod. So if you're looking for an ipod, save your money and buy an ipod. If, however, you are looking for a good entry-level mp3 player that can play videos as well, then this works IF you have some information ahead of time. First, the touch screen is not super-sensitive. That can be good or bad. You won't accidentally select the wrong item with this player; so that is good. However, there are times where it may be difficult to select an item, and that's not so good. mp3 files and wma files are handled with no problems. My son who got this for Christmas was able to figure out how to transfer files with no problems, and the sound quality is fine. Video quality is great IF you know a little secret. It's not mentioned in the manual anywhere, but this player will play flash videos (FLV) format; so that makes it easier to create videos to play on it. The included software that comes with the player is pretty much worthless. I couldn't even get it to work. However, there are plenty of freeware converters on the internet that will take any video file and convert it to FLV format. I used anyvideoconverter and it worked like a charm. However, you need to have the right settings; so here they are: (a) frame size needs to be 320x240; (b) video frame rate needs to be 20 or less; (c) video bit rate needs to be 256 or less; (d) audio bit rate needs to be 64 or less. Only the first setting I listed is critical. The others are ones I discovered by trial and error. With high frame rates or high bit rates, the player tends to play movies in a more jerky fashion. With lower frame rates and lower bit rates, the motion is smoother. Overall, this player is good for what it is intended. A portable 8 GB player that plays movies in FLV format is a bargain for the price. Enjoy.

This MP3 is easy to use and works great! The price is right for this MP3! I have gotten many conplements from people & how much they like it. The Videos play is really good. Love it...just buy for this price; you cannot go wrong.

My first mp3 player.I am glad I waited for this model.
Loads of memory,Long battery, easy to navigate,brilliant Color Screen.also Memory expandable with memory card.For the Price None Better !

I bought two of these for Christmas, 2010. One for myself and one for my 10yr old daughter. Initially we were both very happy - the screen is large and colorful and easy to navigate. It was easy to transfer songs and for the price, $50/unit, I was very pleased. My daughter used her player quite a bit. As kids go, she was probably a little rough with it but still, we were both surprised when it just stopped working about two months after Christmas. I tried everything to get it to work again with no success. I tried contacting Sylvania but was shunted around between one toll free number and the next with everyone saying the MP3 player wasn't part of their department. In frustration, I just decided to chalk it up to a combination of faulty product and rough handling by a child.
Around two-three weeks later, mine started to act funny. It would randomly shuffle through my playlist and play the first 30 seconds of a song and then switch songs. Again, I tried every trick I knew to fix it without success. Now, while I can't speak for my daughter's MP3 player, I can say that mine was never dropped, tossed, exposed to cold or wet, or mishandled in any way. I basically used it @ 30 minutes a night, sitting in on my treadmill while I walk. There is simply no excuse for the product to just stop working after barely three months of use.
So, while the price is nice, save your money and invest in an iPod touch.

I have had this MP3 player for 4 months and am very pleased. From opening the box there were clear instructions which made loading my music and videos very simple. The touch screen may not be as sensitive as an ipod but for this price it works well. Videos play clearly and music sounds great...I am even able to voice record which I find usefull. With 8GB of memory (plus an expandable memory slot) there is room to load tons of media.

All in all this is a sleek, fun and easy to use MP3 player...highly recommended.

The mp3 player worked for around 3 wks then it just stopped working. I don't like that because i spent so much money on it and i waited a long time for it.The player is just sitting there collecting dust and not working.The video part of the player never worked.