Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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92 of 100 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Waste of money..., November 1, 2007
After seeing this item on Amazon, and being unable to find any real data on it, I decided to go ahead and buy it. The first thing I discovered is that it has a name. This unit is called the "Onda VX858."
I bought two of these, to make sure that I wasn't going to write a bad review about an item that was just faulty. Unfortunately, both units worked exactly the same way, so heed my words carefully.
One thing worth mentioning is that I am a technologically savvy person. The things that I could not get to work were certainly the fault of the manufacturer. I spent a good four or five hours working with this unit, and nobody should have to take that much time to get a simple Mp3/Video player to work.
Due to a lack of hard data on this item, with the exception of people who were almost certainly paid off to write up a good review, *ahem*, if after reading this review, there is more that you want to know, just post it in the comments section and I will get back to you. Also, if this review helps you, I would greatly appreciate you taking 30 seconds to let me know in the comments section. Now, to the review!
The Onda VX858 is intended to be the iPod Touch killer. Unfortunately, it really fails in almost all categories. Due to an extremely bad software design, it is almost impossible to get anything to actually play on this unit. Both music and video files of many different types simply did not work. More on that later.
First of all, the actual quality of the item is surprisingly poor. It does not feel sturdy at all. The plastic case is extremely thin and brittle, so I would expect this thing to break very easily. You can tell that it comes from a cheap factory in China.
The unit came with a stylus, cleaning cloth, an extremely cheap cloth sleeve, software CD, and USB cable. The VX858 does not have a place to put the stylus, though, so you have to carry it separately.
Upon first turning on the item, I found that all the menus were in Chinese. Since getting to the language changing function is almost impossible without knowing Chinese (you have to go through four text-only menus; no helpful pictures here), I had to spend about an hour just randomly changing settings until I got it. This is not a good way to start.
I finally got it to display English. The main menu had nine categories: Music, Video, Photo, FM, E-Book, Record, Navigation, Game, Settings.
Music: Music files can be dragged directly onto the unit hard drive. Unfortunately, there is no way to categorize or organize the music. You just have to find the individual track and have it play it (No albums or artist information was displayed.) I was able to get .wav files to successfully play on this unit, and that was it. Mp3 files would not play at all. No software was included that could convert .Mp3 to a format that the VX858 could read. Overall: D-
Video: This was the worst part overall. The VX858 cannot play any video files without having them converted with the included software first. Unfortunately, the included software seems to have been put together by one of the children that made this unit. It is all in Chinese and there is no way to change the language. I could not figure out how to use it. If you speak Chinese, then have at it, but for the rest of us, this is a huge letdown. There is absolutely no way to play video on this unit without using their software. Overall: What comes after F- ?
Photo: It displayed all formats of photos without a problem. This does not come close to redeeming the crappy music capability, and nonexistent movie player. Overall: A
FM: This unit is supposedly able to tune into FM radio, but I couldn't get it to work. It kept crashing and restarting whenever I tried to use this function. This happened with both of my units, so I suspect that this is commonplace. Overall: F-
Record: The built-in microphone is of poor quality, even for this piece of junk. Again, this was the case for both of my units. Overall: D
Navigation: The VX858 cannot "use" folders. You store everything you want on the unit in one folder. This means that to get to your music, you have to go through all your files (which are not organized in any order, and cannot be organized) until you find the track that you want. This, frankly, sucks. Overall: F
Game: Tetris. That's it. You cannot put more games on here. This, and photo viewing, were really the only working functions at all.
Settings: Pretty basic, if you can deal with the Chinese default language, as described above.
The Touch-Screen: Works, albeit very badly. You will have to tap 2-3 times to get it to do anything.
Other notes: This unit does not have wi-fi capability.
In summary, this unit is an absolute failure. I had relatively low expectations, but the VX858 still disappointed me. This unit is just not worth any money at all.
Like I said, if you have any more questions, please don't hesitate to put them in the comments section, and I will get back to you. I hope that this has helped!
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
You do need to be very tech savvy, February 23, 2008
With no disrespect meant to HeavenlyArcher above, I didn't have nearly the trouble he did being tech savvy, I purchased this unit, learned it and now my 12 year old nephew uses it and loves it.
First off, it is a USB mass storage device and supports drag and drop into one giant folder, but why on earth would use do this? Fire up WinAmp, WMP or Amarok (I use Linux) and when you transfer songs, they music manager creates the Album/Artist folder structure for you.
You can then use the "navigate" button and just go find what you want to hear.
The included CD, throw it away, it is, as stated, crap and the software I got wasn't even the right stuff for the player. There are two types of players. If the back of your unit says ONDA, you get your firmware updates from ONDA. If it is blank on the back, you have a clone, head to MP4 nation for lots of firmware updates to your VX858Clone. I upgraded my clone to look like this before I gave it away.
[Edit] The link was removed by editors, sorry. [/Edit]
[...]
OK, that said, the player is a good buy at the $[...] I paid for the 4 gig. Below that, great buy, above that, getting less and less good.
[Edit] Again, the sensors removed what I paid for it, so maybe stating that it was slightly less than 75% of a C-Note is acceptable?[/Edit]
The good.
Easy, easy to use, Just press the "Music" button and it plays.
Easy to load with music manager (see above)
Movies look good. Middle of the road, you need AVI conversion software, it converts any format except flash easily.
It is all metal, the back feels like plastic, but is aluminum.
A touch screen that looks cool, is very easy to use (once you get past the technical howto) for little money.
The bad
No playlists. Just random play or all in order.
There is NO WARRANTY, except what Amazon might do. Nowhere, on any manual, on the box does a VX858 clone list a manufacturer.
The software that comes with it, useless, if you can read it (Chinese) (visit MP4 nation)
If you aren't technical, know what/how a firmware upgrade is, willing to watch YouTube and message boards for answers, buy something else.
Now, if someone here was to productize this as a complete package, it really could price crunch other touch players.
TripleII
P.S. My player arrived with English set as the default, YouTube to the rescue, how to change the default language from Chinese to English.
[...]
[Edit] Again, editors deleted, not hard to find on YouTube [/Edit]
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14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not very good!, September 29, 2007
This summer, I bought one in China which cost me only around 500RMB (about 65 dollars). This price is public price in China market. I dont know why the price here is that expensive. The screen is really unexpected! sounds there's a plastic stuff on the tope of the traditional screen. Its not very sensitive. In my opinion, ipod touch is a better choice!
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