... and then I decided it was time I got myself an MP3 player. There were two types to choose from : the solid-state type - that stored music in an internal Flash memory, and the Discman type - which would directly play MP3 CDs. The problem with the solid-state model was the limited capacity - You couldn’t squeeze in say a few hundred songs, but with the Discman type, the capacity was virtually infinite, CDs being cheap and easily available. Finally I settled for the HF200 from Samsung.
First of all, the features. This player plays Audio CDs, and data CDs/CDRWs with MP3 and WMA (Windows Media Audio) files. And it also plays back MP3s with Variable Bit Rate (VBR) encoding - one feature I think is absent in cheaper grey-market items. It comes with a large Dot-Matrix LCD display (surprisingly better than the fancy Sony MP3 player I checked out) with good features displaying just about everything there is to know about the files being played.
Note that the display does not have a backlight unlike what the picture on the cover may suggest which can make it difficult to use in the dark (like say in a bus while travelling at night). A 120-second buffer is provided to resist dropouts due to shocks (though they occasionally get through). The unit is provided with a pair of size AA NiMH batteries (something most other players I checked don’t provide) which should give a continuous play time of upto 12 hrs for an MP3 CD and about 7-8 hrs for an Audio CD.
The unit features a good digital FM tuner, in case you want to take a break from the MP3s. The quality of the supplied earphones is fairly good (though I use a pair of Philips Headphones instead). A range of fixed equalizer presets are provided eg. Jazz, Rock, Power Sound etc. But there is no feature to allow user programmability of these presets.One neat feature is the simple directory/file browsing you can do on a CD through the LCD display.
Coming to the Cons. First of all, the unit cannot play back VCDs. Most grey market players do support this feature, but then again this is a portable player. If you really want to watch a VCD, a better idea is to buy a DVD player. The lack of Backlighting is a bit frustruating (I wonder why they cut corners there?). The player does have a flimsy feel at times, like a fall could shatter it, but then again all player (except the mighty Sony) feel this way.
And then comes the bugs. There are two bugs that I noticed. If you play this thing till the batteries run out, then recharge it to full and try to play it once again, the player simply refuses to run (it will inform us that the battery is dead!). A remedy is to remove the CD lying in the player, close it and then play it. The player will promptly inform us that there is no CD and will shut down. Now if we put the CD back in and play it, hey presto, it starts running beautifully! The other bug is a bit serious.
If you play back a WMA file near the edges of a low quality CD, the whole thing locks up and becomes unresponsive to any key-presses - and of course the CD simply keeps on rotating without stopping. And the problem : You can’t pull out the batteries, because they are underneath the running CD! How to solve it? Either wait for the battery to run out, or open the lid, pry out the running CD and pull the batteries out. (Try this at you own risk - I knew what I was doing)
The player is supplied with a pair of earphones, a remote control (not the IR type), a pair of size AA NiMH batteries and a charger/adaptor for running it off the mains. It comes with a 1 year warranty (could be useful).
Some features like Shuffle Play etc. that were present in the high-end Sony Discman I checked out were absent, but hey, the Sony Player costs a cool 70% more than this. If you want a branded player with reasonably good features and at a moderate price, this could be a good choice.