I bought a transcend t610 2GB player last month after analysing a lot of alternatives in the market including the fake chinese brands. What I was looking for is the best Value for money product. Apple Ipod was not in my list as it is beyond my budget of Rs.4000. Though the Ipod shuffle falls in this renge it has only 512 MB while I was looking for atleast 1GB. The fake SONY branded chinese MP3/MP4 players are a total waste for your money. I would suggest anyone not to buy them though the features may look convincing that too priced in the 1500-2000 category for 1GB. But most of them have a firmware hack that fools windows to show the disk capacity as 1GB whwreas the real memory is only 256 or 512 MB. This can be confirmed only by formatting the player under windows using the FAT file option which the seller will say you are not supposed to do as it will reveal the truth.
One of my friend brough a 1GB player that looks exactly like an ipod nano evenm packaging is like that. When he started copying songs to it, after some 25 songs it refused to copy sometimes, and sometimes it copied but cant play. So he tried to format the player and when he did so, shockingly, the player’’s capacity dropped to 118 MB. And when we opened the player, and read the memory chip details, it was only 128MB. But the sticker outside clearly states it as 1GB. After hearing all these I wanted to go for only branded ones and when I saw transcend, a leader in memory chips, I am totally impressed. That too its 2GB for just Rs.3600. The packaging also has wrist straps as well as a pouch to carry your player and comes with a CD loaded with drivers.
After purchasing I should say its really superb in sound quality. But the supplied headphones can nowhere bring that quality out. When I switched to my SONY MDR headphones, there was a herculean difference in the sound quality. I dont know why transcend opted for such a poor headset for such a good quality player. Morover the battery life is quite impressive and it comes nearly 14-15 hrs for a full charge which takes less than a couple of hours. Thanks to the backlighting on the screen which uses a special technology for power consumption and is readable under all lighting conditions even when set to low contrast( just to squeeze out more battery life). It has rock, jazz, classical and a user setting for equalizer. It has FM which can store 20 presets and can also play WMA format. It can play CBR as well as VBR mp3’ s upto 320 Kbps. It has a single click record button and has options for ’noisy’ as well as ’quiet’ recording environments. And I should say the built in microphone performs well in this aspect. Even minute sound is easily reproducible.
For people with a tight budget below 4000, its the best buy I can recommend. So why wait? Go and get it. It will rock you...