REVIEW: Truly MP313X

[House de Kris]

Recently, I got tired with my portable MP3 player and looked for a new one. I ended up with a Truly (http://www.picnroll.com/us/detail.php?id=11) (or Pic-n-Roll, you choose) MP313X player and decided to write a quick review here.

Prior to getting the Truly, I had used a Sandisk Cruzer Micro MP3 Companion. I got the Sandisk because I wanted a player with removable media. The Sandisk plays off of USB flash drive. The drawback being that these USB drives MUST be made by Sandisk and they MUST be of the Cruzer Micro type. Not only that, but not all Cruzer Micros work either. All these limitations bummed me out. Besides, the single AAA battery was only good for a few hours of music.

I went shopping again with the Sandisk Sansa in mind, since some of its models could accept external memory cards. When I found the expandable Sansas in the store, the packaging made claims that it was the micro sized version of SD cards that work, and it sorta hinted that only specific vendor or models would work. Well, I'd been down that erroneous path before, so I wasn't going to do that again.

Luckily, I stumbled upon the Truly players. One model had an SD expansion slot, 1G built in, and a decent price. It could also do a lot of stuff I wasn't really interested in. Like play the radio, or record voice, or show pictures, or display ebooks, or play games. So I walked out of the store with the Truly (after paying for it).

I was mildly impressed by all the extras that come along with it. Like an arm strap (I'll use that a lot, yeah right), slip case, audio-in cable (for hooking up to portable cassette decks to MP3ize directly), power supply with a USB-A host connector. The player was recognized instantly as a removable drive (actually two drives, one is internal 1G and the other is the SD slot), and I got started with copying some tunes over. Glancing through the manual while it was downloading songs, I saw that it could display either .bmp or .jpg files. Wanting to test this feature out, I looked around for some picture files. Since I was at work, all I could find was porn, so I sent a couple pictures to the Truly.

When the data transferring was all done, I let the MP313X run on its own and show me what its got. I listened to about 20 seconds of Shizuka Kudo's Super Best album. Yep, it works, it is even in stereo. Since this was typical Jpop with its super-slick overproduced sound, it was difficult to judge the quality of the equipment with this music.

Instead, I opted to check out what pictures look like on a little 1.8 inch screen. Whoa, I'm impressed they can look this good! It wasn't long before I was initiating the process to download my entire Alley Baggett collection of about 2500 pictures. Well, I had to do this to test the slideshow aspet of the Truly. The end result was that it does take a fair amount of time to load a picture before you can see it. This made me think through this whole thing again. Most of my porn is in the 1024x768 resolution or greater. All that excess data is lost on the little 160x120 display, so I decided to batch convert my collection to a smaller size. The smaller pictures look just the same on the 1.8" display and load faster. Had I been patient, I would have loaded the supplied CD into my computer and found a picture converter to Truly's LGO format which load real fast and has just enough data for displaying purposes. Ah well.

The best news is the battery life. After viewing hours of slideshows and listening to several albums, I still have two out of three dots in the battery.




Oh yeah, how does it sound? Not bad, but sound quality isn't why we buy these things, right? I haven't even opened the plastic bag that the earbuds came in. I've been using some Sony headphones, or my Bose noise-cancelling phones. On either, the sound is nice.

[House de Kris]

Thought I'd add a follow-up after using this product for some time. Well, gosh darn if it isn't weird how you buy something for a particular task, and then you find it is quite handy at other tasks as well. Same with this MP3 player.

Recently, I was lucky enough to draw the short straw here at work and landed a trip overseas. When packing, I had to decide between taking my iPod Nano, or the Truly MP313X. I opted for the Truly since it was cheaper (less worry about losing it), and it could hold more music (plus it doesn't force you to use wacky software just to load it with music).

On the 12hr flight I whipped out my little toy for some tunes. Alas, I forgot to pack my noise cancelling 'phones, so the only way to hear the music over the noise was to blast it and I am not about to torture my ears like that. So, after a few minutes of disappointment barely hearing music, I started to put it back into my carry-on. Then I remembered the games built-in. This was fun, and allowed my to burn an hour or so without noticing the time fly.

I didn't have the need to use the MP313X for most of the trip, then I remembered it has an FM tuner inside. Since I was very interested in listening to communist Chinese radio, I grabbed my player and programmed in a couple dozen radio stations. Glad I didn't bring my iPod, because it doesn't have a tuner in it. Then, a couple days before I was to leave, I suddenly remembered I can actually record these radio programs with the built in recorder function. Doubly glad I didn't bring my iPod.

Turns out, I never had to charge the batteries for the whole two weeks I was away. In addition, I ripped a bunch of the CDs I bought there, but they all got tagged with Chinese data. Since my computer only speaks English, all the data essentially appears as hollow boxes on the display. I just copied these .WMA files over to the Truly and it was able to display the Chinese characters just fine. Unfortunately, the MP313X does not display album art on its color screen.

Upon my return, I searched for my iPod all over the house and could not find it. Damn those tiny devices! Figured my girlfriend's kids stole it while I was gone. Oh well, at least I have the Truly. My return to the States was also met by the rath of my girlfriend's warped sense of reality. No need to detail that story here, but suffice it to say she lapsed back into her "endless diatribe" mode of badgering. Seeing as how no one really believes a human can behave as she does, and how some of this may be useful in a legal sense, I decided to use my little MP313X to record her rants. This thing is GREAT! Using the built in mic, I could slip this into my jeans pocket, or hang it on my belt (assuming a loose fitting shirt hides it), and capture most of what she babbles on about. I had recorded several hours of her wisdom and I still had three out of three dots in the battery life indicator. After that, I set it up to record all sounds during the night with about four hours of memory space left. It recorded until the memory was full and I checked it in the morning. Still three out of three dots on the battery.

Since then, I have recorded another 3.25 hour monolog of her droning away with the battery indicator at the two out of three dots level and it is still going strong. Does this battery ever run out? I'm impressed.

Moral of the story is, I was kinda making fun of all the extra features I didn't think I would ever need at first. Now, I am quite thankful all that stuff was there. As it turns out, I now have used everything it came with except the armband and text file display capability.

Well, that's my personal use comment.