This player is said to have a 12 hour battery life which automatically made us a little sceptical. We’ve seen many different players make this sort of promise and fall far short. Once again in this case we were impressed. With the battery provide we actually got just under 13 hours of play time. Now, this will vary from battery to battery but we definitely got lucky with ours. Of course, there is also a battery (think big flat watch battery) for your earphones in order to power the FM radio receiver. How long this battery will last is anyone’s guess but so far so good.
This leads us to our only problem with the whole player....the FM receiver. Truthfully, we found it more frustrating than useful. First off, there is no volume control for the radio since it is built into the earphones. Secondly, there is no way to control or even know which station you are listening to since it only has a scan mode. Personally, l found that the addition of the radio actually made the earphones kind of awkward and bulky but l might just be bitter considering in my area reception was limited at best. It is an interesting concept since you don’t actually need the player in order to listen to the radio but l felt a little strange walking around with just the earphones around my neck. These earphones are excellent though. Crisp and clean with a very nice bass response. Add to that the fact that there is a small cord attached to the earphones themselves to keep the cord behind your neck made this set of earphones a Godsend in the gym.
So, let’s talk about the MP3 player itself. This is a nicely designed oval shaped player, with a cap that you pull off the end in order to access the USB plug. The screen is a good size with a scrolling bar across the bottom so that you can see the names of longer songs when they are playing. The screen is backlit a nice bright blue and you can actually adjust how long it will stay lit. This is an MP3 player with a very simple learning curve. We were able to do everything from setting the equalizers (5 choices that actually affect the music!), to playing MP3s without ever opening the booklet that is provided. There is a toggle switch in the right hand side of the device to fast forward and rewind, select the next or previous track and to access the menu for different settings, voice recording, etc.
One thing that just escapes me with MP3 players is the addition of a point A-B button. This is not a complaint specifically towards X-Micro but I’ve never heard a song where i absolutely had to hear one small section of a song over and over. Of course, if that’s what makes you happy, well the EVA has the option and it’s very easy to use. Something we found to be much more practical is the hold button. Push the hold button and if you are listening to the player in your pocket or bag you don’t have to worry about accidentally changing songs etc. This is an option that i really wish more companies would include on their players. We give a big hand to X-Micro to thinking about how a player is used and coming up with ways to keep our listening pleasure constant.
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