Transcend T.Sonic MP 850 Player

After weeks of pondering, contemplation, googling I finally bought my first music player. Transcend's T.Sonic MP850. This is an 8GB onyx-black model which is supposedly the best model by Transcend.

I was in dilema whether I should By Transcend or I should go for one of the Chinese phones (and use it as an MP3 player). For some time I was inclned to buy the chinese phone (Even now somewhere in my heart i feel that I should have bought the chinese model but what the heck I paid just Rs 3000, including vat :), for the Transccend player).

I would have bought the chinese phone, if not for
(1) Shady battery life
(2) No warranty on the handset
(3) Not sure of the file formats it supports ( i cannot trust the National Market guy).

So I finally decided to by Transcend and went with the Best of the lot (supposedly) MP850. I got it from Anandit Infotech who is the Authorized dealer for Transcend products in bangalore. This shop is located on SP road.

Unable to resist my temptation, I immediately started my research on my player. This is what I find:

Looks
Overall the Player looks slim, sleek, sexy, lightweight.
8GB comes in onyx-black which gives the extra tashan to the layer.
It comes with a protective cover which covers the body of the player (unfortunatly the display screen is left uncovered and exposed to scratches. I need to figureout some way to cover the screen).
You also get a USB connector and a ear phone.
I comes in a handy box neatly packed along with a manual and warranty description.


Features:
Now lets look at what is inside the player. The player has the following features:
(1) Audio
(2) Radio
(3) Voice Recorder
(4) Video
(5) Ebook
(6) Picture viewer
(7) Clock


(1) Audio
The player supports MP3, WMA, WMA-DRM10 and WAV music files.
You have about 8 different types of equalizers to choose (for example: pop, Jazz, rock, classical etc...)
One good thing about the player is that it continues playing a file from where you had left it previously. So if has stopped midway through a lengthy audio, you can resume from that point onwards.
The audio quality is good. At higher volume it is does not jar or hiss but its high is limited and one can go upto the max volume and not feel uncomfortable. You may have to use the Equalizer presets to get the best out of each song.
The menu system for audio (and generally for the player) is not very intutitive. You will have to play around with it for some time to get used to it.

Pros of audio:
(1) Resume from previously stopped point
(2) Equalizer
(3) Song details.
All the details of the song including the title, length of song, progress, visualizer, lyrics (if available) are displayed. So visually it is a complete audio player.

Cons:
(1) Menu.
While playing a file you would not know where to find the Equaliser, where to find out the other audio files. which of the 4-way navigation does what. So nativating though in the audio section i painful.
(2) you CANNOT listen to music and read an e-book.

On a scale of 1-10 (10 being best), I would rate the audio quality at 6


(2) Radio
Radio comes with 20 preset channels. The player moves from one channel to another in a hop space of .1 MHZ.
The audio quality is good and comparable to the songs of the Audio section.
You can record any part of the FM audio to hear later.

Pros:
(1) FM recorder.
Press the Record button and you can record the FM audio to hear it later.
(2) You can also set the quality of the recorded audio. You have 3 options Low, Medium and high. Better the quality, bigger will be the size of the recorded file.

Cons:
(1) You cant run the Radio and do something else (like read an ebook).
(2) Menu is again confusing

On a scale of 1-10 (10 being best), I would rate the Radio section at 7.

(3) Voice Recorder
You can record audio to hear later. The quality of recorded audio is excellent. The mic can capture minute voices. The playback of recorded data is also very good.
It has an additional feature where the player stops recording when it senses that there is no voice. This ensures that there are not many silent sections in the audio.

Pros:
(1) Audio Quality is excellent
(2) Silent sections are not recorded.

On a scale of 1-10 (10 being best), I would rate the Voice Recorder at 8.

(4) Video
The player plays only MTV format for video files. All videos are played in Landscape mode to utilize the screen optimally.
The player comes with a CD which lets you convert avi, mpg, mov, 3gp files to MTV file so that you can play it on your player.

Video was a let down for me considering that it plays only MTV format. After googling for quite some time I finally figured out that the best way to handle this would be to download movies from the net in 3GP format and use the software to convert them to MTV and load it onto the phone. I spent the whole evening converting some of the 3GP movies into MTV and loading them onto the phone. Planning to watch 1 movie a day in my office bus :)

Pros:
(1) it plays videos :)
(2) Pause and Resume from previously stopped point what a relief!!!

Cons:
(1) Supports only MTV format
(2) Audio is not very loud (it could be the fault of the 3GP file that I downloaded...)
(3) Tough to watch movie on such a small screen (not the fault of the player though...)


On a scale of 1-10 (10 being best), I would rate my video experience at 6.


(5) E-book
When I bought the player I had least expectation from the e-book section of the player. Considering 1.8 inch screen i felt i would hardly be able to read any file.

but to my surprise i found that the player displays about 8 lines of text. Though in one screen you might be able to read about 35 words, one can still read small files. i have downloaded the first hardy boys novel from the net. planning to give it a try.

Pros:
(1) Can view e-books !!!
(2) Can pause and resume reading the ebook from where I left previously !!!

Cons:
(1) Alas !! only text files (.txt files) are displayed
(2) Cannot listen to music and read e-book

On a scale of 1-10 (10 being best), I would rate my e-book experience at 6 and 1/2 .



(6) Picture Viewer
I have not yet used this feature. Will transfer some images and check its functionality. But I am sure it would do a great job at showing them.
It suports only jpg and bmp formats. Though not a big let down as most of the images are in jpg format. But if there was support for png and gif it would have been great.



Overall i am happy with the player.
I would give a thumbs up for the player and an overall rating of 7 . BUT, considering that I paid Rs3000 for this player, i would give it a 8.

More on this player as i keep using it...