[herkdrvr]

Obtained this player in Shanghai, although I believe it's available at one or more of the mp4 sites.

The player differs from the majority as it doesn't use the Rockchip but rather a chip set I can't identify, but it plays different formats and isn't so picky about the parameters of your file you want to play.

The player itself uses a 16:9 screen (vs. the 4:3 screen many use) and it makes a huge difference in playback. It has touch sensitive keys on the right side of the front face, and on the right side a multi-purpose button (pause/play, on/off) as well as a key lock switch. Also on the right side is the headphone plug and the mini-usb port. On the left side is the microphone for recording and the mini-sd card slot.

Total memory on board is 2Gb and they claim it will take up to 4Gb card. Haven't pushed those limits yet but I've no reason to believe this isn't true. The menu is easy to use, the touch buttons are very accurate, the screen is quite nice, and the sound is excellent. Even the radio is pretty good. There are no settings in the radio for your region so I believe it covers the widest part of the spectrum that pretty much covers all countries.

The firmware version that came with the device is not the latest, and I personally had problems connecting to my Dell laptop. Once I upgraded the firmware to the latest (from their web site, but it's a chore to find) I was good to go. However, the English instructions don't match the Chinese ones in "how to upgrade the firmware" and it took some translation to get it all correct. However all the other English in the manual seems to be accurate, in their own bad English sort of way. But who am I kidding, I can't speak Chinese!

File format supported for video is RM/RMVB/FLV/AVI. Obviously it uses Real Player in some form, and they have a splash screen to that effect if you don't replace it with your own. I haven't really tried any of the formats except AVI, but they include some sample stuff in those other formats and it seems to work well. Audio is the normal and in the "music effect mode" it has "pop, rock, classic, comfort, dance, soft, soft rock", and of course you can set your own equalizer settings.

When connecting to the computer, you actually have to tell it to go ahead and connect and you have to select which drive, internal or the sd card. This is a pain if you want both drives at once but really nice if all you want to do is charge it from your computer.

It comes with a nice soft case and quite good headphones. I was really surprised at the latter as normally the headphones provided are crappola; these were excellent and I use them most of the time. Of course, I'm half deaf from being around noisey airplanes, so others might find the headphones lacking.

I'm loading pics now to the gallery. Overall I have no issues with the device and find it very good for video, music, radio, pictures, and voice recording. It looks good and is easy to carry.