Review of Panasonic SV-MP010 1GB MP3 player
 

Now this one may really not be on-topic for this site, because its a (half-hearted) mini-review of a name brand mp3 player, not a no-namer. But its kind of sort of peripherally related to no-name chipods.....

....in the sense that it was supposed to be a "Glacier". As this was purchased for my GF, and the status of my Glacier was unknown at the time, I decided an alternative would be necessary, because unlike me, she wasn't the type to take a risk on a unit that didn't have a solid reliability record (not that I regret my Glacier, far from it).

ALTERNATIVES:

I went through many changes of mind in picking out an appropriate player, including switching between an mp4 (ie. Glacier, iRiver CLIX, Meizu M6) and an mp3 player (ie. Samsung YP-MT6, iRiver T10, Panasonic SV-MP020/MP010). Reliability was a prime consideration, but not the only one. The 1GB Panasonic won out. Yes, over the Meizu.

Why, because its likely to still be running long after the others are dead and gone. And no, the world won't change in 1-3 years that an mp4 player today will no longer be desirable. My girlfriend is not 13 years old. Yet it is a concept many seem to be basing their digital player decisions on. That is, the battery wears out? Buy a new player! Well, I've heard of batteries on the Meizu failing after weeks. I suppose you're supposed to consider you've gotten your money's worth after a few weeks.

The CLIX looked very promising (I REALLY wanted to buy it), but that idea died as soon as I found out how dumb the firmware engineers were. They designed the thing to keep draining the batteries long after you've shut it off. And unless you had a paperclip handy and were happy to shove it in a tiny hole every time you wanted to completely power the unit off, you couldn't. Not being able to do a complete shutoff meant the batteries could (and for many did) last about 3 hours, if used 1 hr a day without recharge. Despite the 25 hr rating. That to me is a defective design. The prices and failure rates of lithium meant this choice had to be a good old standard AA/AAA battery. As I've not seen any mp4 players that take a standard battery, that meant an mp3 player (video wasn't crucial, here).

Now there aren't that many good MP3 players that take a standard battery and last a long time. The good ones can be counted on one hand. That would go.... Cowon, iRiver, Samsung, Panasonic. The Panasonic almost had it all. The longest lasting MP3 player in existence (80hrs) that takes a standard battery (sure the Mobiblu lasts longer, at 153 hrs, but that goes stays at 0 when the battery dies). The Panasonic is a very unassuming player, which belies its quality and features. Its hardly bigger than the AA battery (you can hide it in a closed fist), its light as a feather without the battery, it has a really easy to read sunglow orange display (backlight), it can be used like a USB flash drive or it can play DRM protected WMA files by syncing with windows media player (try THAT on a chipod!), and it has a really good, unassumingly natural sound quality (with a unique SQ feature called "Remaster", which attempts to actually compensate for the compression artifacts of mp3 files!). Still not sure if I prefer the sound with Remaster or not, but it definitely expands and deepens the soundstage, brings things forward and gives more bite to leading edges (music may be more natural without it, though, but not necessarily more engaging).

BROWSING/HARDWARE:

The navigation can use Playlists (via WMP) or folder hiearchy, like the Chipods. Using MTC (USB flash drive type), transfers of an entire album took like 6 seconds. I never saw any of my mp4 players transfer like that! Under WMP though, slow as molasses.... (At least 30min. to sync about 750MB). The buttons are what sold me.... there are none. That means no buttons to wear out (its a flat membrane panel. Not unlike the Glacier, but it has no openings for dust & moisture to get in, like the Glacier panel). If it had an FM Tuner, I would easily call it the best strictly mp3 player on the market (but not the best wrt sound quality).

COMPARISONS:

I compared the sound of the Panasonic to my post-frozen 2GB MyMusix MP3 player. (If you don't know what I mean by "post-frozen", see my thread: "How to improve your Chipod audio/video quality for free $"). Which happened to be the only other mp3 player I had.

In many ways, the Panasonic was better. Both were very involving and both competed with each other. But the post-frozen MyMusix was, in the end, more engaging than the Panasonic. Not sure how fair it is to compare a "modified" MP3 player with an unmodified one (even though the MyMusix is a much lower quality grade than the Panny). I also compared the sound of the Panny to a spanking new 1.8" Full Metal Platinum (the limited Valentine's Edition, which comes in a creamy champagne pink), using Mark Knopfler's "The Trawlerman's Song" (the version from "One Hit Radio Sessions") on both machines. Well, I was a bit surprised to find that the FMP had a higher resolution, so overall, that usually spells better sound quality. I wouldn't say it was superior to the Panny's SQ in every way, but at least in most.

Conclusion: If you just want a no-nonsense, good sounding, long lasting, reliable, easy to use barebones MP3 player and dont care about video or radio, the Panasonic cant be beat. Get 'em before they're exinct! (Panasonic it appears, no longer wants to make mp3 players without a built in battery!). Not the Panny comes in a 2GB model too.

PANASONIC MVP-010 (1GB): $49.99US from seller tj6401 on eBay (+$8.95shipping)