I recently ordered two Full Metal Platinum 1.8" 1 GB MP4 players from UXcell. Having owned several iPods and a SanDisk Sansa, I was not sure what to expect from a low cost clone. The order was placed on 2/13/07 and received on 2/22/07. The packaged arrived in a plain brown envelope. Packed inside were two small boxes that they must use for all of their orders.
The contents included the player, driver/software CD, user manual, headphones, wall charger, and USB cable.
Construction:
The player is not at the same construction level of a real iPod Nano. This is to be expected. The player, however, is very well made considering the price point. I am very impressed with the screen. The colors are vivid and the display is bright and crisp. The "click wheel" could be better. The center button sometimes slides under the white ring part of the wheel. This was easily fixed by removing the "click wheel" (pressing and turning the wheel counter clockwise), then using tape to secure the center button to the outer ring. The player features a 3.5mm headphone jack and a standard mini USB connection. The top of the player contains the on/off switch. The aluminum housing is solid and has a nice feel in your hand. There is some roughness in the construction detail on the end caps (Minor issues for me).
Usage:
I plugged the FMP into my Linux box and mounted the player as a USB storage device. I then copied a couple of CD's worth of OGG's to it. Unmounted the player then plugged in the included headphones. They are not the greatest headphones on the planet but get the job done. I used my Apple iPod headphones to test the player. The sound of the player was very good. The highs were crisp and the bass was clean. Overall a very capable music player.
Now off to Windows XP to load up some MP3's, WMA's and some pictures. Windows immediately recognized the player and assigned it a drive letter. Some MP3's, WMA's, and JPEG's were copied to the device. They played just as good as the OGG files did. The pictures all looked very good on the display. After playing through the various music files, it was time to check out the video playback.
As I was waiting for the FMP's to arrive, I was busy doing my homework on the AMV format and working out conversion techniques. I had already converted some animation and some TV shows. Having been an avid KVCD enthusiast a while back, I was busy brushing up on my AviSynth and Virtual Dub. My conversion was as follows: Converted DVD video to high resolution Divx. This was then frameserved into Virtual Dub using AviSynth (AviSynth is a frameserver that will allow you to process video instantly). Virtual Dub was used to save the output from the high res Divx into a 160x128 avi at 12 fps with 22050 Khz mono audio. I then ran it through AMV Convert Tool to get it into the AMV format. The result was very smooth playback on the FMP. The colors were bright and the animation (Clone Wars Season II) was fluid. The live action TV shows looked very good as well. All in all I must say that the playback was very good.
The battery life was a little lacking but still acceptable. I was able to get around 3 hours of continuous video playback with the sound at a moderate level. Music playback was around 6-7 hours. Charging the FMP through the USB port of my computer was typically slow. Using the included charger was considerably faster.
Final Thoughts:
For the price, this is an amazing player. Good looks, great features and a very nice screen make this a tough player to beat. I am thoroughly impressed by what I received. The FMP from UXcell is a solid device that I would recommend to anyone looking for an MPx player. My kids love them. They haven't put them down since getting them. I was so impressed, I ordered one for myself.
Review: Full Metal Platinum 1.8" 1 GB
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