Intro
With Meelectronics’ recent focus shift toward portable audio, their Digital Audio Player (DAP) lineup was refreshed in suit. The MiniMee II is a second-generation budget-class flash-based mp3 player that comes in two capacities – 2gb and 4gb. With list prices of $39.99 and $49.99, respectively, the MiniMEE players fiscally undercut even the Sandisk Sansa Clip players of similar capacity. However, the Clip is popular here at head-fi not only because of its low price but also for the stellar audio quality it puts as well as the ease-of-use and simplicity of the device. Can the MiniMEE challenge the budget flash king or is it just another generic flash player destined for the bargain bin? Given my huge respect for Meelectronics’ IEM line, I thought I’d dedicate some time to finding out.
Fratures & Specifications
-1.5-inch TFT screen (128 x 128 resolution)
-Features 2GB or 4GB storage capacity
-Supported Audio Codecs: MP3/WMA/WAV
-Supported Video Codec: AVI (video conversion software included)
-Multiple EQ plus Microsoft PlayFX and user-defined settings
-Views JPEG images; displays TXT text documents
-Built-in FM tuner, voice recorder, and Li-polymer battery
-Dimensions: 1.8 in. W x 1.8 in. H x 0.5 in. D
Packaging & Accessories
The MiniMEE comes in a simple-yet-stylish slide-out cardboard box that splits into two halves, revealing the player (which is even smaller than I expected) and the included goodies. I am not a fan of blister packs, so give I’ll take this particular packaging any day of the week.
In the box you will also find:
-Meelectronics SX-31 IEMs with three sets of silicone tips in S/M/L sizes
-USB mini-B charging/data transfer cable with AC adapter
-Lanyard
-User manual
-Minidisc with video conversion software
The accessories are pretty standard but I do appreciate the USB AC adapter, which Sandisk does not include with the Sansa Clip. Additionally, the included SX-31 IEMs are an upgrade from most stock earbuds and, while they don’t excel at anything in particular, are very tolerable as far as SQ goes and can even be kept around as backup IEMs.
Appearance & Build Quality
The MiniMEE II is a very small and light player that nevertheless feels very solid to the touch. The plastics are all well-molded and it does feel like a quality product. Due to the rounded nature the player can sometimes be difficult to grip, especially for those with larger hands - I’ve dropped it a dozen times or so in the month that I’ve owned it. On the bright side, the fact that it still works great is a testament to the durability.
It's a handsome little device and the neon-green accents actually look pretty good and brighten up the player’s appearance. The 1.5” screen is sharper than the photos can show and surprisingly vivid. The backlight brightness is adjustable between five discrete levels but I kept it on the middle setting for the duration of the test. I do find the player perfectly usable at the lowest setting except in direct sunlight and I imagine that battery life increases with a decreasing brightness.
The biggest issue for me is the design of the various screens and menus of the player. The colors of the screens differ depending on the function that’s being used – the music playback screen uses different shades of blue, the radio screen – green, and the voice recorder – brown. While I have no problems with this idea in theory, in practice the software sometimes utilizes the wrong color elements on various screens, resulting in oddly clashing colors and other artifacts. A more consistent and streamlined implementation would go a long way into making the MiniMEE feel like a more upscale product.
Functionality & User-Friendliness
There are a total of six buttons – the standard play/pause, fast forward, rewind, menu access, and a volume rocker - plus a dedicated on/off switch. They are pretty easy to figure out but not quite as intuitive as the directional pad on the Sansa Clip. Still, the side buttons give the MiniMee a larger screen while maintaining a footprint similar in size to the Clip’s, a worthy trade-off. One thing I don’t get is the need for an on/off switch that basically only acts as a killswitch – it will turn the player off, but flicking the switch into the on position does nothing - the player is actually powered on by holding the play button for several seconds.
A definite turn-off for me is the player’s battery life. My Clip does not shine in battery life by any means, getting 8-12 hours on a charge, but the MiniMee struggles to do even that. I averaged around 6-7 hours per charge in all of my tests, though I may have been more demanding of the player than the average user. An upside is the near-zero power draw of the MiniMee when not in use – my Clip’s battery drains noticeably if left unused for a week.
From the spec-sheet it is obvious that the MiniMee II is jam-packed with popular PMP features – perhaps even too many to be useful in such a small device. I’ve had a chance to try them all at various lengths and they all at the very least work as advertised. Going down the list, one-by-one:
Music:
Loading music onto the MiniMee II is a snap – just plug into your computer and it is instantly recognized as a USB storage device. All files are placed right in the root directory. When the player is powered on the loading screen comes up for a second or two and then you are taken to the top-level menu. The top-level menu is very simple, elegant, and intuitive, with a vertical scroll scheme and one selection per screen.
Choosing the music option takes you to the music playback screen that resumes from the previously played track. Pressing the menu button briefly from there opens the file tree while holding the menu button for 3 seconds will take you back to the top-level menu. There is no option to use ID3 tags to browse by album or artist, just folder. Navigation is fairly intuitive but quite primitive – it reminds me of navigating my first mp3 player – a Sandisk SDMX1. There is no back button but instead an additional entry in each folder to go back to the top-level folder. There is a shuffle option as well as repeat options that can be used to confine the player to a single directory or a single track instead of the entire tracklist.
The playback screen tries to relay a lot of information but ends up being rather crowded and disharmonious. Similarly to all of the other screens aside from the top-level menu it is far from elegant and looks like an early 2000s winamp skin. Aside from the usual basic playback information, the screen shows track length, volume, file type and bitrate, as well as the selected equalizer setting and a ‘Lyric’ indicator light that I haven’t yet figured out. As expected, the screen does not show ID3 tag information, so all of my meticulously-tagged rips show up by their long and nonsensical file names which take several seconds to scroll across the screen. That said, I never found myself looking around for more information and it is nice to see the file type and bitrate without going through 3-4 keypresses like I do on my Sansa Fuze. After a few hours using the playback screen becomes simple and I don’t find myself peering into it for particular pieces of information.
Video:
The included minidisk contains software that converts videos to the supported avi format. Native resolution videos look best (as good as anything can look on a 128x128 screen). Conversion is pretty straightforward and the screen is fairly fluid. Colors are about as good as one may expect from a 1.5” TFT. They’re okay for watching a basic animation but the MiniMEE does not excel at being a video playback device.
FM Radio:
The FM radio is basic and functional. Reception is decent and the auto-scan feature works well. Stations can also be browsed manually. Up to 20 presets can be set manually or auto-scanned in. Pressing the play button on the radio screen launches the FM recorder, which can record in 256kbps WAV format for as long as the amount of free memory on the player allows.
Photo:
The Photo viewer opens pictures in jpeg format. The file browser is identical to the one used for music. I was actually surprised by how well the little 1.5” screen (128x128 resolution) performs with photos. It will display a jpeg in any resolution, but of course square photos work best with the square screen. Rendering times are quick – 1024x600 wallpapers uploaded from my netbook display in just under a second. The colors and definition are both vastly superior to my 1.5” Coby photo keychain which, while not exactly a benchmark, does cost ½ as much as the entire MiniMEE and can do so much less.
E-Book:
The E-Book reader opens .txt files. It is pretty simple and fits around 7 lines with 20-25 characters per line on the screen at one time. Unlike the photo and video viewers, the E-Book viewer does not interrupt music playback. Another nice feature is the automatic bookmarking, which opens a previously-viewed text file on the last screen viewed. I can’t imagine reading an actual e-book on the tiny screen but it works great for small text files such as to-do lists or address books.
Record:
The voice recorder is quite basic. The high quality setting results in 64kbps recordings in WAV format while the low quality setting corresponds to 32kbps. Recording length is limited only by the battery life and the amount of free memory on the player. The whole 4gb will fit roughly 150 hours of voice record on the “high quality” setting. While not exactly high-def, I was able to record some notes on the player’s functionality while going about my daily activities and listen to them later without any trouble. Mic sensitivity can be adjusted between five levels and doesn’t pick up any more background noise than the mic on my Sansa Fuze. Again I must say that the player is not designed to be used primarily as a dictaphone but it works well enough for the occasional recording.
Navigation:
The navigation setting allows you to browse the entire folder structure of the player without confining yourself to a particular file type. When a file is selected the player decides which utility to open it with.
Setup:
The setup menu contains all of the options for the player’s many functions. The settings are not accessible straight from the respective application so the menu is the only way to get to them. Aside from the usual language, display, power, and playback settings the setup menu also houses a customizable 5-band equalizer with several presets and several other audio options, including 3D HeadPhone and Pure Bass settings which are not dissimilar to the 3D and Bass Boost settings on the Cowon players. There is also a useful AutoVolume feature, which normalizes significant variations in track volume.
Sound Quality
Well, this being Head-Fi the sound quality is a matter of prime importance. The MiniMee’s biggest competitor is the Sansa Clip, a very highly regarded player around head-fi.
My critical listening tests of both the MiniMee and the Clip were performed using Audio-Technica ATH-CK10 IEMs – earphones that I’m very familiar with and that sound quite transparent and revealing. They aren’t particularly picky about sources but they do let the strengths of whatever they’re hooked up to shine. Anywhere outside of head-fi it may seem counterintuitive to pair a $40 player with $200 earphones, but this is head-fi
.
For anyone interested, my previous mp3 player stable includes the Sandisk SDMX1, E250, and E280, several Ipod Classics, the latest being a 5.5g video, and a Cowon D2. I have also spend sufficient time with the Sony A828, Toshiba Gigabeat F, and Ipod Nano 4G as well as various mp3-ennabled cell phones.
My initial impressions of the MiniMee were mediocre at best. Coming straight from the clip it sounded very rough around the edges – boomy, muddy, lacking in detail, even distorted at times, with overblown bass and absolutely berserk positioning. I was surprised at the downright lack of sq from a player touted as being “Tiny in Size yet Huge in Sound”. Only when playing with the settings menu for this review did I notice that the default equalizer setting was set to something called “MS Play FX”. I figured that default settings would be flat eq so I’d paid no attention to this previously. When exploring the settings screen for the umpteenth time, though, I realized that MS Play FX is in fact an equalizer setting submenu with multiple categories, including a setting called “3D Headphone” and another called “Pure Bass”. Both of these were set to ‘Medium’ by default. Obviously I turned both off, and since I didn’t want to take any more chances I restored the player to a flat eq by using the custom 5-band equalizer.
Without the ridiculous bass boost setting, which reminds me of Cowon’s Mach3Bass but with a much larger step size, the MiniMee was transformed into a proper little DAP. The bass instantly became well-behaved and stopped assaulting the midrange, clarity was restored, and all was well. Turning off the “3D Headphone” setting tamed the spatial positioning as well. With usability restored I found the MinMee’s sound very reasonable. When comparing to the Clip it’s not really a matter of what the MiniMee does worse but more a matter of what the Clip excels at and that is soundstaging and flatness of response. The CK10s are very spacious-sounding earphones but even so the Clip takes them to a different level. The MiniMee… doesn’t. Also, there seem to be a few small treble peaks in the MiniMee’s response that I’m not hearing from the clip. Other than those small flaws the MiniMee is a very pleasant-sounding player. The sound is lively and engaging, with a good amount of power behind it. In fact, the MiniMee has more driving power than the clip – the CK10s require 13/40 on the MiniMee to reach my normal listening volume and about 25/40 on the Clip.
Value
The Meelec MiniMee II provides very good value for money provided that the numerous multimedia features of the player are put to use. With its many features and astonishingly low MSRP and retail pricing the MiniMee offers hard-to-beat bang/buck. It is cheap enough to be used as a stocking stuffer yet functional enough to be used as an everyday portable. It is built much better than the average generic budget flash player and has the advantage of Meelectronics’ unrivaled customer support if anything should go wrong.
Summary & Conclusions
All in all, the Meelec MiniMee provides an enjoyable listening experience. I am quite happy with the sound it provides and will gladly keep it as a backup player, especially since it fits in small earphone cases much better than the rectangular and somewhat thicker clip. The various non-audio related features of the MiniMee are also good to have – who knows when the ability to take a text file or some photos on the go will come in handy. I would probably be even happier with the player if I were not drawing direct comparisons to the Sansa Clip, but c'est la vie. Sandisk is a more established player on the market and has had years of feedback to shape its offerings and my experience with other low-end players is quite limited, though I have a feeling that the MiniMee is far above average in the price range. For anyone looking for a player that is small, cheap, and highly functional the MiniMee II is a safe bet in my book.
With Meelectronics’ recent focus shift toward portable audio, their Digital Audio Player (DAP) lineup was refreshed in suit. The MiniMee II is a second-generation budget-class flash-based mp3 player that comes in two capacities – 2gb and 4gb. With list prices of $39.99 and $49.99, respectively, the MiniMEE players fiscally undercut even the Sandisk Sansa Clip players of similar capacity. However, the Clip is popular here at head-fi not only because of its low price but also for the stellar audio quality it puts as well as the ease-of-use and simplicity of the device. Can the MiniMEE challenge the budget flash king or is it just another generic flash player destined for the bargain bin? Given my huge respect for Meelectronics’ IEM line, I thought I’d dedicate some time to finding out.
Fratures & Specifications
-1.5-inch TFT screen (128 x 128 resolution)
-Features 2GB or 4GB storage capacity
-Supported Audio Codecs: MP3/WMA/WAV
-Supported Video Codec: AVI (video conversion software included)
-Multiple EQ plus Microsoft PlayFX and user-defined settings
-Views JPEG images; displays TXT text documents
-Built-in FM tuner, voice recorder, and Li-polymer battery
-Dimensions: 1.8 in. W x 1.8 in. H x 0.5 in. D
Packaging & Accessories
The MiniMEE comes in a simple-yet-stylish slide-out cardboard box that splits into two halves, revealing the player (which is even smaller than I expected) and the included goodies. I am not a fan of blister packs, so give I’ll take this particular packaging any day of the week.
In the box you will also find:
-Meelectronics SX-31 IEMs with three sets of silicone tips in S/M/L sizes
-USB mini-B charging/data transfer cable with AC adapter
-Lanyard
-User manual
-Minidisc with video conversion software
The accessories are pretty standard but I do appreciate the USB AC adapter, which Sandisk does not include with the Sansa Clip. Additionally, the included SX-31 IEMs are an upgrade from most stock earbuds and, while they don’t excel at anything in particular, are very tolerable as far as SQ goes and can even be kept around as backup IEMs.
Appearance & Build Quality
The MiniMEE II is a very small and light player that nevertheless feels very solid to the touch. The plastics are all well-molded and it does feel like a quality product. Due to the rounded nature the player can sometimes be difficult to grip, especially for those with larger hands - I’ve dropped it a dozen times or so in the month that I’ve owned it. On the bright side, the fact that it still works great is a testament to the durability.
It's a handsome little device and the neon-green accents actually look pretty good and brighten up the player’s appearance. The 1.5” screen is sharper than the photos can show and surprisingly vivid. The backlight brightness is adjustable between five discrete levels but I kept it on the middle setting for the duration of the test. I do find the player perfectly usable at the lowest setting except in direct sunlight and I imagine that battery life increases with a decreasing brightness.
The biggest issue for me is the design of the various screens and menus of the player. The colors of the screens differ depending on the function that’s being used – the music playback screen uses different shades of blue, the radio screen – green, and the voice recorder – brown. While I have no problems with this idea in theory, in practice the software sometimes utilizes the wrong color elements on various screens, resulting in oddly clashing colors and other artifacts. A more consistent and streamlined implementation would go a long way into making the MiniMEE feel like a more upscale product.
Functionality & User-Friendliness
There are a total of six buttons – the standard play/pause, fast forward, rewind, menu access, and a volume rocker - plus a dedicated on/off switch. They are pretty easy to figure out but not quite as intuitive as the directional pad on the Sansa Clip. Still, the side buttons give the MiniMee a larger screen while maintaining a footprint similar in size to the Clip’s, a worthy trade-off. One thing I don’t get is the need for an on/off switch that basically only acts as a killswitch – it will turn the player off, but flicking the switch into the on position does nothing - the player is actually powered on by holding the play button for several seconds.
A definite turn-off for me is the player’s battery life. My Clip does not shine in battery life by any means, getting 8-12 hours on a charge, but the MiniMee struggles to do even that. I averaged around 6-7 hours per charge in all of my tests, though I may have been more demanding of the player than the average user. An upside is the near-zero power draw of the MiniMee when not in use – my Clip’s battery drains noticeably if left unused for a week.
From the spec-sheet it is obvious that the MiniMee II is jam-packed with popular PMP features – perhaps even too many to be useful in such a small device. I’ve had a chance to try them all at various lengths and they all at the very least work as advertised. Going down the list, one-by-one:
Music:
Loading music onto the MiniMee II is a snap – just plug into your computer and it is instantly recognized as a USB storage device. All files are placed right in the root directory. When the player is powered on the loading screen comes up for a second or two and then you are taken to the top-level menu. The top-level menu is very simple, elegant, and intuitive, with a vertical scroll scheme and one selection per screen.
Choosing the music option takes you to the music playback screen that resumes from the previously played track. Pressing the menu button briefly from there opens the file tree while holding the menu button for 3 seconds will take you back to the top-level menu. There is no option to use ID3 tags to browse by album or artist, just folder. Navigation is fairly intuitive but quite primitive – it reminds me of navigating my first mp3 player – a Sandisk SDMX1. There is no back button but instead an additional entry in each folder to go back to the top-level folder. There is a shuffle option as well as repeat options that can be used to confine the player to a single directory or a single track instead of the entire tracklist.
The playback screen tries to relay a lot of information but ends up being rather crowded and disharmonious. Similarly to all of the other screens aside from the top-level menu it is far from elegant and looks like an early 2000s winamp skin. Aside from the usual basic playback information, the screen shows track length, volume, file type and bitrate, as well as the selected equalizer setting and a ‘Lyric’ indicator light that I haven’t yet figured out. As expected, the screen does not show ID3 tag information, so all of my meticulously-tagged rips show up by their long and nonsensical file names which take several seconds to scroll across the screen. That said, I never found myself looking around for more information and it is nice to see the file type and bitrate without going through 3-4 keypresses like I do on my Sansa Fuze. After a few hours using the playback screen becomes simple and I don’t find myself peering into it for particular pieces of information.
Video:
The included minidisk contains software that converts videos to the supported avi format. Native resolution videos look best (as good as anything can look on a 128x128 screen). Conversion is pretty straightforward and the screen is fairly fluid. Colors are about as good as one may expect from a 1.5” TFT. They’re okay for watching a basic animation but the MiniMEE does not excel at being a video playback device.
FM Radio:
The FM radio is basic and functional. Reception is decent and the auto-scan feature works well. Stations can also be browsed manually. Up to 20 presets can be set manually or auto-scanned in. Pressing the play button on the radio screen launches the FM recorder, which can record in 256kbps WAV format for as long as the amount of free memory on the player allows.
Photo:
The Photo viewer opens pictures in jpeg format. The file browser is identical to the one used for music. I was actually surprised by how well the little 1.5” screen (128x128 resolution) performs with photos. It will display a jpeg in any resolution, but of course square photos work best with the square screen. Rendering times are quick – 1024x600 wallpapers uploaded from my netbook display in just under a second. The colors and definition are both vastly superior to my 1.5” Coby photo keychain which, while not exactly a benchmark, does cost ½ as much as the entire MiniMEE and can do so much less.
E-Book:
The E-Book reader opens .txt files. It is pretty simple and fits around 7 lines with 20-25 characters per line on the screen at one time. Unlike the photo and video viewers, the E-Book viewer does not interrupt music playback. Another nice feature is the automatic bookmarking, which opens a previously-viewed text file on the last screen viewed. I can’t imagine reading an actual e-book on the tiny screen but it works great for small text files such as to-do lists or address books.
Record:
The voice recorder is quite basic. The high quality setting results in 64kbps recordings in WAV format while the low quality setting corresponds to 32kbps. Recording length is limited only by the battery life and the amount of free memory on the player. The whole 4gb will fit roughly 150 hours of voice record on the “high quality” setting. While not exactly high-def, I was able to record some notes on the player’s functionality while going about my daily activities and listen to them later without any trouble. Mic sensitivity can be adjusted between five levels and doesn’t pick up any more background noise than the mic on my Sansa Fuze. Again I must say that the player is not designed to be used primarily as a dictaphone but it works well enough for the occasional recording.
Navigation:
The navigation setting allows you to browse the entire folder structure of the player without confining yourself to a particular file type. When a file is selected the player decides which utility to open it with.
Setup:
The setup menu contains all of the options for the player’s many functions. The settings are not accessible straight from the respective application so the menu is the only way to get to them. Aside from the usual language, display, power, and playback settings the setup menu also houses a customizable 5-band equalizer with several presets and several other audio options, including 3D HeadPhone and Pure Bass settings which are not dissimilar to the 3D and Bass Boost settings on the Cowon players. There is also a useful AutoVolume feature, which normalizes significant variations in track volume.
Sound Quality
Well, this being Head-Fi the sound quality is a matter of prime importance. The MiniMee’s biggest competitor is the Sansa Clip, a very highly regarded player around head-fi.
My critical listening tests of both the MiniMee and the Clip were performed using Audio-Technica ATH-CK10 IEMs – earphones that I’m very familiar with and that sound quite transparent and revealing. They aren’t particularly picky about sources but they do let the strengths of whatever they’re hooked up to shine. Anywhere outside of head-fi it may seem counterintuitive to pair a $40 player with $200 earphones, but this is head-fi
.For anyone interested, my previous mp3 player stable includes the Sandisk SDMX1, E250, and E280, several Ipod Classics, the latest being a 5.5g video, and a Cowon D2. I have also spend sufficient time with the Sony A828, Toshiba Gigabeat F, and Ipod Nano 4G as well as various mp3-ennabled cell phones.
My initial impressions of the MiniMee were mediocre at best. Coming straight from the clip it sounded very rough around the edges – boomy, muddy, lacking in detail, even distorted at times, with overblown bass and absolutely berserk positioning. I was surprised at the downright lack of sq from a player touted as being “Tiny in Size yet Huge in Sound”. Only when playing with the settings menu for this review did I notice that the default equalizer setting was set to something called “MS Play FX”. I figured that default settings would be flat eq so I’d paid no attention to this previously. When exploring the settings screen for the umpteenth time, though, I realized that MS Play FX is in fact an equalizer setting submenu with multiple categories, including a setting called “3D Headphone” and another called “Pure Bass”. Both of these were set to ‘Medium’ by default. Obviously I turned both off, and since I didn’t want to take any more chances I restored the player to a flat eq by using the custom 5-band equalizer.
Without the ridiculous bass boost setting, which reminds me of Cowon’s Mach3Bass but with a much larger step size, the MiniMee was transformed into a proper little DAP. The bass instantly became well-behaved and stopped assaulting the midrange, clarity was restored, and all was well. Turning off the “3D Headphone” setting tamed the spatial positioning as well. With usability restored I found the MinMee’s sound very reasonable. When comparing to the Clip it’s not really a matter of what the MiniMee does worse but more a matter of what the Clip excels at and that is soundstaging and flatness of response. The CK10s are very spacious-sounding earphones but even so the Clip takes them to a different level. The MiniMee… doesn’t. Also, there seem to be a few small treble peaks in the MiniMee’s response that I’m not hearing from the clip. Other than those small flaws the MiniMee is a very pleasant-sounding player. The sound is lively and engaging, with a good amount of power behind it. In fact, the MiniMee has more driving power than the clip – the CK10s require 13/40 on the MiniMee to reach my normal listening volume and about 25/40 on the Clip.
Value
The Meelec MiniMee II provides very good value for money provided that the numerous multimedia features of the player are put to use. With its many features and astonishingly low MSRP and retail pricing the MiniMee offers hard-to-beat bang/buck. It is cheap enough to be used as a stocking stuffer yet functional enough to be used as an everyday portable. It is built much better than the average generic budget flash player and has the advantage of Meelectronics’ unrivaled customer support if anything should go wrong.
Summary & Conclusions
All in all, the Meelec MiniMee provides an enjoyable listening experience. I am quite happy with the sound it provides and will gladly keep it as a backup player, especially since it fits in small earphone cases much better than the rectangular and somewhat thicker clip. The various non-audio related features of the MiniMee are also good to have – who knows when the ability to take a text file or some photos on the go will come in handy. I would probably be even happier with the player if I were not drawing direct comparisons to the Sansa Clip, but c'est la vie. Sandisk is a more established player on the market and has had years of feedback to shape its offerings and my experience with other low-end players is quite limited, though I have a feeling that the MiniMee is far above average in the price range. For anyone looking for a player that is small, cheap, and highly functional the MiniMee II is a safe bet in my book.
