Well well well where to start on this. I've been searching for a TOUCHLESS pmp for a long time that can do what this thing does. I hate touchscreens and opted to buy the VPD400 instead of the touch version, which has less battery life and a butt ugly User Interface. Before continuing, I am going to list some bad things about this. But realize, this PMP is awesome at the same time it fails.
I'll start off the the aesthetics. It looks and feels beautiful. It feels quality, not cheap plastic-like. Its very solidly built. It is not a touch but it still is a finger print magnet. As you can see by the pictures, after heavy cleaning and wiping down, this is the best picture i could get of it.
The screen is lovely, and supports full 720 HD video and pics. It is nice and bright, crisp. Not as good as some of the LED pmps but hey, I only paid 80$ new for this thing! The UI is simply beautiful, very psp and ps3 ish. Same concept. You can set any picture as your wallpaper and navigation with the buttons is a bit confusing at times but needs some getting used to.
Right off the bat I noticed some issues and was told to update. I made a HUGE MISTAKE in not reading viewsonics guide. THE UPDATE ONLY WORKS FOR WINDOWS XP....AND I HAVE VISTA. I ALREADY STARTED THE FIRMWARE UPDATER AND IT WIPED THE FIRMWARE OFF....and got stuck there because it cannot proceed without XP. So it was bricked within 5 minutes. Was technically my fault for purchasing this and not reading everything.
thankfully my grandma had a pc that had xp and i got it all worked out quickly and easily. The update worked fine and did not fix a single problem lol...not one. I have no idea what the update did. It did nothing to my eyes, i found nothing changed except the firmware version title.
Problems with the UI that NEED FIXING...yes im talking to you viewsonic people
-no playlists. You have to create a subfolder anywhere you wish either on your micro sd or the internal, and copy and paste your songs of your choosing into that folder, which means you have DOUBLE tracks and memory wasted. One track in your library, one in your playlist folder. So that means if you have a song appearing in multiple playlists, its taking up triple space of the original...literally on your vpd 3 times
-when its set to randomize, you only get a randomly picked song AFTER the current song ends. That means if you press the skip track button, you skip it and go to the very next track on the list in your library/makeshift playlist. I cant explain this. Why idiot thought this was a great idea? Even the ipod knockoffs you get for 15$ on ebay dont have this problem. I have to fast forward to the end of the song and let it end, then it skips to a random track. WOW...just WOW...
-no manual, no detailed instructions for anything.
-If i exit the music menu and go back to the home menu, I cannot reenter the current song playing screen unless i navigate back to the exact song currently playing inside the folder i choose to play it from. If i click on any other song, it will end the current song and start playing that one.
-Avi does not seem to work and some mp4 files are sluggish and choppy. I may have to reconvert my avi to avi yet again or try redownloading all my videos in avi to see if the player truly doesnt play avi...I get sound off the avi files but no video.
THESE ARE ALL EASY PATCH FIXES THAT I SUSPECT WILL NOT EVER BE FIXED, IF SO...AWESOME!!!!! and its the best pmp...ever? IF NOT...I WILL BE VERY SAD and likely will still keep it due to its WIN features.
The winning features-
well, this pmp as i said is full of win and fail at the same time. The win in this thing is the EQ and output. It's very nice and powerful. I do not need my cmoy BB 2.02 at all. Its almost identical in output except the small hint of warmess and bigger bass thud the cmoy gives it. The output is equally as pushed and driven without it.
The main reason I purchased this pmp is because of its audio and video out functions. I can hook it up to a tv and get 720Hd video, as well as direct connect to speakers via RCA/component. For me, everything else is trivial, annoying, but still not bothersome for my needs.
The EQ only had a few presets and cannot be customized. However, each one is fantastic. Rock and Soft are very close to the custom setting i always used on my sansa fuze. Its very nice and I dont need to EQ it to my liking.
The VPD400 outputs to a tv. WIN WIN WIN WIN!!!! Its very easy as the player comes with two types of cables, one for outing to the tv, one to just audio things like speakers.
-the flaw, video works great, outting full HD720 to my tv but the audio doesnt work! lol, maybe its my tv or a faulty cable aimed for tv use ( not the audio only cable )
-REMOTE CONTROL!!! WIN WIN!!! I was playing with it all day with just using the remote. It works great.
-Dedicated speakers on the device, not great, but pretty cool.
-Can be charged both with a mini usb and the dc adapter.
-It gives you both a battery icon and a time count down feature, and a graph
( example: 6 hours 5 minutes ) of battery and counts downward, thats awesome
-FULL .GIF player. EPIC win. but sluggish during transition. Expect and understandable.
-Micro SD
-supports an immense list of file types in picture, audio and video including FLAC
( however, one of my FLAC cds just didnt play and it said unknown. Ive no idea why, as i converted other working FLAC cds with the same settings on winamp and foobar2000 as this cd that shows as unknown, still havent found out why, but every other flac song works)
-can use a mini usb adapter/key and still play/transfer files.
Overall the player has some easily fixed faults, but its great features are great enough to want me to keep this and use it as my main player. Battery life seems to be around 14 hours of audio with the screen off, about 2.5 hours of full HD720 video, just over 3 hours of non stop video playback
overall rating 7/10 currently
if some fixes were added, including VISTA support - 9/10
also their tech support is A+. Agents arrive quickly on the chat over the net and are very knowledgeable and helpful. THEY ARE AMERICAN and DO SPEAK ENGLISH.
best i could do with pics of the graph and countdown timer for the battery
Edited by swbf2cheater - 7/8/10 at 7:33pm
