Dell DJ

Received the Dell DJ today. Tired of waiting for Zen NX backorder. I downloaded Dudebox on the advice of Dell if you can believe it. They actually have a link to red chair on their DJ forum.

First impression: This thing is small. From all the reviews, I was expecting a pocket ripping cigar box. I'm used to Archos rather large players. This thing is comfortable in the pocket. Nice heft and feels solid.

Scroll button... I like it. Works really well. Easy to adjust to. Scroll through songs, click the scroll button to play or select. Has a home button. Push it and it takes you to the home screen from which you select your playlists, etc.

Sound is awesome. Haven't played with the EQ yet though. But this thing sounds great unamped with KSC50. The stock earbuds are cheapies, but decent compared to other players - like Archos. They're Dell branded, but they appear to be one of the Sony buds. Not sure.

I really like the volume controls on the side of the unit. Top button increases, lower decreases. Front of unit has rewind/previous, play/pause, fast forward/next buttons. There is a "slider" button on top of the unit to lock/unlock the buttons to avoid accidentally pushing them.

Ordered the wired remote with the unit. No display on the remote will be a major complaint for a lot of people. For myself, I've always shuffled either a playlist or the entire song list. If a song comes on I don't like I click next. I actually like the remote. Volume up/down, rewind/previous, play/pause, and ff/next are present on the remote.
Remote is small enough and buttons are spaced apart so no problems with pressing two buttons at a time.

Recording with internal mic is a snap. There's a button on the side exclusively for this. Press the button and it has about a 1 second delay while it prepares to record. It then immediately starts recording. Press the button again and it stops recording. You can then either press the record button again to start another recording or edit the name of the recording. This is by far the simplest recording feature of any player I've seen. Lack of a line in is a valid complaint. Would be nice to see one on the next version of the DJ.

My only complaint is that the DJ uses ID3 tags exclusively. For those of us who have thousands of Napster-Kazaa mp3s, we have work to do. Most of my files have tags, but not complete with gnere or album. If they could only go with file name and artist I would have no complaints at all. I'll have to check with the dudebox. Maybe this is possible.

There are several areas I need to play with to have a better understanding of this player.

I'm glad I went ahead and bought this player. It's exceeded my expectations in several areas.

My cam won't take close ups worth a flip. I really need to buy another cam, but with all the new players coming out I hate to tie up the money.

The blue glow around the buttons on the panel looks great. Now to try to find a blue LED to add to my cmoy to try and match them up.

If anyone is in the market for an mp3 player, don't overlook the DJ. I thought I was making a sacrifice buying it instead of waiting on the Zen. Wrong assumption.

I also bought the sporty case and the clear jam jacket. Both fit really snug. No movement of the player. Easy access to the buttons and screen viewing is great.

I've been playing with the DJ half the night and most of the day. The battery life on this thing is amazing. It's been running now for 17 hours almost constantly and I've still got one bar left. I left it on all night on the desk to judge battery life. To be fair, I have turned it off for a few minutes twice today to play with the resume.

While playing a song, if you turn the DJ off and then turn it back on, it resumes where you were in the song. Immediately. I don't know if turning the unit off is sort of a "standby" feature, but I mean immediately the music starts. The split second it turns on the song is playing. I've never seen such quick loading of a song.

DEJ - Not sure about the power of the headphone out. Actually have no idea where to find that info either. Didn't see it in the manual or specs. "Frequency response 24-20 khz(headphone out)" I dont' think that's what you're looking for though.

ID3 tags are actually a good thing, once you get them all properly tagged. If you want to play all songs by a particular artist,genre, or album, you just click home, scroll to the selection and click. Then pick out the artist,album, or genre and it INSTANTLY loads all the songs into a playlist for you. The hardware in this thing is Fast. Everything loads quickly.

Hope I'm not beating a dead horse here. Just trying to post any new things I find while playing with the DJ.

I really have no idea toby. I'll play some music on the computer tomorrow and stand away and record and see. I would think with an internal mic only that it would probably be speech only.

You really should read some of the reviews of the dj. It seems everyone is concerned with the "non-removable battery" issue. Only one hd based player that I know of has a removable battery and that's the Zen NX.

Dell's DJ forum

This is Dell's forum for the DJ.

Final playing time: 19 hours and 18 minutes. This is playing mostly 128 - 192 bitrate mp3s. Backlight off most of the time. I played with it several hours learning controls and listening to various eq settings. Great battery life.

1. You have to install software for the DJ.

2. Software is Music Match jukeboxto transfer music and make playlists. Also, DJ explorer(?) to transfer data.

3. Making and saving playlists on the DJ is simple and fast.Scroll to a song, click the button and a drop window opens, scroll to add to playlist and click.

4. Carrying case that comes with the unit is nicely constructed. (Didn't want to mention a negative.) Actually the case they give you is a leather case with a belt clip. Covers the entire player except the top. Can't get to any of the controls using this case. I bought the sport case and the jam case. Sport case has front window to see screen and use buttons. Has side window to use the volume and power buttons. Jam case is a rubbery skin for the player. Non-skid protection. Fits nice. Cant shove player in pocket though, the non-skid surface creates MUCH friction.

5. Haven't had the player long enough to know about the scratch proneness. Rather large screen though. I've read a few reviews with the screen scratches mentioned. I keep my player in the sporty case most of the time, so ?


Dell support has an employee that constantly monitors the DJ forum on their site and answers questions,complaints,and comments.

While on my MP3 player search, I found the best info to read is user forums. Reviews by CNET, IGN, etc. are nice, but I'd rather hear fom someone who has the actual finished product and is using it on a daily basis.

One complaint: Headphone out to my car stereo is adequate, but not optimal. I use my cmoy now on this to increae volume.