Intro:-
There was tour taking place for a new mp3player here in india, claiming to be more powerful than sansa clip and even the fiio X1. I have neither of these, but had experience with the clip. What I have is a couple of cowon players and a few mobile phones. As I was looking for mp3player for myself, I thoughts, lets bother these guys and see if I can get a chance to have a few hours with these. And finally I had it with me last week.
First thing I noticed as I plugged it into my pc is that, there is no internal memory. You are bound to have a memory card. And there is no flap to cover it too. 2nd one is these are tiny. Small, as small as a homelite match box!! Have a look at the specs first, and then we will move on to more serious things. (I will put it in past tense, as I had only 4days to play with it and I don’t have it with me now.) And lastly let me thank HiFiNage for this tour and including me in it.
Build and U.I.:-
At the first look, these are small and good looking players, light weight too. A bit on the thicker side when compared to IPods and my j3, but it’s not bothering. Built is sturdy and will take a few drops if you are one of those who drop things now and then. Buy it can’t be said about the keys. Squeaky will be the word for these. There is a 0.96 inch Organic led display. Bright enough to read under direct sunlight. Other than that, there is a Micro USB port to charge and transfer data to your card. And, and I won’t advice that, if you are home and have a card reader, please use it. Because the transfer rate via this player is 3 mbps at max and average is 2.5 mbps. Whereas my 5 years old J3 can reach up to 6mbps. I am not complaining but even transferring a few albums (flac) will take you Hours! I filled my 16 GB card with 9 GB of files and it took 45minutes. Slow it is.
Then it turned it on. Boom!! On my face, it reads “format error...” I looked for all the albums it can’t play, then I deleted those, it’s frustrating, and I had a thought which is similar to “it’s a Flac player man, come on”
Then I noticed that the U.i. is sluggish, Keys were not responding properly. It takes more than one click at times. Pressing the center button to select and wake might not work at the first attempt. Same goes for the menu too. Battery indicator is not upto the mark too, after playing for 10 hours, it shows ¾ full, but it will show Zero after a few more hours. It needs to be addressed.
Two menus can be found here, one when music is paused, it shows, card folder, delete file, delete folder and exit, 2nd one is while playing, it shows Eq( natural, pop, rock, jazz, classical, soft, and DBB), repeat( normal, repeat one, folder, repeat folder, repeat all, random and Intro),Dir navigation, back light, off time and exit. I would have liked some more Eq options, preferably a user Customizable Eq would have done good.
Along press will show the Settings menu, I never got into it, was not bothered about it.
Now playing screen shows, Battery, What is the now playing song number, number of songs in queue, name of the song, album and artists name too. Total duration of the song and time elapsed. In the bottom row, you can find the Applied Eq, File bit rate, but its supports three digits only and when your flac file is over 1k, it shows 999. Let’s move on to the Main part, sound quality.
Sound quality:-
Let me start by saying that the X2 has some background sound with sensitive earphones like doppio, it’s not much but it's there, always, even when you are playing. Play with sensitive analytical earphones like doppio and it revels where this little player is going wrong. Not a problem for this price. In fact it’s one of the best sounding budget players I have experienced. Better than clip and those Philips gogears I used to have.
Let talk about its power, which was highlighted by the tour conductor, and I have to admit that these have plenty of power, I usually hear at lower volume and with this player I was satisfied with volume level close to 13 out of 40 steps, if you do volume matching with J3, it’s close to 18 out of 40 steps. Even my Hd380pro was driven without any problem. Other like T2, Ath-im70 and Doppio were driven effortlessly.
Let me start with bass. Here one can observe that bass is not flat, even with Eq set to natural, you have more than enough bass, a bit elevated than usual, I tried to play with Eq but I liked Natural the most. Others had their own flaws, some were not clear enough, slightly edgy, some had bolted bass and some had the highs toned down. Texture and presentation is good. Notes are thick and had enough details too. Decay is a bit lacking but it’s not a problem, its fast enough. Mid bass is a bit more prominent but sub bass is present too. I have to say that sub bass could have been better, with a bit more control and extension too. Doesn’t interrupt with the mids but I think it could have been cleaner.
Let’s move on to mids and highs. Mids were clean, vocals are really good and forward, me likey, and instruments were well pronounced and nicely placed too with enough space between them to separate but was not super clean. Sometimes I feel it could have done better with imaging, Presentation is good too. I can notice that vocals were elevated, and were lush, but lacking some texture. Sound stage was good but not J3 good. Sadly you can’t customize it like the j3 but yes, it’s good enough for a player in this budget range. Highs are lacking, lacking enough to say that it lacked some appeal to me. I like my highs full and sharp with plenty of attack, lacks much clarity too, its kind if veiled and foggy. It’s not bad. Instruments still play nicely and are detailed but not exactly vivid.
Comparison with J3:-
Where j3 likes to puts it cool and calmly, X2 pushes it hard and hot, should i mention a bit hurried and slightly veiled overall with some veiling up top. Extension too is not to the mark with highs. Texture , presentation, layering, separation too is better with J3, not to mention the more user friendly U.I. of J3, but, meh, it’s so cheap and is close to 80% what my j3 can do with sound quality. Yes j3 is more versatile with equalizer and far better with UI and many more features, but it’s discontinued now!!! J3 has a huge battery life, even with flac files you can expect close to 30 hrs of playback, whereas X2 can manage close to 11 hours of flac and 16 hours of mp3 playback time.
J3 can record, can play FM and record it too, Has Bluetooth too. And more than that, it has some internal memory!! No comparison here X2 is not bad for the price you pay. I hope its price stays close to 3000 Rs which is somewhere close to $50.
But this player has more power. Close to 20% more power when compared to J3. And the word is that it does good with Havi B3 pros too.
Main points: - Battery indicator is not accurate, UI is sluggish and slow, Customizing options are limited. Won’t play 24bit files and Format error is annoying, if it’s a Flac player, it should play everything. Keys are stiff and Response is not the mark. Back ground is not perfectly clean with super sensitive earphones like zero audio Doppio. Plenty of details for a small player but won’t come close to J3 or C2, Sounds a bit dark. Bass is nicely present, fun sound signature will appeal to new comers. I have to admit that it has plenty of power for a tiny player.
I hope you like this review, have a nice time guys, enjoy.
I wonder how this stacks up to the sansa clip sport. From memory, the sport sounds about the same as the clip+ on normal firmware (rockbox does not enhance SQ as that is a hardware feature, but rather it offers better sound optimization than the pitiful stock custom EQ).
Sport is plastic, but has a beefier jack (though still probably nowhere near as solid as X2), and a very long battery life. Also, the EQ is not bad (nothing compared to cowon's EQ), but it gets the job done well enough.