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MEElectronics GrooveMee II Review
First impressions: Ooooh this looks pretty and my god it’s so very much smaller than I thought it was going to be. I really don’t know why but I just expected this to be a lot bigger than it is. Looking in the box it has a little rubber case thing and a little pointer.
So after its been sent to charge for a while I plug it in to my computer and up it pops being recognised as 2 external drives (2 because the additional card slot shows up itself) but I’m not going to use the external slot as I don’t have any mini SD cards kicking about, M2 cards yes but I’ll live with 4GB for now. The fact that it has drag and drop for getting music on to it a really approve of. Drag and drop is how all pmp’s should be.
Screen: The screen is rather nice on this, the viewing angles are good and the screen is readable even in quite bright light.
UI: This at first I rather liked, it was clean and simple which is how things should be. Once you go into things trying to find the files it’s still pretty simple but the on screen selection does require on screen presses for video playback. Why this is required for video files and not for photos or music I don’t know. The UI on the whole is fine but there is the one thing that I really did find to be a problem and that is the volume control. I’d like to know just who the hell thought it a good idea to make the volume control screen areas so unbelievably tiny. This is a massive failing for me and it was only then I realised oh this must be why they give you the stylus, they expect you to use it all the time. The problem is there is nowhere to store the stylus on the device so if you want to bring it along you must put on the case and use the slot provided there. Frankly no, the case may be functional but its ugly and I don’t want to use it and I don’t actually want to use the stylus in the first place. The volume controls awkwardness to use means if a song comes on that doesn’t work at the volume I’ve set I found myself just skipping the track rather than try to change the volume. What this is not how it should be and this one I think for me was so major it utterly ruined it as a music player. A whopping fail of epic proportions here.
The other aspects of playback were fine, track skipping was fine using the on screen controls and it also worked well using the accelerometer. Why this was included I don’t really know but yes you can skip songs by giving the device a little shake, I guess for some this will be appreciated but I think it’s a stupid idea and don’t know why any devices do it.
Photo viewing on the device was really rather good. The pictures looked great and happily took full sized 12M pixel jpeg pics as they came off the camera. I know it can’t come across in a photo but trust me they look great and my first thought was how great a feature for say taking to grandparents or aunts and uncles. You may not want to cart a digital photo frame or a laptop but this little device would get the job done if on a not ideal sized screen. On smaller pics it was really snappy but on large one it was a bit slow in flicking between them, a few seconds, nothing terrible. I did rather like its ability to let you advance by swiping the screen. It felt natural and didn’t bring up on screen buttons, you can also use the shake to advance thing but again i just don’t know why you would want to.
Video viewing wasn’t so simple as photos, I tried just dropping some divx files on the player but they wouldn’t play. The solution was found on the little cd in the box and the aviconverter programme on it. Hmmm not the greatest programme ever but it worked simply and once I had converted a couple of files they played back beautifully. This was where I felt the player worked best despite its little screen, rather reflective little screen. It’s not perfect but I still liked it.
Built in speaker: Hmm it works but is really too quiet for video use but I can’t really see much of a use for it anyway. I don’t see what possible useful purpose this would ever have other than so you can show home videos to granny. However it has a speaker and it works, just not very loudly.
Radio: Erm yes a radio, useful to some. It scans very quickly. You can also record the radio.
Recorder: yep it has a little mic built in an can be used as a Dictaphone. I guess to some a potentially useful feature, not something you would buy it for but could come in handy. It’s not very sensitive though.
E-Book reader: Yes this can display e-books it claims. What this really means is .txt files can be displayed, I can see this randomly coming in useful for small things but your never really likely to use it to read whole books, at least I wouldn’t be.
Sound Quality: The sound is reasonable enough, it didn’t wow me and I didn’t wretch in horror but it wasn’t stunning. I found it a little lacking in detail in the highs and the bass wasn’t quite as deep as id have liked. It worked fine and could drive everything fine, oh and it could go spectacularly loud if you wanted it to, I never went past 16 and it goes up to 32. So those who have really hard to drive things way find that power useful. Since I use IEM’s this never was something I found personally helpful. I feel I maybe being a little hard on it here as it’s not like it was worse than just about any other random player I’ve heard and I’m sure most people would be perfectly happy with the sound these produce, it was good enough for me for several hours of use without bothering me.
Value: I guess this depends on how you like the features and the UI, if they work for you then it’s a bargain price I think us$80 is about £50 and for that I can’t think of anything so versatile.
Conclusion: Well I have to say when it first came I thought “oh just how cool is this dinky little thing” and that lasted right up until the first time I used it outside. Now I don’t know about you but I’m always adjusting the volume depending on the song that plays and it was a mayor pain in the bottom changing it on this. I just cannot think of why such a simple but major problem was allowed to ship. If you have great long nails then maybe this will be fine for you but for me it was a big problem and really really put me off using it. If you hardly ever change the volume then this might be fine for you but it just killed me. I can’t help but feel that one thing really just spoils the device as it’s a really versatile and cheap little wonder but for me unusable without a screen pointer of some sort to hand. MEElectronics go and slap whoever it was that okayed such monumentally tiny volume controls. Better yet just stick a volume control slider on the side. So very sad that something so very silly just completely spoiled the Grove me II for me.
All the other features I rather felt like this device was trying to be a jack of all trades but master of none and if those features are ones you want then great. For me the main 3 were music photos and video and it did these three fine. If you think these features would be of use to you in one small neat package then this could be a great little thing to have around especially given its cost but don’t expect perfection.
First impressions: Ooooh this looks pretty and my god it’s so very much smaller than I thought it was going to be. I really don’t know why but I just expected this to be a lot bigger than it is. Looking in the box it has a little rubber case thing and a little pointer.
So after its been sent to charge for a while I plug it in to my computer and up it pops being recognised as 2 external drives (2 because the additional card slot shows up itself) but I’m not going to use the external slot as I don’t have any mini SD cards kicking about, M2 cards yes but I’ll live with 4GB for now. The fact that it has drag and drop for getting music on to it a really approve of. Drag and drop is how all pmp’s should be.
Screen: The screen is rather nice on this, the viewing angles are good and the screen is readable even in quite bright light.
UI: This at first I rather liked, it was clean and simple which is how things should be. Once you go into things trying to find the files it’s still pretty simple but the on screen selection does require on screen presses for video playback. Why this is required for video files and not for photos or music I don’t know. The UI on the whole is fine but there is the one thing that I really did find to be a problem and that is the volume control. I’d like to know just who the hell thought it a good idea to make the volume control screen areas so unbelievably tiny. This is a massive failing for me and it was only then I realised oh this must be why they give you the stylus, they expect you to use it all the time. The problem is there is nowhere to store the stylus on the device so if you want to bring it along you must put on the case and use the slot provided there. Frankly no, the case may be functional but its ugly and I don’t want to use it and I don’t actually want to use the stylus in the first place. The volume controls awkwardness to use means if a song comes on that doesn’t work at the volume I’ve set I found myself just skipping the track rather than try to change the volume. What this is not how it should be and this one I think for me was so major it utterly ruined it as a music player. A whopping fail of epic proportions here.
The other aspects of playback were fine, track skipping was fine using the on screen controls and it also worked well using the accelerometer. Why this was included I don’t really know but yes you can skip songs by giving the device a little shake, I guess for some this will be appreciated but I think it’s a stupid idea and don’t know why any devices do it.
Photo viewing on the device was really rather good. The pictures looked great and happily took full sized 12M pixel jpeg pics as they came off the camera. I know it can’t come across in a photo but trust me they look great and my first thought was how great a feature for say taking to grandparents or aunts and uncles. You may not want to cart a digital photo frame or a laptop but this little device would get the job done if on a not ideal sized screen. On smaller pics it was really snappy but on large one it was a bit slow in flicking between them, a few seconds, nothing terrible. I did rather like its ability to let you advance by swiping the screen. It felt natural and didn’t bring up on screen buttons, you can also use the shake to advance thing but again i just don’t know why you would want to.
Video viewing wasn’t so simple as photos, I tried just dropping some divx files on the player but they wouldn’t play. The solution was found on the little cd in the box and the aviconverter programme on it. Hmmm not the greatest programme ever but it worked simply and once I had converted a couple of files they played back beautifully. This was where I felt the player worked best despite its little screen, rather reflective little screen. It’s not perfect but I still liked it.
Built in speaker: Hmm it works but is really too quiet for video use but I can’t really see much of a use for it anyway. I don’t see what possible useful purpose this would ever have other than so you can show home videos to granny. However it has a speaker and it works, just not very loudly.
Radio: Erm yes a radio, useful to some. It scans very quickly. You can also record the radio.
Recorder: yep it has a little mic built in an can be used as a Dictaphone. I guess to some a potentially useful feature, not something you would buy it for but could come in handy. It’s not very sensitive though.
E-Book reader: Yes this can display e-books it claims. What this really means is .txt files can be displayed, I can see this randomly coming in useful for small things but your never really likely to use it to read whole books, at least I wouldn’t be.
Sound Quality: The sound is reasonable enough, it didn’t wow me and I didn’t wretch in horror but it wasn’t stunning. I found it a little lacking in detail in the highs and the bass wasn’t quite as deep as id have liked. It worked fine and could drive everything fine, oh and it could go spectacularly loud if you wanted it to, I never went past 16 and it goes up to 32. So those who have really hard to drive things way find that power useful. Since I use IEM’s this never was something I found personally helpful. I feel I maybe being a little hard on it here as it’s not like it was worse than just about any other random player I’ve heard and I’m sure most people would be perfectly happy with the sound these produce, it was good enough for me for several hours of use without bothering me.
Value: I guess this depends on how you like the features and the UI, if they work for you then it’s a bargain price I think us$80 is about £50 and for that I can’t think of anything so versatile.
Conclusion: Well I have to say when it first came I thought “oh just how cool is this dinky little thing” and that lasted right up until the first time I used it outside. Now I don’t know about you but I’m always adjusting the volume depending on the song that plays and it was a mayor pain in the bottom changing it on this. I just cannot think of why such a simple but major problem was allowed to ship. If you have great long nails then maybe this will be fine for you but for me it was a big problem and really really put me off using it. If you hardly ever change the volume then this might be fine for you but it just killed me. I can’t help but feel that one thing really just spoils the device as it’s a really versatile and cheap little wonder but for me unusable without a screen pointer of some sort to hand. MEElectronics go and slap whoever it was that okayed such monumentally tiny volume controls. Better yet just stick a volume control slider on the side. So very sad that something so very silly just completely spoiled the Grove me II for me.
All the other features I rather felt like this device was trying to be a jack of all trades but master of none and if those features are ones you want then great. For me the main 3 were music photos and video and it did these three fine. If you think these features would be of use to you in one small neat package then this could be a great little thing to have around especially given its cost but don’t expect perfection.
