Wow, I have missed a lot of posts here! Nice to see it has been more active.
My X3 has pretty much been the most used it ever has been recently. A few years ago before covid was around, i was working 5 days a week and the bus journeys would add up to around 10 hours a week when i used the player. It tended to pretty much last the whole week back then.
I'm working again now, but although less days, i use it at work with the line out. Including the journeys to work and my working days, I would say that for the past month, it has been getting 20 - 25 hours use over just 3 days each week. I choose to charge it early now, before the battery runs flat just so I know i can get a full work day from it. I do use the line out at work with a bluetooth speaker (i much prefer using cables anyway!) I would say that it lasts about a day and a half. Over the past month, I would say it gets around 6 hours on line out at work, and an hour and a half from the headphone output each day. Certainly still getting around 10 hours, though I think it will probably be a little less if I just used the headphone output.
Now that I use the X3 so much more, as in selecting music, constantly flicking to a custom EQ, the bugs are more annoying than they used to be. The EQ bug especially. It never remains on the EQ you left it on when you power it off and back on, despite saying so. You then have to turn it off and back on again.
I personally would say that the custom EQ set to flat compared to EQ being off has a negative impact on the sound. It to my ears sounds like it compresses it. It also becomes softer and quieter. However, i think it makes sense for digital Equalizers to do this as it avoids distortion when boosting the frequencies. I use a custom EQ at work for my IKEA Eneby 20 speaker. It lacks low end bass and it's own EQ just boosts the mid bass too much. It's treble boost is around 10khz which just sounds wrong. Bumping up 62, reducing 250 and bumping up 16k makes it sound a lot better, however, it still sounds more compressed and softer than it does without the EQ on.
Other bugs i notice is the annoying shortcut to the menu. Pretty much every time i use the X3 now, I use the EQ. And as it always forgets it is on, i use the quick menu to get back to it. If you accidentally don't do the second press and hold return key long enough, it is guaranteed that the track position, or number will get messed up. At least this is predictable and can be avoidable if you always remember to press the return once then press ok each time the player comes on.
The X3 may always have been like this, but I'm noticing a lot of brief freezes when file browsing. I used to just listen from a - z in order, but now i listen at work, i choose more appropriate music, so often select and it can be a bit tedious.
The card I use is a 128gb U1 I. It is REALLY slow even with a card reader. 12mbps max. I don't know if this is related to laggy navigating though. I would like to have more storage soon though as it is very close to being full. Does anyone have experience with higher than 128GB cards? I nearly have 8000 tracks, so maybe it is the track quantity slowing it down. But it sometimes is instant, so I'm not convinced.
Despite it looking old, i still love the feeling of this in the hand. And the buttons feel really nice. I still don't have a smartphone, mainly because I really don't get on with touch screen. I struggle to type on tablet touch screens even. It is obviously how technology is moving on, but i find it a real shame that most DAP company's are now making the vast majority of the functions on the screen itself. I wish I could get over this, but i find that on small screens, it is really annoying to select things with your fingers as you literally block the screen as you do that. At least with buttons, you get used to the physical feel of them, never have to look at them again and can always see the entire screen. You won't be able to get used to fully operating new DAPs from your pocket! With the X3, i have it in a small jacket pocket and just feel for the grooves for the volume and skip track and am even used to navigating back to the settings. Admittedly that was not quick to learn!
I've had this since 2014 and I haven't had anything that has had the battery reliability even close to this. I do travel on buses an awful lot, and i can certainly say that the combination of what is in my avatar will have been used well over 1000 hours on them. If I try and add up all the other uses it has had, it could well have had over 3000 hours of use.
I wouldn't want to sell this, but I have been thinking that I wouldn't mind an upgrade some time and keep this for other uses. But what is there out there that isn't touch screen?
