Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I bought this item because I have the Aiworth voice recorder and was impressed by the quality. This MP3 player leaves me a little less impressed, and I'll explain why if you're interested. But the bottom line: 4 stars because it is stylish, functional and as good as any other at a similar price point. If you want my quibbling details, read on! First, marketing this as a small, lightweight player is off the mark. The old SanDisk ClipJam and modern clones of it are *much* smaller (see photo) Calling it a “touchscreen” is a bit misleading: see the icons on the screen? Well, you don't navigate by touching them. Instead, you just use arrows to plod along to your destination. Unlike with most other players, there is NO onboard memory, but they DO give you a 32 GB TF card which you can also swap out if you want more. Unlike some, this will support up to 128GB card, so you could have a bazillion songs. The body itself is a big plus: it is lightweight, sleek, and looks and feels nice in your hand. I was really put off by the sticker on the back, which marred the tactile appeal, and at first I was afraid to scratch the device removing it. TIP: I found that after soaking the sticker with Goo-gone for 10 minutes, it came off easily and cleanly. That's a good thing, because the aesthetics of the device make it stand out. The player come with Bluetooth 5. But what are the real world advantages? That's not so clear. You can’t transfer files or charge via Bluetooth, so what good are the “faster speeds?” In theory, it will transmit over greater distances (say 200 feet versus 400 feet) In theory, Bluetooth 5.0 also enables a cool new feature that allows you to play audio on two connected devices at the same time, streaming to two different pairs of headphones or speakers. But my research tells me that you get that advantage ONLY if your headphones or speakers are also Bluetooth 5. So, can anyone can confirm this functionality? In general, I'm not sure why this (and other players, to be fair) add needless extra features, which only make for icon clutter. For example: there is a radio, but that only works with wired headphones, not your bluetooth connection. And do you really want to watch a video on this? (Well, only an .avi file, because it doesn’t support more modern formats) Or read a book? (Well, only a text file, because it doesn’t seem to support .epub or any other real ebook format) That said, the voice record and alarm features could be handy. But let's face it, we bought it as an audio player, and for that it performs well, but again with caveats. It will play almost most every format you want, with the notable exceptions of both AAC and the lossless ALAC format (too bad, Mac users!) Ability to play FLAC is a big plus if you want audiophile quality. They tout the onboard DAC (digital to analog converter) and that is considered an upgrade. But is it Wolfson or Cirrus DAC, or something else? Who knows? And will your ears hear the difference, especially playing mp3? A big FAIL, and a basic one, is a lack of “shuffle all songs” feature, especially with mega-storage. Why?? This matters even more because the playlists feature is worthless: they must be tediously created song by song. The player does NOT support importing iTunes playlists of course. Sadly, it does not seem to support the standard .m3u file type for playlists, which can be easily created. At this point you probably wonder why I give it four stars. Well, I’m imagining many users don’t care about all these points; they just want a good looking, functional player. If you are interested, this is good one, especially if the caveats I noted don’t matter. Happy listening!