Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I've covered a lot of this in my video review, including an unboxing and a talk-through of the features and even a demonstration of some of the functionality, but I'll write it out here for those who aren't inclined to watch a video and listen to me talk about what I'm doing/seeing. The Ruizu X52 is a great little device for the price. It's packed full of features, and for $30, it may be the best MP3 player you can find in the price range. In fact, it's a little unfair to just call it an MP3 player because it also supports FLAC lossless audio. The cheapest SanDisk Clip device with BlueTooth is $20 more, and the similarly-priced Clip Plus can only hold 32 GB of additional songs. This device supports a full 128 GB MicroSD Card, which gives you plenty of capacity for music on the go. More to the point, this device supports FLAC natively. Tried and tested. SanDisk products do not. First, the music player itself. You have two ways to access your music files. One is through the "Music" app in the menu, and the other is through the file folders. Either way, the device will automatically load any music that you put onto the internal 8 GB of storage, which is plenty of space to hold many hours of MP3 music and even a decent amount of FLAC files. I put the entire Beatles Discography (albums from 1962-1970 plus the Past Masters) in FLAC format and used less than half the space. Use MP3 files instead and you'll have even more space, but that's still a pretty good amount of music in lossless quality to stream through my car speakers, my bluetooth speakers, or through headphones. As long as your music has been appropriately tagged, navigation is easy enough. One small point of pain - because of file length reading limits, artist and album names get truncated after a certain number of characters. However, all tracks display full names in a scrolling fashion. The audio quality itself is great. While I would definitely recommend upgrading from the included earbuds as they're a little uncomfortable for my ears (I personally use a set of JVC wired earbuds and a pair of Sony Bluetooth Earbuds depending on whether I want to be wireless or not,) they are passable in a pinch and it's probably not a bad idea to hold onto them as a backup. The device includes a 3.5mm to 3.5mm aux cable and that works great in the aux input in my car, enabling me to use the player even with my phone paired to the Bluetooth. Speaking of the Bluetooth, this device paired to every pair of headphones and every Bluetooth Speaker I tried it with. I've had issues with other units connecting to some devices, but this one, I don't. My only pet peeve with the device is that the MicroSD card does not load automatically and you cannot read off both the MicroSD card and the internal memory at the same time. However, it does accept a full 128 GB MicroSD card which is a much higher capacity than most players I've dealt with. My best advice for this: put music that you know you're most likely going to want to hear on the internal 8 GB storage so that it is available immediately on start-up, then load all the music you want on the player on the 128 GB MicroSD Card so that if you decide you want a more diverse library you still have access to it. It would be nice to see a future firmware upgrade that allows the device to remember what music is on the card and to use both the card and the internal storage at the same time. But again, I don't view this as a deal breaker so much as something someone should be aware of. To load the music on the card, in the music section, instead of choosing artist/album/etc., scroll down to select which memory card you want to use then tell it to make a list when it asks. Within a minute or so, you'll have access to everything on the memory card. I'll address a few other elements of the player. Bluetooth: As I mentioned, works with everything. The quality of the sound is great. Everything I paired it to sync'd quickly and easily and did not drop. I will note that there is no EQ setting that I can access through BlueTooth. While I did not have any particular need to alter the EQ, this is just something to be aware of: EQ can be adjusted for wired headphones, but not Bluetooth. If you switch from Bluetooth back to wired, you do need to restart the device to access the EQ settings again. (There is a custom EQ module for wired headphones.) Video - I would probably not use this as a dedicated video player myself for one simple reason: the screen size is small and the video would require a conversion. There is a conversion tool on the device and it does work, if you want to try it. The device came with a sample video on it. The quality of the video was decent, but again, the small screen is not ideal for this function, so unless you have a reason why you would need to watch movies on a very small device, you probably won't use this function much. Also, audio will only work with wired headphones with the device's current configuration. F.M. Radio - Works well and the signal is great in the L.A. area, so I'd imagine most people living in an area with strong radio signals will be able to enjoy this feature. If you live in rural areas or are in the woods, you probably won't get radio signal, but then again you're doubtful to get much signal up there with any consumer radio. Does require wired headphones, since the headphone wire acts as the antennae. Voice recorder - The device does have a small microphone on the bottom. The voice recorder works well in a pinch and the quality of the audio is decent. You probably will not want to record concerts with this thing, but quick audio memos and lectures (provided the volume of the speaker is adequate) will work just fine. Photos - Again small screen. However, you can definitely store and view photos on this device. The screen's your limit as far as quality. A few other things this device includes of note: a pedometer (works!) an eBook reader (comes with a sample text file, again, I'm not sure if you want to read documents on a screen this small but it is possible if for some reason you need to,) it also has a basic calendar (dates only, no memo storage,) and a stopwatch. To summarize? I would recommend this as a BUY. I am enjoying this player. I have tried a few other small portable players with FLAC capability and none worked as well as this one did. Some did not play FLAC at all which was very disappointing. To RUIZU I would recommend three future firmware upgrades (the firmware on this device is listed as version 1.0.) I've listed these in terms of most important to least important in my opinion. 1.) Make it so that when I insert a MicroSD card, the card is automatically read and the information is saved to the device. That way even if I have to switch between cards, I at least do not have to wait for the information on the card to load every time unless I add more songs to it. 2.) If possible, make it so that I can use both the internal 8 GB storage and the 128 GB SD card at the same time. This is not a deal breaker of course, but being able to use all 136 GB at once without switching would be nice. 3.) I've noticed with other players (iPod, iPhone, the SanDisk Clip) that if the headphones get pulled out from the device, the music stops at the point that the headphones became disconnected. This may require a sensor or circuit that is not in this device and it's the least important thing, but it would be a nice feature to see in future players even if it cannot be implemented in this one, providing it can be done without significant cost increases of course. I hope that this review and the accompanying video will help people who may be curious as to how this player works. I read a lot of reviews on Amazon where I feel like a reviewer is either blowing smoke, only highlighting the positives OR negatives of a device, or just giving a five star by default, then when I actually try the product I find that they left a lot out. I feel, at this price point, with these features, and the abilities of the player, this warrants a five star review, but that the buyer should be aware of what they're getting for the price. If you want something that will do your shopping for you, spend about 30 times more and buy a cell phone. If you want a great little music player on a budget for working out, hiking, riding the train to work or ignoring the world (including your phone) on your lunch break with a surprising amount of capabilities, buy this.