MPIO ONE tiny PMP reviewed

Is the ability to display video on a minuscule 96x64, 1-inch OLED display something to brag about?
That's the most unique feature of the MPIO ONE, a flash-based player that includes most of the other standard audio playback features, along with the ability to play video converted from most common formats including DivX and XviD. Anything But iPod's EnzoTen took a look at it and gave the video playback a ringing endorsement, declaring it "not as bad as I had thought." The review goes on to say that the video quality is good enough for "comfortable" viewing on plane flights, despite some minor bugs that include persistent display of track info on the screen. Beyond the video functions, the review found the ONE to be a "very solid" flash-based player, with good audio playback, and a good package of bundled accessories.
 

[AC @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

The persistant display of track info on the screen has got to be the suckiest suck that ever sucked on a 1" screen!

Oh please please let me be the 1st poster....I will be joyous!

[Blacknimbus @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

*sarcasm on*

Don't you know that the only tiny video screen worth watching is on the Video Ipod! Everything else stinks and isn't wanted by the general public...only Video Ipod!

*sarcasm off*

[starpause @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

here i am again, left wondering why they couldn't include a .wav or other lossless recording feature! 128kbps recording doesn't cut it for me =)

there's a market for people who use DAT and minidisc for recording their music. a small market, but one these flash-based-pmp manufactures would have to take only a small step to target.

[clicclic @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

Did they use South Park graphics in their pixel calculations?

Okay, so 96x64 is actually four times that.

[TZK @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

YaY for "ZaGaT" style overviews from other sites!!!

I love it!

Go Go EnGadget ZaGat!!

[Mike Cerm @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

Target's got these on their websites for $167, and I tried one out for a few hours before returning it. The screen is definitely just past the point of being both too small and too low-res to be useful for movie watching. This device in general just seems like a poor-man's iAudio U3 (which is slightly larger/harder to find).

Other big problem? Proprietary software for converting videos to MPEG4 for playback on the tiny screen is absolutely terrible, and I couldn't live with something that always requires transcoding and doesn't (natively) play WMV.

For audio, it's not bad, but it's not good. It doesn't do gapless playback (like everything else), but it also fades out at the end of track, and chops off half a second in the process. It should at least play to the end of the file, but it doesn't. Lame.

[Jomy @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

Instead of making such a tiny MP3 player, they should make a regular sized MP3 player and ship it with oversized ear buds.

You know what they say about people with big ears...
"Very hard to keep those tiny buds from falling out"

Since the picture has nothing to reference the size of the object to, it is very hard to picture how big it really is.