Best Buy's Insignia Kix: please make it stop

Look out Apple, Microsoft, SanDisk and anyone else who actually gives a damn about DAP design, features and quality: Best Buy still has a horse in this race. We were positively floored by the unadulterated horror of last year's NS-DVxG DAP from Best Buy's in-house Insignia brand, and now here comes the Insignia Kix to provide a low-cost, 1-inch screened entry to Insignia's shoddy lineup. The player supports MP3, WMA, WAV and Audible, sports an FM tuner, runs for 30 hours on a lithium-ion battery, and stores 1GB of your tunes for $60. We suppose we can't rag on 'em for building a USB mass storage device, but that's about as positive as we're going to get for this one.

[Via dapreview]

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 25th 2008 6:41AM]

VPR Matrix. Mine is still going strong after six years. It was a good price for a great machine.

[LexSky Posted Oct 29th 2007 12:00AM]

The article that it links to:
"Insignia isn't your typical "no-name" company that you'll find at your local electronics retailer. Best Buy's in-house brand has released a respectable array of players over the last two years"

Engadget:
"We were positively floored by the unadulterated horror of last year's NS-DVxG DAP from Best Buy's in-house Insignia brand, and now here comes the Insignia Kix to provide a low-cost, 1-inch screened entry to Insignia's shoddy lineup."


HMM now who to believe... a site that actually tries and reviews DAPs or Engadget that just writes biased-opinionated late reviews, not based on real facts or proof. hmm at least agree with the article you link to

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 29th 2007 2:48AM]

I've heard of "giving up the ghost", but this is ridiculous. Because I just bought Best Buy's own "Insignia Pilot" DAP a few weeks ago and now I'm left out in the cold. Brrrrrr.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 29th 2007 2:41PM]

Here's an opinion from another BBY employee. Yes, I do believe this thing is very cheap. The buttons are very hard to press. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, especially when the Sandisk Clip is the same price with twice the amount of storage.

When I first saw this thing show up in the inventory system, I figured it'd be 20$, made mainly for kids, and be carried in the Media department, like the Sandisk Shaker is. I'm horrified to see it carried in my department, Wireless.

We actually aren't told to push store brand stuff. We're told to push whatever seems to fit the customer. If we can tell the customer is a cheap jackass, we'll sell them the cheapest thing, which is usually store brand. There's a lot of store brand stuff that I will tell people flat out that it sucks.

I have to chide Engadget for hating on store brand stuff just because of where it comes from. The original Insignia players, sure, they had cheap build quality, but other than that, they were solid players. The new ones (Sport and Pilot) have better build quality and beat most of the competitor brands in features and price. I have an Insignia Upconvert DVD player, which is manufactured by LG. However, with my discount, it's less than half the price of an LG branded player. I've bought basic Insignia DVD players for a few friends as gifts, and despite being around 20$, they are still working fine after over a year.

All the Insignia mp3 players so far excepting this one are manufactured by Banta Global. This one is done by someone called Micro Tech or something, which is why it's so different from the previous devices.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 26th 2007 9:37AM]

Went from a magnavox pocket radio to the Insignia Kix. I am so pleased. The radio sounds great. I can load the pleanty of songs the the stations don't play and it fits in my pocket. This is better then my daughters IPOD. Walter Moore