Newman ManMan A1 is way too manly for us
[Via PMP Today]
Newman posts
Newman's had a thing for kicking out low-cost, fairly well-spec'd portable media players over in China, and the M669 looks to uphold that reputation quite nicely. This pocket-friendly PMP reportedly includes a 3.6-inch LCD, 20GB internal hard drive, support for MP3, WMA, OGG, and MPEG1/2/4, video out, FM tuning abilities, e-book support, a photo viewer, voice recording, and USB 2.0 connectivity. Of course, the aesthetics leave something to be desired and the specifications are just barely above ho hum, but word on the street is that this here PMP is going for around $131 over in its homeland, which changes the complexion around real quick like.
Remember the Cowon iAudio F2 that came out about two months ago? Yeah, the one with the button interface? We're pretty sure that Newman's latest offering, the D20c, is the lovechild product of the iAudio F2 and a 1980s Casio calculator. It's got an 80GB hard drive (although some Chinese sources cite a 20GB or 40GB drive) that will play MP3 and WMA audio files, but also will show your XviD movies on its 2.4-inch 480 x 220 screen as well. If 80GB isn't not enough for you, there's also built-in flash memory slots for SD, MMC, Memory Stick and CompactFlash cards. It's currently on sale for 2,000 yuan ($254) at electronics bazaars across China -- perhaps you can get your favorite merchant to throw in one of those Casio calculators they've had kicking around since 1983.
You'd think that we would have heard of a company that's made (or perhaps rebadged) literally hundreds of DAPs and PMPs since 2004, but until we came across the swivel-screen M790, we'd never caught wind of a Chinese manufacturer called Newman. Most of its products are simply cookie-cutter devices that resemble so many of the other products we've featured on these pages, but the M790's unique design and large-ish 2.5-inch screen convinced us to give it another look. As with many foreign products of its ilk, this DAP's exact specs are a little hard to come by, but we do know that it sports a QVGA resolution, built-in speakers, a camera of some undetermined pixel count (machine translation pegs it as a 20 megapixel shooter, but frankly we're a bit suspect), and support for MP3, WMA, JPEG, and unspecified video files. Storage on this one is a paltry 512MB (expandable through the SD / MMC slot), but that's just as well, as it'll take a pretty long time to load up even that amount of data over the sluggish USB 1.1 connection. Also along for the ride are your typical assortment of dictionaries, games, voice recording, audio line-in, and the all important timekeeping functionality. It seems like you can pick up the M790 sometime this month (maybe even right now!), but it's obviously not available in the US, so factor in the cost of a plane ticket to China along with however many yuan this happens to be retailing for.








