MeizuMiniPlayer
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Meizu Mini Player iPod-alike reviewed
We've never had many complaints about Meizu's Mini Player. Sure, it gloms onto a couple iPod design cues, but Meizu really did their own thing with the player, and they've gotten a lot of love for their efforts. CNET's review of the device isn't a total love fest, but they do have some nice things to say -- along with some legitimate criticisms that might keep you from chucking your nano or 5g iPod just yet. For starters, the build seems just right, with the 0.4 inches of thickness giving it a sturdier feel than the nano, and the 2.5-inches of screen taking up as much of the device as you could reasonably expect. The clickable touch strip bulges a bit for a tactile feel to the buttons, but the actual touchpad is a bit too sensitive to reliably stop at your selection. Meizu also mixes up some of the player operation from the traditional iPod/Zen model. For instance, if you hit menu while at the main menu, you jump to the currently playing track, and continue cycling from there. Also, updating music is a drag-and-drop Windows Explorer affair, and to get music titles to be sorted by ID3 tags you have to manually select "Update Music Library" on the player itself. The lack of PlaysForSure or any sort of DRM could be a deal-breaker for some, but the music codec support otherwise is nice, and includes Ogg Vorbis files. For video there only seems to be AVI support, but Meizu includes documented software to ease the conversion process. There are also a few games included, along with apps like a calendar and calculator, so the Mini Player really stays away from the traditionally quirky and unsupported Chinese rip-off territory. No word yet on that 20 hour battery life, but we're expecting good things from this little flash unit.
Meizu's iPod-ish Mini Player shows Apple a thing or two
Normally we would frown on another cheap iPod rip-off from China, but in the case of Meizu's Mini Player, it looks like they've actually managed to make an improvement on the oft-copied design. Sure, that control scheme might not have any scroll action in it, but it does make room for 2.4-inches of QVGA screen in a form factor smaller than a 5G iPod. We can't complain about the price either, with versions ranging from a $87 512MB unit, all the way to a $200 4GB model. The unit supposedly supports video and playback, though we're not sure of the extent of codec support. We do know that the Mini Player has 20 hours of claimed battery life for music playback, which doesn't sound bad at all for the tiny 0.4-inch thick device. We don't really expect to see it in the States any time soon, but this is one iPod look-alike we actually wouldn't mind spending a bit of time with.[Via Engadget Chinese]
