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Most of you will probably not read this because it's not an iPod, but those of you who aren't fruit-crazy may want to know what we have to say about the Transcend T.sonic 610 digital audio player. Also, those of you who want to know why we reviewed the T.sonic 610 instead of the T.sonic 620, read on.
As far as specifications go, the T.sonic 610 is quite a regular MP3 player with its 512MB/1GB/2GB capacities, MP3/WMA/WAV playback support, FM radio tuner, digital voice recorder (in MP3 format), USB pen drive (drag and drop) support, etc. It plays only unprotected/ripped WMA files, i.e. not the ones with DRM protection, purchased online. Digital recording is adequate, with looping functions and high/low quality encoding settings. There's no line in, but that's alright as this is just a voice recorder.
One of the few things that separates this from the rest of the players is its bright, 1-inch, 2-color OLED display that's quite informative. The 128x64 display manages to show you the name of the artist, album, track, time elapsed, total time, track number, total track count, volume, EQ setting, playback setting, battery level and finally the soft key options. Not many other players show all this info in a manner as clear and legible as the T.sonic 610. After 10-15 seconds, the screensaver kicks in and scrolls the entire name of the song across the screen in different places, much like the Marquee screensaver in Windows. I like this. The only thing I don't like about the display is the font. The serif, Times New Roman-like font is a bad choice for a small display and even though the T.sonic 610 display is clear and well laid-out, a sans-serif font like Arial would always work better. Serif fonts work better for printed material. Anyway, enough of the typography 101!
The T.sonic 610 is a pretty compact audio player that reminds me of the old Nokia 8310, only this at least half the size. It's 7cm tall, around 3.5cm wide and 1.5cm thick. It is very, very light. At 28 grams, it's even lighter than it looks, which is a very good thing. It's almost as light as the iPod shuffle, although its a lot thicker. The form factor of the T.sonic 610 is candy bar shaped, while the T.sonic 620 is more squarish. Not only that, the 620 weighs around 36 grams, which is not a good thing because it requires a AAA battery, adding more weight to it. The T.sonic 610 has a built-in battery that recharges via USB. The battery lasts for at least ten hours on a charge (rated at 14 hours on the box), which works during regular day to day commuting, but not if you're planning to take it out of town for more than a couple of days. Some of those Sony Walkmans [EDITOR: NOT WALKMEN] do upto 30 hours, if you're looking to go on a trip.
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_011517074205_160x90.jpg "Epson Stylus Photo R3000")
