Final Thoughts

 

With so many MP3 players hitting the markets and the Holiday season coming upon us, a company has to have something to set its product line apart from the crowds. X-Micro has come up with a very solid offering with the Video MP3 400 device. It has a lot of features that are not common in the competition and still manages to be user friendly.

 

A little more choice in larger storage formats would be nice, but a 1GB model will hold upwards of 4-5 full-length movies and still have just a little room left over for other stuff. As far as price is concerned, you'll find a very limited availability right now, but we're assured that this will be taken care of soon. MSRP for the Video MP3 400 is slated at $99US for the 256MB version, $119 for the 512MB version and $169 for the 1GB version. We all know that prices will be lower online, so we're also looking at a decent value for our shopping dollars. Comparatively, I was able to search around online and find MP3 players with video capabilities for prices ranging from $299 - $620 depending on storage capacity.

 

As an aside, a lot of folks are looking at the iPod as a potential purchase for Christmas. While the storage offering is a lot higher (30-60GB), you also have to use their purchased files from iTunes. As I mentioned before, I'm not a big fan of proprietary mediums, but at least the X-Micro offering gives you the ability to convert your own files to its required format. Of course, half the price also helps the X-Micro device out as well.

 

Bottom line... If you've been thinking about getting a full-featured MP3 player and just don't know where to start looking, let me recommend the X-Micro Video MP3 400 device. It isn't the biggest kid on the block but it has nearly every feature you could ask for and a very simple method to access it all.

 

- Pros

 

Very small size

 

So many features

 

Video output capability

 

Good sound quality with stereo output

 

Video conversion compresses files nicely

 

Price is very reasonable

 

- Cons

 

Earpieces were unimpressive

 

Limited storage size choices

 

Rating - 9 out of 10 and TweakTown's "MUST HAVE" Best Features Award!