Eumax 4-in-1 128MB MP3 Player

The Eumax 4-in-1 128MB MP3 Player is a great, no frills, USB flash disk / MP3 player. It's small, lightweight, and sounds very good. It's ideal for those of you that need a flash disk to transfer files between computers and are looking for a combo device with inexpensive MP3 player functionality too.

This device has everything you really need, and omits less important features like displaying song titles. Sure song titles are nice to have, but it's a trade off. This unit is lightweight, inexpensive, and at least it actually has a display, unlike cheaper players. This player is easy to use and overall (in spite of a few flaws), I like it a lot.

Let's take a look at what you get in the package:

There's a player, a combined lanyard (neck strap) / ear bud cable set, a name-brand AAA battery, a USB extension cable...

...and a fairly cryptic manual (with enough info to get you started) and a mini (3 inch) CD with drivers & an MP3 Manager program.

Features

The Eumax 4-in-1 128MB MP3 Player has a fairly extensive set of features:

• USB removable pocket-drive
• MP3 Player with backlit LED screen
• 128MB internal memory with SD / MMC Card slot for external expansion memory
• High quality MP3 player which supports compression rates from 32Kbps to 320Kbps.
• Voice Recording
• 5 Equalization modes: Normal, Classic, Rock, Jazz, and Pop.
• It can play continuously 6 hours for just one AAA (UM-4) battery.
• USB host interface: USB 1.1 standard high speed files transfer, Upload 950 Kbps, Download 520 Kbps.
• Dimensions: 9 x3.8 x2.3 cm, Weight: 38 g (w/o battery)

Click HERE for the full specs.

The LCD is easy to read in bright sunlight, as well as dim lighting, thanks to the backlit display. It would have been nice if there was a backlight "on" button, since the backlight automatically turns off 1.5 seconds after the last button was pressed. That's not a lot of time to read the display. I would settle for a longer backlight time, but that's not an option either. It's not a big deal though; the player is still usable (albeit a little awkward) in dark surroundings. A bigger issue is the lack of song titles and other info, but that too is something I can live with since track numbers and song lengths are displayed.

The backlight is provided by 2 reasonably bright blue LEDs.

The Eumax 4-in-1 comes with comfortable ear buds integrated into the neck strap. That's a superior design, when compared to separate strap and earphone cables (which are easily tangled). Even so, I had to untangle the cords more that once. One nice feature of the lanyard is that it includes a quick-release mechanism, so that you can plug the player into a USB port without removing the strap or earpieces. There was an annoyance too: The ear buds tended to fall out of my ears whenever I moved my head quickly. I generally prefer ear buds, but something about this design just didn't fit my ears very well. (It's entirely possible that others won't run into this particular issue.)

The music playback quality is quite good, especially when playing high quality MP3 files with minimal compression. This MP3 player sounds practically identical to WinAmp running on my computer (at least as far as my untrained ears are concerned). I like the Rock equalization setting best, since it really emphasizes the lower frequencies.

The blue rubberized case is easy to hold; it's unlikely that you'd accidentally drop the player. It's attractive too, in my opinion. Also, the tight-fitting battery door stays closed and the USB cover stays on. This device includes 128 MB of flash RAM, which is a very useful size for carrying lots of files around. (I've definitely outgrown my old 16 MB Flash Drive!) I shouldn't have a problem with outgrowing this device anytime soon, since that memory is expandable. That's very reassuring. Unfortunately, the exposed SD / MMC slot has no cover and faces upwards, which may lead to problems. My recommendation is to install an external memory card to fill the hole, or just cover the empty slot with a piece of black electrical tape, as described later in this review.

Software Installation

The manual recommends installing the drivers FIRST, before plugging the unit into a USB port on your computer. That's what I did -- everything worked flawlessly. The software is easy to use. There’s a window that lists music files on your computer and another one that displays the playlist on the MP3 player. Select the files and click the upload or download button to transfer MP3 files between the two.

One thing to note is the arrow up and down push buttons, which allow you to rearrange the order in which the songs play. Not every MP3 player allows the playlist order to be specified, especially the cheaper units. It's very nice to have full control over the MP3 playing order. Other functions in the software let you do things like delete files, convert Voice Recorder files into .WAV files, etc. Overall, the MP3 Manager is a pretty decent application.

However, you don't always need to use the MP3 Manager. Sometimes you just need to transfer a few files to the flash disk. In that case all you need to do is crank up Windows Explorer. The Eumax appears as 2 (removable ) drives: One drive is the internal memory and the second is the external card slot. Drag-n-drop your files to the flash disk, just like you would copy files to a standard hard drive. You can even drag-n-drop MP3 files to the player, but you will need to use the MP3 Manager to arrange the playlist ordering.