5 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
Good Looks, Poor Product
Date of Review: Sep 8, 2006
The Bottom Line: Spend a little more and get a product that won't dissapoint you.
I received the Nextar MA99T 512MB mp3 player as a birthday gift. Knowing it was a basic, low cost unit and that I don't have much use for an mp3 player, my expectations weren't high. Even still, this product dissapointed me to the extent that I will be returning it for something better.
Like most, this mp3 player doubles as a USB storage device, although it requires the use of the provided USB cable. Notable features include voice recording, FM radio, and preset EQs.
I read the manual before even playing around with the player itself, which wound up forshadowing the rest of my experience with it. The manual was akwardly written, using unusual rhetoric for an electronics product, much like it had been poorly translated from another language. That's a sign of a product that has been very quickly designed and manufactured, resulting in a wittingly low quality product for a quick profit. Maybe like the toys you win at a carnival. It's no secret they're cheap crap, and you wouldn't go expecting anything different. Nextar spared all expense in making this mp3 player, including a good translation of the manual.
So while its features are potentially good, the operation is so bad that you don't want to use it at all, nevermind recording voice memos. This unit's display is a little too small and the navigation is a little too complex for such a basic player. But the real issue is the buttons. Maybe I just got a bad one, but it takes several tries to get any of the buttons to work. The large centered play button is the most reliable, but as the rest, there is sometimes a delay and this causes an insane back-and-forth process to accomplish a simple function. The manual says to "slide" the buttons but they must be talking about some other product with buttons that slide. It'd be nice just to be able to press a button and advance a track or change the volume. Everything happens too slow, especially the volume control, and again, this is exasperated by the buttons that only work when the planets are in a particular alignment. Very difficult to operate, leaving me frustrated and disinterested.
The only good thing I can say is that it does look cool. The almost mirror charcoal/silver case and blue backlight give it the look of a more expensive product. Too bad I don't want to turn it on.
