2010年7月15日星期四

Review of the Xonix 256MB MP3 Watch

I then started copying some albums over to the watch to test the capacity.I ran out of room while transferring a Dave Mathews album after already copyingover entire albums from Coldplay, Portishead, Amad Jamal, and The Police for atotal of 42 tracks, plus the three sample tracks. Although I typically encode MP3sat a higher bit rate than this watch can actually use (higher bit rates mean greaterranges of sound which you are likely to only notice with higher end stereo equipment),I think four or five albums are about what you can expect from the 256MB version(see below for more information on the Xonix MP3 watch's capacity).Copying the music from an external firewire drive to the watch via USB 1.1 wasa little on the slow side (if you're used to using firewire or USB 2.0 with youriPod, you may need to keep an open mind here), but since it was only four albums,it wasn't horrible. Just play a little solitaire or check some sports scores whileyou wait.After some real-world experience with this watch, I found the best way to useit is toactivate the random track selection feature and put the watch in charge of yourlistening itinerary since scrolling through individual tracks one at time withno visual cues to let you know where you are is a little cumbersome (the watchactually has a memory of its random selection, so you can scroll forward and backwardthrough the randomly generated play list).To fully understand and appreciate all of the Xonix'scapabilities, I did have to delve into the instructions further, butafter gaining a little experience, I have no complaints regarding the watch's usability.I connected the Xonix MP3 watch to both an IBM ThinkPad running Windows XP Professionaland a Macintosh PowerBook running OS X 10.3.6, and both machines immediately mountedthe watch as a external storage device, although Windows had a hard time decidingwhether it was a USB mass storage device, or a generic MP3 player. I don't knowwhich one it settled on, but either way, it worked fine. I was able to use theintegrated USB cable for the ThinkPad which has its USB ports on the left, andI used the included USB extension cable with the PowerBook since the USB portsare in the back. I have a newer PowerBook that has the ports on the side like theIBM, and I found that with it, I did not need the extension cable. The integratedUSB cable tends to add some bulk to the band, but it's nice to know you can connectthe watch anytime, anywhere without having to carry an additional cable with you.The watch comes with three sample tracks obviously intended to demonstrate theMP3 player's capabilities. Two of them I couldn't identify, and one was a liveversion of "California Hotel" (somehow they managed to get the name thisEagles classic reversed). As expected, I was able to play the MP3s on my PowerBookfrom the watch, just as though it were an external USB drive or a dedicated MP3player.