I ordered a 4GB Glacier MP4 player from UXCell.com, black since that is the only color available in 4GB (truthfully black is what I would've gotten anyway, but the white does look sleek as well)
This is going to be my holiday gift to my dad, he was impressed looking at some stuff in Best Buy that could do video so I thought I'd get him something similar. Right now he is stuck with a 2GB shuffle type thing that takes a AA battery.
I was torn between the Glacier and the V88, but ultimately the Glacier won out since it was A) cheaper by ~$20 and B) had a user-replaceable battery. Plus I was able to see a few videos on YouTube of it in action.
I used the coupon posted here by the Admin so it ended up basically giving me free shipping since I saved around $6.
After the order was processed and shipped (3-4 days), it took about a week to get from Hong Kong to me in the US via standard shipping. I was happy since it got here with plenty of time for the holiday to spare.
Packaging is simple, black UXCell box with the basic stuff (crummy earphones, USB cable, AC Charger, manual, driver CD).
First thing I did was open up the back to look at the battery and make sure it was in there. It was. Then I closed it back up and turned the player on, and waited... And waited -- blue hourglass screen was on the screen and it was flickering to black and then back to the blue hourglass screen. I am thinking "shit, I've got a dead player"
But after fiddling with it a few minutes, it worked. The little welcome-screen poofed on and I was able to get to the player. I wonder if this will be a problem later on but it seems to be rare. After hours of fiddling with the player, it's only happened one other time and never killed the player, just made me wait a couple of minutes. Another thing that I noticed was that about 75% of the rubber USB slot cover was cut off, I am assuming since I read a lot of complaints about it being very hard to get off, that perhaps UXCell or their manufacturers decided to take them off of the players before shipping them now.
I wanted to run it through the gauntlet to make sure it met my expectations before giving it to him, my first order of business was to check to see if it was TRULY 4 gigs of memory as UXCell claimed, since I know it is very common for mp4 players to come hacked. So I followed the guide here on the forum to the letter, and it was indeed really 4GB. I made sure to change it back to FAT32 after the format.
I wanted him to be able to play with it right out of the box so I threw on about a dozen songs, a few clips from YouTube and decided to make him a video of me talking about the player on my webcam.
So I converted a few videos from YouTube from FLV to WMV then to AMV for the player. I and went to work on my webcam. I put the videos on the player to see what it could do it and discovered a bit of a problem: the audio on the videos was ridiculously low, even with the speaker or headphone volume maxed out. Thankfully this was not a problem with music files, just AMV.
So I spent literally HOURS troubleshooting the problem. I finally settled that the problem was not with the video conversion, but with the way the player itself was reading the AMV files. After preprocessing the videos through different settings in VirtualDub, trying to find out how to make it loud but not too loud that everything sounds distorted. With preprocessing the videos and cranking the volume up to about 200-400% depending on the video, I was able to get it on the player and have it be clearly audible and close to how it ought to sound with volume to max.
I didn't want to fiddle with it too much since it is a gift, but I did see that it had about 4 games, one was Tetris and the other one reminded me of a very simplified version of the Lolo NES games (moving a blob)
Pros: True 4GB, very tiny, looks sleek, sturdy construction (doesn't feel flimsy), plays video without headphones. Lots of features in a really tiny player. Came fast from Hong Kong and I was given a tracking number. User replaceable battery. Transferring files to the player couldn't have been easier, drag and drop.
Cons: Somewhat sluggish user interface, sometimes confusing as to which button to press for menu, or to play, etc. Hourglass screen situation made me a bit nervous about if this thing will last long or not.
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That's my review, I would post pics but I'm sure your all familiar with how Glacier players look by now. I also ordered 2 replacement batteries for the player at the same time as the player (separate order) but have not yet received them, so I have emailed UXCell and am awaiting response. Unfortunately I did not get a tracking # for the batteries and I think they shipped from a different place (not Hong Kong, but Shenzen)
Overall, thumbs up and UXCell made sure I got my player before XMas. I also got a $5 off coupon for my next order in the box. |
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