I love my Chinese MP4 Player (ChiPod)
Why is this a Personal Finance Question? Because I think I saved a lot of money buying a ChiPOD instead of an Apple iPod. (What's a ChiPOD you ask?? I did NOT coin the phrase, I found it called this on this unofficial support website.)
I'll note right up front that these MP3/MP4 players are NOT for everyone, but as a daily listeners of Podcasts and music on occasions, I find the unit I bought on EBay to fit my needs perfectly.
I have never had an iPod, but my daughter had one and I had a Creative Zen. Both were great, but they had one feature I never want to see in an MP3 player again...that has a disk drive.
I don't remember dropping my Zen, but the drive died about a year into owning it. Not only that, it was kind of large.
When I went out searching for another MP3 player, I decided to try one of the "inexpensive" Chinese non-name brand MP3 players that you can buy on EBay. I bid on it on Thanksgiving day as I felt I would get the fewest people competing with me....and sure enough, I had my 4GB FLASH based MP3 player for less than $60. (shipping included)
So I have had it now for a couple of weeks, and I have to day I love it. First of all, it is so tiny it fits easily in my shirt pocket. The battery life is just great, and it is as easy to use as a USB based storage device....it simply looks like a disk!
I mainly listen to Podcasts, and I just drag those on and off every morning. This player actually does play video and show photos, but you have to run a conversion program to turn normal video files into files that will play on the small screen. I have tried it with a few video podcasts, and it works great. (but I use it mainly in the car, and watching video while driving is more than a bit dangerous! :-)
The only huge negative I have is that the CD that came with the device (the one with the conversion programs on it) also came with a Trojan Virus in one of the files. When I asked the seller, they simply said "Oh yea, several other customers who bought one also complained of the same thing." He then pointed me off to a website for sort of "unofficial support" and drivers.
The player not only plays video and shows photos, but it has an FM tuner that works very well, and a microphone so you can record sounds / voice. It even has a small speaker that you can play through....and it works well in a quiet room.
I don't think you can beat the features for the price. Heck, the 4GM of memory is worth the $60 even if only to use it as a thumb drive.
Take a look on EBay....you might find one of these as a good inexpensive alternative to an iPod. (Watch out Apple!)
PS: If this isn't interesting enough, check out the Dick Tracy MP4 Video watch!
Labels: 12-09-2006, Chinese iPod, Chipod, saving money
posted by Bigqueue at 11:35 PM
4 Comments:
I have one too and aside with currently fighting with it to play videos I really like mine too. Do you know what you did to get the video to work properly. I got mine to work once but now I ALWAYS get an invalid format error every time I try to play any converted amv file. Great article.
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DON'T BUY A CHIPOD IT'S NOT WORTH IT!!!
Honestly, I I have bought two chiPods, and both were terrible. one from eBay and another from bestofferbuy, and both left me disappointed. I had the bestofferbuy one for about 4 months and it suddenly died on me for no apparent reason. The screen is corrupted when I plug it in the computer and when i turn it on it won't get past the startup screen "mini mp4 player". I payed $60 for it also. The second one was worse. It looked exactly like an iPod nano, but was just terrible. It said it was 32gb but it was actually only 2gb. Navigation was terrible, and hard to manage. I couldn't find any firmware for it anywhere.I could not send either back because shipping cost WAY too much. Please listen to me, DON'T BUY A CHIPOD IT'S NOT WORTH IT!!! I have spent enough on the 2 crappy mp4s to buy a nice iPod that would last a lot longer.
Please listen to me.
Hi, I'm Sin Yi. I had a same MP4 player as yours before. But I lost it somehow. There's a video stored inside the player and I like the song very much. Can you tell me the name of the song? If you still keep the video. Thank you.
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