MSI P610 Portable Audio/Video Player

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MSI P610 Portable Audio/Video Player

Sudeep Naik, Aug 03, 2006 1800 hrs IST

MSI P610 Portable Audio/Video Player, one more PMP that has the iPod Nano 'form factor.'

Sleek design, Feature rich, Text Reader, Good battery life.

Sluggish interface when playing Audio, Headphones could have been better, Low Screen Resolution, Slightly expensive.

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Features

The MSI P610 portable music player measures 90 (W) x 40.5 (D) x 8.5 (H) mm and has a 1 GB Flash memory and weighs around 45 grams. It can play MP3, WMA, and WMA with DRM audio as well as video in M-JPEG format(.MOV or .AVI) and smaller 320x240 pixels video. It has a 1.8 inch TFT with a resolution of 128x160 pixels. It supports 10 language options.

The P610 has a photo browser that allows you to store and view JPEG photographs and also provides slideshows for the same. It also has an FM radio with recording capability with real-time MP3 or WAV recording. Thrown in with these features is a voice recorder as well which can also record in MP3 or WAV.

And since this player comes from our far eastern friends, it's bound to have some function or feature that is a little off-track but endearing at the same time.

Well, it has a TXT file reader that provides support for TXT and LRC Unicode files. In simple words, one can store the lyrics on a .txt file and hum along. Well, that was only one application, I am sure you guys can think of some other stuff too.

As far as playback is concerned, features include an A-B Section Repeat option that enables users to repeat particular section during normal playback

It has support for lyrics, SRS, WOW, and TruBass effects. The P610 has 5 Equalizer presets namely, Normal, Pop, Rock, Jazz, and classical, and 5 playlists.

Usage

The P610 is every bit as sleek and suave as it can be seen from the pics. Pressing the Play button for a few seconds turned on the player. It's got 1GB of memory, which means around 250 songs encoded at 128kbps giving you around 16-17 hours of music. The startup time is around 20-30 seconds that nearly seems like an eternity. Once it's turned ON (no pun intended), the player features a rotating main menu where you can choose from the options like audio/video playback, picture browsing, reading text files, or just fiddle around with the settings. This part of the interface is quiet fast and easy to use as well.

Selecting the Music option gives you a choice of either surfing through all the tracks or sorting them by album or artiste. You can access your saved playlists from here. The Record option will allow you to start audio recording either in-line, radio, or voice.

The music quality is good but not as good as the iPod though; but not too far off either. The headphones look pretty standard and sound like it too. The problem with headphones this size is that they either don't fit well or they don't fit at all. Mine happens to be the former.

The interface is very appealing and quite easy. The only problem was the sluggish performance of the software while the music was playing. It took almost 10-15 seconds to move from one option to another. Also, the switching time between songs was a little high (around 7-10 seconds.)

The Video playback has no flim-flam of choosing options and all. Just go to the folder, select the file, and press OK. That's it. Although I am not too keen on watching videos on a 1.8 inch screen, I must say, the video playback quality did make my eyes bulge for a sec or two. But that was the best MSI P610 could do. Overall, the player features average video playback.

The Picture Browser gives you a thumbnail view of all images before you select the image you want to view on full screen. Navigation through the images is easy; just left and right for full screen up and down included only in the thumbnails. You can rotate the image 90 degrees CW or CCW. As I mentioned earlier, the MSI P610 is bound to have some crazy and unique function or feature. Well, you can turn any picture into a puzzle and you have to solve it in 500 moves for you to win. Now, ain't that a USP???

Coming to the Radio, I have to tell you, the moment I selected that option from the main menu I could see nothing but a magnifying glass and a screen that said 'Searching' for about a minute. Now I don't know what it was looking for but obviously it didn't get it, so, it just showed me a slider which I could use to select the frequencies for the stations I wanted to hear. It stores upto 15 station presets of your choice. The reception is good in areas with strong signal but otherwise it struggles to deliver a hiss-less output.

Reading the text files I transferred was a walk in the park with seven lines to display text, you feel like you are reading SMSs from your phone, unless the files are too long of course.

As mentioned previously, the MSI P610 allows in-line, radio, and voice recording in either MP3 or WAV format. The voice recording, radio, and in-line recording were somewhat average. Nothing to brag about here.

Data Transfer

There are two data transfer modes available with the P610 namely, MTP and MSC. They can be explained as:

MTP: Media Transfer Protocol mode currently supported by Windows Media Player 10. This mode is used to sync music files by Media Player 10.

MSC: Mass Storage Class mode. In MSC mode, the player is recognized as a removable drive. You can transfer files between the player and your computer using Windows Explorer. The player has a USB 2.0 port for connecting to a computer and gives good transfer speeds.

The P610 uses a Li-ion Battery rechargeable by USB Cable or Power Adaptor (optional accessory) and gives up to 15hrs of non stop audio playback.

Conclusion

The MSI P610 is available for Rs. 6,400 with a one year warranty. It may not be as expensive as the Nano but it isn't as inexpensive as the Apro 1 GB player either, to which its performance is comparable. So MSI might have to rethink its pricing if it plans to create an impact in this cramped segment where the potential buyers already have one option too many.