Now I have to say from the outset that I have not had much experience with any type of a music player other than my old Sony tape player. I used that for years but in time CDs started to take over my music collection. I would copy songs from CD to tape but time was becoming an issue. Eventually that process faded and as I started to get a collection of MP3 songs, I played them while I was working on my computer. Eventually, all of my songs went on my iPAQ and I have remained with that for years — and I might add, I have been very happy with that process.
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Of course, over time, my collection has grown significantly so maybe it was time to start looking at other devices. I would keep my favorite songs on SD cards and change the card depending on my mood but with a collection of a little over a hundred CDs, even that was becoming a major process for organization. So I began looking at music players that might satisfy my needs and frankly, I just was not impressed with any of them.
What appeared to be the most popular was too bleak in color — it just didn’t have a classy look. I didn’t care for the screen, the design, or the apparent lack of a masculine touch to it. I was just about to give up and leave the store when all of a sudden I saw a very classy device sitting at the end of the shelf. It had a very unique design and look — enough to make me stop and take a serious look.
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What caught my attention was a very sharp looking shiny black glass exterior cover with a red PLAYBACK LCD display, and a stylish Touch Panel for selecting features or adjusting some aspect of the player. From a distance, it was definitely an eye catcher and as I approached it, I had to see what it was all about. Impressive is the first word that describes this device upon first looks. Now the question is, does it perform as good as it looks…we will see.
Nice packaging gives a new user an excitement of what they are about to use and that is what the m:robe packaging gave me. I was excited to open the box and see just what came inside. Of course the size of the box and the size of the m:robe were really disproportionate but there had to be a lot of “stuff” inside.
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Clearly, the packaging was designed to protect the device but also to house a myriad of “stuff” ranging from the m:robe, cradle, dedicated USB cable, headphones, extension headphone cable, AC adapter with a separate AC power cord as well as a CD with the m:trip software, a users manual, a quick start guide and warranty information.
Charging the battery was the first order of business but I must admit that I did power on the unit and surprisingly it was almost a full charge. I was tempted to play the music that comes pre-loaded but I chose to wait, let it charge to full capacity then begin my listening experience. Besides this gave me time to load the software and read the manual, which was thicker than I expected.