REVIEW: DTK Computers' MPS-120 Mp3 Player

Geeks.com were very kind to send us in a unit of DTK Computers' MPS-120 2 GB WMA/WAV/MP3 player. We took the product for a spin and here is what we found:

The MPS-120 is a luxury mp3 player, despite its affordable price. The box it came with uses magnets to close while inside you will find a layer of velvet! The box included the player itself, a rechargeable & removable Li-ion battery, an adapter to charge the battery directly on a wall plug, a USB cable also used for charging, a 1/4-inch to 1/8-inch stereo headphone adapter, a wired remote control, two stereo earphones (3.5mm and 2.5mm), the user manual, a carry bag and a line-in cable.

The MPS-120 player is able to play the WMA, MP3 and WAV formats, while it comes with an integrated FM radio, microphone and a Line-In jack which allows recording from an external source. The device has 128 MB of RAM, which is a lot for an mp3 player, but this way is able to record in MP3 format in almost real time. It can also record in ADCPM and WAV formats.

It takes 8 seconds to boot the device after you insert in it the replaceable battery and fully charge it. It starts up by pressing and holding the "play" button and it shuts off by pressing and holding the "stop" button. The player uses an OLED 128x64 2-bit display instead of an LCD. OLED displays are unique to their ability to display black colors really black while most LCDs display the black color pretty washed out. The price you have to pay for using OLED though is battery life. The device scored just about 7 hours of playback, while a similarly equipped hard drive-based iPod Mini mp3 player can do between 10 and 15 hours, depending on the iPod generation used.

The player came with a well-written manual and software to upgrade your player's firmware and just upload songs to it. File copying was really fast as the player uses USB 2.0. The player does not support any kind of playlist, but it allows to modify your playback in different ways: it allows for repeat track, repeat all, shuffle and shuffle repeat. There is also some basic equalizer support with 5 presets for Normal, Rock, Pop, Jazz and Classical. The player supports mp3/wma attributes for artist, song name and album and it just shows up the file name if no attribute tags are present.

The user interface requires a bit of time to learn, especially because the keys carry a different action depending on the menu you are currently in. For example, when on the mp3 playback mode the "stop" key will just stop the current song from playing, but when on the FM radio section it will cycle between the "presets", "auto tune", and "tune" options. Additionally, when you are on most setting menus by pressing the "stop" button will get you to the previous menu, but when you are on the Recording menu, you have to keep pressing the middle menu button to get out of it. These are small UI inconsistencies easy to learn though, compared to the biggest flaw of the player: no Hold button.

While reading the manual we found a screenshot from the company's emulator running the mp3 program and the software is clearly capable of supporting a "Hold" function (there was a lock icon displaying in one of their sample pictures), but whoever designed the hardware left the Hold button out! It makes you wonder if these people actually use their products at all in addition to just manufacturing them...

The player is somewhat bulky for the 2GB storage it offers, but it is not too bad. It has a good feel in the hand and it fits everywhere easily. The design of the player will remind to some people of high-end japanese industrial design with its nice brushed metal and mirrors, while the remote control is a nice touch too. The wired remote control fits on the 2.5mm jack (there is no 3.5mm jack on the player itself), supports Vol+/- and Fast/Forward and Fast/Back while it outputs on a 3.5mm jack so you can use any of your favorite headphones with the player. Sound quality was very good overall and there were no hickups or crashes during our test.

Overall, this is a nice audio player. It has very few flaws and its combination of beautiful industrial design, recording abilities and low price makes it an excellent birthday present.

Pros:

Removable battery

Luxurious design

Remote control

Line-In, FM, voice recording

Support for multiple headphone jack sizes

Cons:

No "Hold" button

Mediocre battery life

No playlist support

Overall: 8/10