Page 2 - More Features and Conclusion | Apacer 4GB Audio Steno AU840 Review

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Apacer 4GB Audio Steno AU840 Review
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An FM radio tuner is also included in the AU840, which gives quite reasonable reception and the ability to store favourites and auto scan, so even when you’re sick of the music in your library, you can always turn to local radio, wherever you are.

To use the AU840 effectively, you’ll need to master the menu controls. While the menu system is rather simple and straight forward, navigating your way around takes some getting used to. A D-pad next to the screen would have been very useful, instead of constantly confusing fast forward for up instead of down, and that ‘mode’ means both enter and exit a menu sub category, but to exit you have to hold mode instead of just tapping it. It’s hard to describe how annoying the whole system is without giving you one to try yourself. As none of the secondary functions of the control buttons are actually printed on the player, it’s either trial/error or study the user manual and hope you remember.

The battery in the AU840 is a 350mAh Lithium Polymer item, which is good for around 8 hours playback, which although not exceptional, is not too bad considering it’s powering a LCD screen and not just a basic MP3 player. Recharging the battery is handled through the USB port, so no separate chargers are necessary, and unfortunately the battery is not user replaceable, so you can’t buy or carry around a spare battery to give you longer playback time.

Transferring files to the AU840 is really not a pleasant experience. While it is easy and no drivers are required, the supposed USB2.0 connection transfers files at around 1MB/s, so a 50MB video file took almost a minute to send across, which is USB1.1 speed. With 4GB of storage space to fill, you could be waiting around for a while.

Conclusion:

Retailing online for around AU$125 for the 4GB version it’s certainly not expensive, it’s actually reasonable value for the specs it has – 4GB of storage, LCD screen, video playback, dual-outputs, lithium polymer battery etc... the problem is that because the player suffers from a serious lack of processing power, none of these features work as well as you want them to, and there are better players out there that are video capable, with the same amount of memory, for around the same money.

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