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| Apacer Audio Steno AU581 2GB MP3 Player Review |
| Page 2 - More Info |
| Page 3 - Conclusion |
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The AU581 is more of your ‘No Frills’ MP3 player, but that isn’t always a bad thing,
less things to go wrong and easier to use. We take a close look at Apacer’s latest audio player.
The AU581 that we’re looking at today sells online for around for around AU$77 for the 2GB version, and around AU$105 for a 4GB version. Here today we have the 2GB version, however there is no difference between the two versions other than the obvious storage size.
The colour scheme on the AU581 is a dark blue central screen and control area, surrounded by a polished silver frame. Altogether a very basic layout, the controls are handled by a 4-way directional-pad on the right hand side and a double button on the left and hand side of the unit with the power/hold button hiding on the side. These controls make the unit very easy to operate and navigate, no matter how technologically illiterate you are.
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A single 3.5mm stereo headphone jack pops out of the end or top of the unit, depending on how you’re looking at it, which helps keep its original sleek profile when it’s sitting in your pocket. On the other end of the unit is the USB port for both data transfer and to charge the internal battery. The port uses a standard mini-B type connection, which is very common on digital cameras, portable hard drives, media players etc... So if you ever lose the cable that comes with the AU581, replacements are a dime a dozen.
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When you connect the AU581 to your Windows PC it will be detected and installed automatically without needing any drivers just like any good storage device would or should, however just like the Audio Steno AU840 we reviewed last week, the transfer rate on this one is poor at best, averaging around 1MB per second or worse, which is USB1.1 speeds, nowhere near the USB2.0 speeds this thing is supposed to be capable of. To transfer 195MB of MP3s over my laptop’s USB2.0 connection took around 8 minutes, which is terrible to say the least.
When transferring your MP3/WMA/WAV files over, you can’t make use of playlists with this Steno, but if you organise your music by folders you can take advantage of a ‘Play by Folder’ option within the AU581. Or if all your MP3’s have ID3 tags, you can also choose to play music by Artist, Album, Genre or Year. So even with 2 or 4GB of music on there, it’s still quite easy to keep it in order, and if you get bored of your music collection and don’t feel like waiting 2 hours for your computer to transfer over different songs, simply take advantage of the built-in FM Radio, but you better hope you’re in a good reception area, as reception is not the best with the AU581, but should be adequate in most built-up areas.
While music is playing, the single colour OLED screen displays a few basic bits of information, such as time elapsed and song length, song title, battery level, track number, volume level and equaliser setting (7 different equalizer presets are available), which is quite a bit of information considering the screen size and resolution (128x32pixels). When no buttons have been pressed the screen turns off after 10 seconds to save battery, though this time length can be changed from the menu system in the player.
The sound out of the AU581 is excellent quality considering its size and price, the headphones which are included are a little questionable in terms of their quality and produce a bit of a tinny sound, but I plugged in a cheap set of Sony headphones and the sound is crystal clear, with well defined but not over the top treble levels, and good bass. Mess with the equaliser settings on the player and it’s just going to ruin things, it’s best to keep it on ‘normal’ settings.
Like many MP3 players on the market these days, the AU581 includes a voice recording feature which works very well thanks a rather sensitive microphone on the side of the unit. The 2GB model is capable or recording over 120 hours of voice into mono-WAV files, although the internal Lithium-Ion battery will only last for 9 hours, it’s still a lot of recording capability.
Navigating the menu system on the AU581 is as simple as it can get, to simply start playing music you go ‘Music > Direct Play’ and it starts playing in alphabetical order. As we’ve mentioned earlier you can play by artist or album etc if you wish, this only requires one or two more simple steps, and it’s not confusing in the slightest. This I think is the best feature of the AU581, the fact it’s easy to use, real easy!
Conclusion:
The AU581 is a great looking device, which is well priced and delivers good sound quality to boot, there isn’t much more you could ask for. Well maybe one thing, and that is faster file transfers, how Apacer can put something with this much storage space and this slow a transfer speed on the market is shocking, and a company of their size should know better. The good news is though, that once you finally get your songs onto the Audio Steno it’s smooth sailing, with very simple controls and only a basic menu system you’ll be up and running in no time, even your mum could use one of these things.
OzHardware Rating – 7/10
This product can be purchased online at www.techbuy.com.au (Direct Link)
