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Review: Sapphire Ivory 512MB Digital Audio Player

by Bob Crabtree on 22 May 2006, 15:02

Tags: Sapphire

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Final thoughts, award, HEXUS.right2reply


At a glance

Pros

* Incredibly small and light for what it does
* Good value for money, even if you don’t use all the features
* Almost no distortion even at volumes most people are unlikely to use
* Fantastic sound quality
* Support for asian languages
* 22-band equaliser that's genuinely useful
* Interesting extra features - karaoke mode, E-book and Tetris
* Large screen, considering player size
* Good build quality
* File-transfer requires no extra software on all OSs that support USB mass-storage devices
* Half-decent earphones come in the box. But an even better set will really let you hear what the player can do
* Bundled software easy to use

Cons

* Looks like a bar of soap and is almost as slippery
* Rather fiddly, I found myself needing to use two hands rather too often
* Bitrate range for recording on back of box is quoted twice but they aren’t the same, the values settable in the player matched neither
* Voka player & editor functional, but leaving a feeling of sub-standard quality
* When the backlight is off, the screen is hard to read in low light and changing the contrast settings do not help
* Only USB 1.1

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Rather to my surprise, the player thoroughly impressed me with its rich feature set and great MP3-playback sound quality. First time out, Sapphire has succeeded in coming up with a product that seems more than a match for others in its price-bracket. That's not to say it's perfect, it's not. To get close to that, it would need to have USB 2.0, less fiddly buttons, a better-quality software bundle and less noisy recording from line-in and the built-in mic.

Does that mean that Sapphire is onto a winner? Well, not necessarily with the more style-conscious buyers - looks could be its downfall. But if you are thinking of getting an MP3 a player, don’t dismiss the Sapphire on looks alone - afterall, it's going to spend most of its time out of sight.

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Thoughts on this review and on MP3 players generally? Let us hear them over in the HEXUS.community.


HEXUS.links

Sapphire - UK home page
Sapphire - Ivory Digital Player specs
Advance Technologies - MP3-player buying page


HEXUS Right2Reply

At HEXUS we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If Sapphire's representatives choose to do so, we'll publish their commentary verbatim.


HEXUS Forums :: 4 Comments

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I thought this review was one of the most thorough I've seen on this website and I would like thank Leo for giving such a detailed review. I have been thinking about buying an MP3 player for some time and this one fits very nicely into my budget, and given the wealth of information in this article I think I will be able to make a much more informed decision. I especially like the fact that it doesn't require any extra products to interface it with my exisiting tech, and it seems to be a good size.

Thanks for the review, Leo! Look forward to the next one!
qibster
I thought this review was one of the most thorough I've seen on this website and I would like thank Leo for giving such a detailed review. I have been thinking about buying an MP3 player for some time and this one fits very nicely into my budget, and given the wealth of information in this article I think I will be able to make a much more informed decision. I especially like the fact that it doesn't require any extra products to interface it with my exisiting tech, and it seems to be a good size.

Thanks for the review, Leo! Look forward to the next one!

I know Leo has been very busy at work and so it's possible that he might not see your comment at an early stage - so I've emailed him telling him to come take a look!

This was the first piece of work that Leo had done for us - or anyone - and *I* was impressed, too.

As I'm sure Leo would be the first to admit, the review was better still after I'd finished editing it (oh, and I've now corrected the typos that Leo pointed out in the published review!) but it was clear to me as soon as I sat down to read the original that he had put a lot of time and effort and thought into what he'd written.

So, like you, I look forward to his next piece.

Bob
Bob Crabtree
…the review was better still after I'd finished editing it…
can anyone else hear trumpets ? :p

Bob Crabtree
(oh, and I've now corrected the typos that Leo pointed out in the published review!)
:mrgreen:

Bob Crabtree
…but it was clear to me as soon as I sat down to read the original that he had put a lot of time and effort and thought into what he'd written.

So, like you, I look forward to his next piece.
yes - well done Leo - nice one!

cheers,

PD
As Bob pointed out, this is my first review, so I'm really glad to see people are going to the trouble of posting me comments (and nice ones too!!). I'll be checking back as often as I can and hopefully starting another review soon too, so hopefully you'll be seeing a lot more of me.

Thanks again!!

Leo