RCA eMusic (512 MB) MP3 Player

I purchased one of these on the 4th of July, and by the 10th, the data structure was corrupt and could not be reformatted. While the unit is included "free" in the EMusic starter kit, it is the primary draw of the kit.

The hardware is pretty big for a small MP3 player, since it has a USB plug at the end of it so that it can be plugged directly in a USB Port. The screen has a multicolored back lit display, that is clear and legible. It also includes a voice recorder, but the quality of recording is poor at best.

Playback was as expected from any MP3 player, as you get what you give. Storage was as labeled for 512MB, but if files are stored on the device, your music playback time is going to be cut. The battery life on the unit is fairly strong, while the unit only lasted a week, I never had to change the battery after moderate to heavy use.

The drive came with 20 or so songs from eMusic, which I felt polluted the player, rather than provided me with entertainment, especially since the loaded music took up a very large portion of the player that I had to remove before putting on my songs. The biggest complaint is that after the data corrupted, there was no way of resetting it, and it would lock up both my Windows XP desktop and Vista Laptop any time that I would plug it in.