China — country of mystery, of intrigue, of wholesale intellectual property theft. Her majestic mountains and sprawling cities inspire us. Her cheap electronics make us puke a little in our mouths.
Feast your eyes, friends, on the latest product from her shores: this 2GB, $69 MP3/MP4 player sold by Geeks.com. It is utter and total garbage.
The box: What is that, velvet?
Those of you who know me and have read me for a few years know that I am a man of some calm and restraint. I rail against only a few major players in this industry and try to give just about any product a fair shake in my reviews. When Doug posted about this MP4 player last week, I thought it would be fun to see how it worked. I see now that my decision was fatally flawed.
Coming soon to the PS3: Explode Pigboat
The player itself is made of flimsy plastic. The touchscreen is very dim and violently non-responsive. It does not appear in disk mode under OS X and I had considerable trouble connecting it to a PC. The product, in short, is infantile — a half-assed effort by an electronics manufacturer to bilk the entire technology-loving community out of seventy dollars.
I like to think of good products the way I think of bands. When they’re on, they’re great. When work between R&D and marketing, engineering and design, sales and support all work together, they can make beautiful music. This product, however, is like flatulence played over a reel-to-reel tape recorder made by blind Russian factory workers during the harsh winter of 1973 — nothing, not even the sound emanating from the paper cone speakers, is right.
I’m sure the folks at Geeks.com mean us no harm. We know what we are getting into and we accept the good with the bad. But for anyone to spend any money on this — nay, for even the good men and women at Geeks.com to allow this to enter through their loading dock door — is a travesty and a crime against all that is holy in this or any other world.
Sure, it does everything as advertised. But the theft of the iPhone UI — for no good reason — coupled with the shoddy manufacturing, the various failed attempts and “value-added” applications, and a general unsuitability to any task makes me want to puke. Call me a stickler for shit actually working, but I couldn’t even set the date, let alone play the built-in game, Explode Pigboat.
If there is a place in hell for malicious businessmen, the designers of this abortion deserve to be there. They’ll be forced to wear Oakley Thumps and only listen to Yanni albums while they drink Crystal Pepsi and eat Hot Pockets for all eternity, cursing their mothers for bringing them into this world to cause such pain and anguish.
I would not introduce this product into the anus of a dead jackal and then blow it up underwater. It would be a waste of dead jackal, explosives, and water.
Too bad, I just went to pick one up and see they are already sold out…
they had some just now
scored one
I live two miles down the road from the actual Geeks.com warehouse/brick & mortar store and I’m always tempted to pick pick up one of the slick looking little players for cheap whenever I go in. Thanks for confirming the price really is too good to be even remotely true.
Gee, why am I not surprised that Geeks.com is selling a piece of crap?
Back in December, my wife’s Visa card suddenly became unusable. A call to Visa elicited the information that someone had stolen her identity to make some fairly large purchases using her Visa account number.
We found out that Geeks.com had violated their merchant’s agreement with Visa by keeping the “secret” numbers on the back of Visa cards in the same file as the account numbers. My wife had made a purchase from Geeks.com back in February of ‘07.
Not only was her Visa card unusable during the Christmas shopping season forcing her to get a new account number, Geeks.com never apologized for this massive screw-up or offered any kind of compensation.
Run, don’t walk, away from Geeks.com.
Well, it looks like I’m screwed- I’m waiting for my new ‘Chinese’ 4MP, MP3 Player that I ‘won’ on eBay for $46. This will be my first and I don’t even know how to set the thing up when it gets here. I have FIVE days to see if I like it or send it back. From reading the REAL review above, it looks like I shouldn’t even try to set it up- I’m really bummed- I wanted this thing BAD!
Yeah just check out the video it looks cool !!
see the check me out for the video
click ss
as i am writing this my 2gb mp4 is sitting in front of me. This thing isnt actually that bad. YES u can set up the date very easily and despite the fact that the gaming section is a peice of crap the rest is excellent. The screen is actually not too bad it has the following functions which work well:
*music player
*video player(it plays AVI’s)
*ebook
*2mp camera with good resolution
*radio
*photo viewr
*voice recording AND it doubles as a webcam.
So yeah no pint of the gaming section but apart from that it is really good. GET ONE!
I’m thinking of using the packaging from my real iPod Touch and buying one of these and putting in the the packaging and giving it to my cousin as a gag gift. She’ll be so excited to get an iPod Touch and she’ll be convinced for a little while, then the tears will come ^_^
Bust open your wallets everybody! Geeks has an 8GB version now!!!
Totally agree with your review. I got some samples of these from China. We were looking to sell them on our website http://www.buyingcheap.co.uk but the quality was terrible. We got a few different touch screen models but none of them worked properly. When we tried to plug them in to the pc they would connect for a minute but then switch off and they would not charge properly either. One of the supposed value added apps was a digital camera but it was crap. I gave up and needless to say we decided not to sell them.
my 3 week old mp4 player just quit working, what a piece of shit