Touch Screen Gadget

Small rival LXP1 look ahead

Posted by admin | Category: MP3 Player, Video Player

AZ Designz, has carved out a respectable niche making multimedia bags and iPod accessories.

  Now it’s upped the ante by bravely entering the crowded palm-sized personal audio-video player market with its very own gizmo: the Life! LXP1.

So, has a worthy rival to Apple’s all-conquering iPod range finally emerged — and one designed in our own fair city at that?

Sadly, no. Though there’s much to like about the LXP1 — not least being the chutzpah to take on the Cupertino set — it’s not about to knock the iPod off its perch.

Regrettably, the LXP1 has shortcomings which, for too many potential buyers, would be deal-breakers. The locally designed but Chinese-made LXP1 is about the same credit-card size as a third-generation iPod Nano, only a bit chunkier, and weighs 120gm.

Extra functions and controls in the LXP1 are a fair trade-off for the added bulk. These include touch-screen navigation (like the iTouch), voice-quality recording, an FM radio player/recorder and an SD/MMC card slot. The LXP1 also has a clock, calendar and photo slideshow. The mechanical controls for volume, on/off, lock et cetera are simple and practical. (Would an on/off switch be too much to ask of iPods?) There’s also a two-year warranty, a carry case, strap, USB cable, earphones, and a mini-CD of instructions and PC software. The LXP1’s 60mm (diagonal) 320×240 pixel TFT touch screen is bright and clear, but video playback is a bit jerky.

The negative opinion that director David Lynch recently expressed in an entertaining YouTube rant about watching movies on an iPhone would go doubly for a device with half the screen size. Best match for LXP1 video viewing are rock clips and South Park episodes.

Navigating the LXP1’s many functions via the touch-screen is easy and logical. On-screen information and controls are excellent. The rechargeable battery’s life is brilliant, too.

The same can’t be said for the earphones packed with the LXP1. Bin them or toss them in the back of a drawer, labelled "emergency use only" — they’re shockers. The iPod’s earphones are nothing special, yet they lifted listening quality on the LXP1 several notches. We seem to have reached the point where it’s assumed the public know they have to separately buy their own earphones or earbuds for decent sound quality. Cygnett’s GrooveStyle and GrooveAtomic earphones, or your pick from Shure’s SE range, would be a good match for this machine.

Only MP3 and WMA audio formats are supported, as well as LRC-format lyrics. Sound quality of a CD ripped via a LAME-encoder at 320kbps was impeccable.

Though the box says the LXP1 works with Macs, it’s not a good match. MP3s loaded with drag-n-drop ease and came up filed correctly by their ID3 tags. However, the supplied video conversion software is only for PCs. Xvid.avi and .mp4 files loaded without conversion would not play. And the mini-CD that contains the software and a PDF of user instructions is unusable with an iMac’s vertical slot-loading optical drive.

The LXP1 icon would not "eject" off the screen, so the safest option was switching both the LXP1 and the iMac off before disconnecting the USB cable. Verdict: Mac users should give the LXP1 a miss.

O N PCs, audio and video files can be loaded with the same drag-n-drop simplicity, or synchronize files via Windows Media Player 10. However, the supplied video conversion software proved to be the LXP1’s achilles heel. And a pain in the neck. Most desirable option in a gadget like this is support for a range of audio and video formats without having to convert files. Second best is for packaged software to be set up for a no-nonsense one-step automatic conversion to the required format.

The software provided with the LXP1 came in a distant third. Detailed PDF instructions have to be followed to configure the settings to match the LXP1’s particular requirements before doing the job. That’s way too much effort and know-how to ask of the average user in return for watching video on this little gadget’s matchbox-sized screen.

[news.au]

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2 Responses to “Small rival LXP1 look ahead”

1. Highly competing the MP3 touch crown - Touch Screen Gadget Says:
   April 8th, 2008 at 11:09 pm

   […] the exception of the LXPI, the MP3 players shown here also include some type of wireless capability to complement their […]

2. lala Says:
   January 24th, 2009 at 11:27 pm

   The Best mp4 Player ever!

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