Home > Consumer Reviews > D-Link DMP-HD610 Roq-it MP3 Player and Hard Drive (10 GB)

I purchased the D-Link Roq-it two months ago. It worked flawlessly until I found the screen flickering and the unit unable to work properly. After sending back the product D-Link replaced my battery and I have had no problems since. While I have heard of other problems, this is a very functional unit: using a 10 GB IBM Travelstar 2.5" laptop hard drive and 2 MB buffer it plays thousands of tracks without skipping. The player has an IR remote (like your TV) for home use and a 5 hour Li-ion battery for portable use. The unit has both line out and headphone jacks and fast USB 1.1 800 k/s transfer. The unit has a bright, large LCD to display ID3 track information and can be used as a portable hard drive. Unfortunately it is as large as a CD player and has good sound quality but poor bass response. This player, however, beats all on the market as of 4/1/02. Here is why:

Archos players: Ni-cd batteries, no true line out, small LCD.
Creative players: Ni-cd batteries, poorly designed, no hard drive functionality.
Ipod: less memory, Mac compatible only.
Treo: no hard drive functionality, dim backlight, no ID3 support.
XP3: same as Treo

You be the judge. You'll find smaller players, but none as functional as the D-Link Roq-it 10 GB.

I bought this unit about two months ago. For the most part, it has lived up to my expectations. The user interface is a little bland, but it works efficient. The OS is a little slow to respond at times. It is very easy to download/upload songs or files from the device. For WinXP and Win2000, there is no need to install any drivers. Just plug the device in and it is instantly recognized. Even though others have stated that play-lists are not supported, I have no problem using them. Although it is a portable device, it may be too cumbersome for jogging (about the same as portable CD player w/o the skipping.) Some of the firmware needs to be updated (maybe they should have a patch) as I have gotten it to lock up on several occasions. The buttons are sensitive so the can be inadvertently pressed when in the travel case. The sound quality out of the line out is excellent, but the headphone out lacks bass even with good headphones. As a portable hard drive, it is excellent. Given reviews of other devices, I would still pick this one over the other hard drive based MP3 Jukeboxes.

We bought the ROQ-IT primarily as a substitute for a 300 disc CD changer, not so much for as a portable device. I like the large display screen on this compared to the tiny screen on the Archos Jukebox. Copying files over is a breeze and the files are transferred at a rate of about 40 megabytes per minute. The only software you need to install is the USB driver and it is less than 550K in size, which is nice if you want to take the Roq-It to another PC and use it as a portable hard drive. You can leave the installation CD at home and just take a floppy with the driver on it. Everything the player does it does well.

I read many of these reviews (and the info at the D-Link web site) before buying the Roq-It and there were still questions I had that were only answered by trying it. So I'm here to fill in the gaps for you. First of all, there are two shuffle modes. You can play random selections from the folder you are currently in or from files throughout the whole hard drive. It would have been nice if there where a third shuffle mode to shuffle through songs in the current folder AND it's sub folders but there is no such option.

In regular continuous play mode, there are a few options. You can play a folder then stop, play a folder then repeat, or play one folder after another until they have all been played. There is also a mode to continously repeat just one song. It would be nice if you could find songs strictly by track title like you could with the Creative Nomad Jukebox. But if you have your songs organized, it's really not hard to find the song you want. And frankly, I expect that most of the time we will just be playing this in Random All mode anyway. The Roq-It does look at the ID3 tag information while a song it playing. It displays the track title, artist, album, total time, and current time index simultaneously. But it does not use ID3 tag info for finding or listing songs. If it did have that ability and a Playlist feature, I would have rated it 5 stars.

And just think: only a couple of years ago you would have paid this much for a 10GB hard drive alone. By the way, it's not really 10 GB, it's about 9.35.

I recently purchased this D-LINK 10GB USB mp3 player and can only say good things about it. Before I purchased this specific player I had a D-LINK 32MB mp3 player that performed perfectly. I decided to invest a good amount of money into another D-LINK product and I can only say good things. Use of the player is very easy. Its a drag and drop format. Of course having two thousand MP3's as I do, organization is a major issue. All I had to do was organize my mp3's into different folders. For example, I had 7 folders. ROCK, R&B, CLASSICAL, JAZZ, ITALIAN MUSIC, FOREIGN, 70'S etc. etc. All you need to do is open up a folder and fing your song. The sound of the player is amazing. What more could you want?? I would say that the only bad thing about the player is that it looks like the first release of the Nintendo Gameboy. Its ugly, plain and simple. If you have a lot of mp3's and you like to travel (without taking your laptop with you) get this player. Do NOT get the ARCHOS just because it "looks better". It may look much better but the reliability of the D-LINK is unsurpassed. TECH support is A++. My advice: if you have money to spend on a 6GB-20GB mp3 player GET THIS ONE!! (DON'T BE FOOLED BY ITS UGLY APPEARENCE!!)

I first bought one for my little brother. The player's driver was easy to install onto Windows 98SE. We didn't bother with the Windows Media Player application, we just use the player as an external hard drive. I just bought one for myself! I love it! It's so easy to operate, and it keeps my files in clean order so I can play Mudvayne one second then play Enya the next. Here are my tips: When downloading music to the player, don't overwhelm it by downloading way too many files. I'd say keep it at a maximum of 20 files at a time. And, when you just downloaded them, give the player about 20-30 seconds...then you can unplug the USB cable. Also, when you have added lot's of music onto the player, defragment the players hard drive. It's a drive, right! It needs defragmenting just like a normal computer. It will elliminate the possibiility of the player stopping while playing. Enjoy...