Home > Consumer Reviews > Machspeed Trio 2 GB MP3 Player with Voice Recorder & Thumb Drive

I've been using it for about 2 months now and it's working pretty good for me. I use this more than I use my Toshiba F40 believe it or not.

The good:
1. Easy to get music on it - No proprietary software to load, no proprietary format to "convert" in and out of. You just copy over your MP3's & go.
2. Data storage - You can carry just one device now & not have to lug around a USB key & MP3 player separate.
3. USB plug right on device - You just plug the thing in and don't need any cables or other garbage.
4. Normal battery - You don't have to worry about charging a battery, it's 1 AAA battery. When it's dead you can just dump it and put in a new one.
5. Small size

The bad
1. No power-off memory - When you turn it off, it doesn't remember where you were in a song/podcast. If you're 1/2 way through a 2 hour podcast and have to turn it off, you have to "fast" forward back to where you left off. This is a big issue for podcast listeners
2. Fast forward - Because of the above you end up fast forwarding a lot, and fast forward on this is really "slow" forward. Also, the control is tiny and hard to use. It needs a knob on the end of the dial ro something. If it can't remember where you left off, it should at least make it easy to get back to it, but it doesn't.
3. Long boot time - Turning on the device the "welcome" screen is up for about 20-30 seconds, this should be INSTANT on.
4. Battery Life - 1 AAA battery is only good for 3 hours. It's good that you can change it because it dies so fast.

Overall I'm happy with it, but think a few small tweaks are needed to make it great.

I read all the reviews and inspite of the several bad reviews, I purchased the item. I read how the mp3 player, once turned off, would not keep your place. Not true (Or at least not true any more, maybe there has been a software update).
I also was concerned about the battery life concerns. These also were not true. I go running for about 30 miniutes every day after work and for using it the last two and a half weeks I am just now changing out the battery, added to that I listen on many other occasions as well, like in the car with an fm transmitter. (I will say that I immediately threw out the battery that came with it and put a real battery in.)

The last concern that I had when buying the item was that many reviewrs said that it felt cheap in their hands. I found that the buttons are not metal, but they are not fragile in that they would break with common use. If you abuse your things and do not show rescept for anything, than yes I am sure that you could utterly destroy this MP3 player. However, I would say that under normal use and normal care, it should last as long as any other electronic device on the market.

Don't listen to the "Nay Sayers" that find fault in everthing just to have something to say stear you away from this product. It really is as good as it looks.

As they say - "Bad news sells" and it appears to me that all the negative reviews about this product were simply - wrong.


This is a definate buy!!!! I would recomend it to anyone looking for an inexpensive MP3 player.

The basic ability to play MP3 and WMA files works well. Navigation, if you separate files, is not the easiest thing. When I power the unit up it always defaults to the location of the first folder I created rather than the last folder I was in.

The voice recording works with 8Khz sampling. With higher sample rates a considerable amount of noise is introduced into the recording but since the sample rate is higher the frequency response improves. This isn't advertised as working so I can't complain. If you're in a hurry to start a recording you have to first navigate to the voice folder which is time consuming and is frustrating.

The "ebook" function is a little misleading. To use, create a folder named TEXT. The 2 line display will then let you "read" a text file with a .txt extension. It does not as I'd hoped read the file to you as spoken words. If you have a few thousand word document you'd have to be pretty desperate to scroll through it ~20 characters or so at a time. This isn't documented as far as I can tell. I had to search for some documentation on sigmaTel MSCN to find a description to get it to work.

At the time of writing I'd put 1/2 the value in the 2GB of storage and 1/2 in the basic MP3 player capability giving fair (but not good) value for the money. The file transfer speed is at best 1KByte per second.

If you want ease of use consider another player at a higher price point.

The audio quality is excellent, but compared with the brand name products in this category the user interface seems crude. It took more than a little practice and study of the user manual before we got the hang of it.

That said, given it's price point this we found this product to be a very good value.

Totally broken after two hours. The software drivers provided and available online are bugged out. The install disc is one of those little mini cds they used to give away on beer boxes in 2002.

One of the products you would not buy if you could actually see it instead of the photograph.

A shame because the flash drive mp3 concept was nice. Maybe going to get a shuffle or nano as a replacement gift for a friend.