Home > Consumer Reviews > Epson P-3000 40GB Multimedia Storage Drive, Viewer, and Audio-Video Player w/ 4-Inch LCD

I've had the P-3000 viewer for a couple of months, long enough to have used it under a lot of environments and situations. The unit has performed flawlessly. It does everything as advertised.

Downloads are quick.....quicker than with my Mac notebook, which is particularly useful when previewing photos with clients. The screen is bright and contrasty, with good resolution.

I really like the dual card slots, which allow me to download directly to the unit without having to go through a CPU. I can be on location doing a shoot, pop out my CF card from my camera and insert it into the P-3000, and wait a few seconds for the images to come up. With other devices I've owned, I haven't had the confidence to delete the photos from my cards after downloading. I have that confidence with this unit. It's proven itself.

The reason I gave the P-3000 four stars is because of the screen resolution. I wish the resolution was higher, since my camera is 12.8 megapixels and I'm not seeing all the detail in the images. However, I knew when I bought the 3000 that its resolution is not as high as the P-5000.

Having said that, I'm very pleased with the device. It's a workhorse, and it's never had a hiccup in operation.

The screen is large and bright with no off-axis viewing issues. I bought it to have on location instead of using a laptop to view my images. The Art Director loved seeing the images clearly and easily; she wished all the photogs she hires had one of these. Nice to know the CF cards are backed up to at least one other place for ease of mind. 40 GB is more than enough for a day of shooting for me. The folder interface is a little tricky but once you get used to it, it makes sense. I've also used this recently to store Tivo'ed shows for when I'm not needing the 40 GB. The video play works very well and you can easily plug it into a TV to check out video or still images.
My P-3000 definitely inspires gear envy from other photographers who don't have one. Cool Stuff.

The Epson P3000 is a great storage device. The instruction booklet is very bare bones and basic and at time is so cryptic as to be of little use. When putting a slide show together the unit will not allow picture taken vertically to be shown that way. They are show horizontal. I have been unable to rotate them in the unit. I have also been unable to get the unit to accept the rotation when I use either of two editing programs I have. The unit just will not show them in their correct perspective. Getting music into the is also difficult.
Over all it is a great unit to move pictures from place to place and store them.
I would purchase the unit again and do recommend it.

I used to use my video ipod as a place to offload my CF cards, but being I shoot in raw I couldn't see them on screen. Although, I have not yet used this in the field, I have downloaded Nikon raw files and viewed w/o a problem being able to zoom in, check histogram, etc. and have a display that is large enough to really 'see' the pix is super! You can tell immediately in great color how your shot is.

It is easy to use with the menu system to go between music, video and photos and to select what you want to see. I have converted and downloaded dvd's to the player but had some problems with the fps. According to EPSON (who provided a response with 24) the fps must be no more than 24 although the documentation states that 29 will work. The volume on the device thru headphones does not go extremely loud. You may need to increase the sound level on any video conversions you do. It is difficult to hear when using the speaker but since this is primarily for photo viewing, or watching videos while traveling thru headphones, it is not that much of a con.

On another review I read that you could not FF or Rewind but the controls do allow for this. It also keeps track of where you left off so you can continue watching from where you stopped.

I have tried to play videos on several TVs without any luck. According to the documentation it is pretty straight forward, but so far I have not been successful.

Music-wise I have not had any problems. The only odd thing here is that I generally connect the P3000 as another drive and use Explorer to move videos and pictures to and from the device. It seems, however, that to download music you need use the EPSON link software that comes with the unit.

I have not run the battery down yet, but haven't played a full video. So far this device has met my expectations and I will probably leave my ipod at home this next trip.

As a side note - the unit I purchased had several pixels not firing so I had to return it. This was extremely easy via Amazon who sent out a replacement and picked up all charges for returning the original viewer.

This product has made our workflow for my business a much SMOOTHER and stress free process. We are a professional wedding & children photography studio in Miami and we love this item mainly because we download the images immediately at each wedding, on location. Especially destination weddings. It's like carrying around a laptop to download images, but carrying around a pocket size laptop! what better feeling than PEACE OF MIND of our downloaded photos from our weddings? priceless. Download time is QUICK average about 10 minutes for 4 gb cards. I can also "star" a few images and show the bride and groom a slideshow immediately after they're downloaded. WE're also offering projected slideshows to the guests at weddings using this amazing piece of technology. I absolutely endorse this item especially for the professional.