Home > Consumer Reviews > Coby MP-C896 MP3 Player with 2 GB Flash Memory, FM Radio & USB Drive

Player works fairly well. One of the buttons on the player was acting flaky when we first started using it. But it seems to be working itself out. Player can be slow to respond to button presses. I had to reset the player once when it locked up. I just pulled the battery out and put it back in. It started back up just fine. I got this player for $42 when it was being sold directly by Amazon, I wouldn't pay much more than that for it.

0/5 stars as a voice recorder
4/5 stars as an mp3 player

Warning, do not buy this if you are planning on using it as a voice recorder. It simply does not have the function despite what the ad/specs say.

I bought this mainly to use as a voice recorder, and planned on rarely using it to play mp3s. Let me make this perfectly clear: there is NO voice recording function on this player, despite what the ad says. Page 16 of the instructions indicate that there is a "Record" function accessible from the main menu between "FM Tuner" and "Settings". However, the function simply does not exist at all, and the menu skips directly from "FM Tuner" and "Settings". It also says that you can hold the record button down from the playback screen, but that does not access the Record function either. But surely there's a firmware update, right? Wrong. The only software/firmware on the Coby site is a Windows 98me driver. The instruction manual squarely lies, and so does the specs, there is no voice recording function accessible on this player.

As an mp3 player? Go for it! If you don't need the voice recorder function, and that's what you want cheap, small, lightweight, and 2GB, this will do just fine.

Also, there is a plastic piece that surrounds the headphone jack that makes it difficult to plug in certain headphones (2 out of 2 that I owned before). You can snap the needless plastic piece off if you don't mind it looking a little ugly, but that is a poor design.

Update: Get the Coby MP-C895 instead (link below). It actually does contain a voice recorder function, and its headphone plug accepts any headphone. Other than that it is the same.

Coby MP-C895 MP3 Player with 2 GB flash Memory, FM Radio & USB Drive

This MP3 player has a lot of things going for it, but the time I get out of batteries is ridiculous. I literally go through 1 battery every 2 days.

I have purchased Coby products before and have found them to be quite satisfactory, but I found myself surprisingly unimpressed with this item. Unlike its 1 GB predecessor, this MP3 Player is exremely light weight and I feel as if I'm going to break the thing, because it's made of such thin plastic. It also takes a really long time to turn on, an unimpressive 10-15 seconds vs. the original's 5-10 (and it has nothing to do with how many songs are on the thing). Another issue, is that this thing isn't easy to operate at all and the instructions aren't that helpful with setting it up. I've owned mine for a few weeks now, and I'm still having difficulty with uploading my songs! I really just wished that they had stuck with the original 1 GB MP3 player design, and just gave it more GB's this time around...

I bought this mp3 because it's supposed to act as flash memory (pen drive) and voice recorder, but both functions simply don't exist in this product.
I just cannot believe Amazon is selling a bad product like this. What a shame.