Home > Consumer Reviews > Transcend T.sonic 850 8 GB Video MP3 Player (Black)

I bought this player a month ago, and so far love it. Benefits: Easy to use. Plug-and-Play with no setup on PC. Coes with protective cover. Smaller than a credit card. Negatives: A little difficult to use with Windows Media Player's or Rhapsody's digital rights protected files. The instruction manual provides a work-around for it, but a bit troublesome if you have a library mix-and-matched with protected/non protected files.

Otherwise...I think this player is a GREAT buy for the money. I am fairly new to the portable music thing, so this player holds my whole library of music, and still has plenty of space left for use as a flash drive.

The Transcend T.sonic mp3 player is a great gadget for the price. It does everything it says it does and does it well. The audio quality is pretty good, and the voice recorder works great. For the money I do not know of a superior product. The only feature I did not bother with was the e-book reader as I can't imagine trying to read a book on something about the size of two postage stamps.
The device comes with it's own case, and neck strap and once again for the price it is a terrific bargain. My only complaint with the product is the difficulty in navigation when trying to select amongst files. I guess my iPod has spoiled me, but this seemed a slightly annoying task and one I can't imagine trying to undertake while driving. And as others have emphasized you can select the song you want, and it's not true that this won't play audio books, perhaps the other reviewer simply did not have the audio book in a compatible format.

If you are a PC person like me, this player has some nice qualities. Nothing against Apple (I even own their stock), but iTunes is not where I shop for music, mainly because I want the ability to drag and drop music onto a player or sync it with a program. If you rip a lot of tracks from your CD collection, your gonna like this player.

Right after I checked to see if everything worked, I started off my test of the player by updating the firmware. A firmware upgrade will erase everything you have stored or settings you have changed on the player; hence, it is a good idea to knock it out before you poke around too much. The first thing I really liked about the player is that as soon as I plugged it in to my PC via mini-USB, it showed up as a mass storage device in Windows and I could drag and drop to the device without any additional software. I both created folders on the device and dragged nested folders with music and picture files. They all showed up in the interface (music player or picture viewer) without a hitch no matter where I placed them in the file tree. The file tree is displayed one level at a time but, as long as you don't get too carried away, navigation is straight forward and easy. Then, I used Windows Media Player to sync the device with all of my music files. Once again, everything went off without a hitch. The device showed up in the player and I hit the sync button. It was that easy.

Next, I converted and loaded some AVI files to check the video playback. The unit only plays MTV files so you will need to convert everything to play it. The conversion interface is simple and easy. Loading the player is drag and drop. But, lets face it, watching anything on a screen less than two inches has limitations. It is fun for showing baby footage or something from your cell phone camera from the last hockey game you went to. That is about it for me.

Finally, I took it to the gym for a test drive to see how well it held up in real life.

In a nut shell, I liked:
- The drag and drop capability from any PC without additional software
- The easy sync with Windows Media Player (if you choose to)
- The ability to use it as a BIG portable storage device for any file type
- The in recorder function has good quality and records from the FM receiver built into the player. It is also voice activated
- It comes with a protective silicon cover
- It is very light
- The display is well laid out and easy to read
- Navigation is easy, even while exercising
- The supplied headphones are good. I have never heard really good headphones supplied standard with a player, though

I did not like:
- The only supplied charging option is via your PC
- The supplied neck strap is not very practical. An arm band would be better
- The supplied headphones could not compete with the sound at the gym. The excessive ambient noise ruined the listening experience

All in all, the player is not perfect. However, the good qualities combined with the price make it a compelling buy.

The Transcend T.sonic 850 media player is a very affordable option for people who aren't looking for the most stylish design and who aren't hung up on using the ideal file formats. This makes it a great gift as the first media player for a young person.

The affordability colors expectations for the player - it's far from perfect in many regards, but the sheer amount of functionality that you get for less than half the cost of any comparable unit is what makes it worth seriously considering.

BUILD

The T.sonic 850 is thicker than any iPod yet thinner than most flip phones. It is as compact as possible while still holding its 1.8" screen and navigation buttons below. It has a solid feel except the face buttons have a looseness to them that hopefully won't get worse with time. The screen itself is a very nice display: sharp with nice color and contrast.

PERFORMANCE

The T.sonic 850 only handles a small variety of file formats: MP3 or WMA for audio (and even then, it needs to be pretty heavily compressed or else the player can't decode it) and some proprietary .mtv format for video. You need to use included software to convert your video files to readable .mtv format. This is a real downside because the hassle greatly diminishes one of the player's strongest attributes: the great-looking screen. You can also put pictures or text files/ebooks on the unit, although the screen size argues against using the latter.

With that said about the compressed audio files, I was pleasantly surprised by the sound fidelity that the unit gave, especially given how underwhelming the included earbuds felt out of the box. Using the "rock" equalizer, I got treble that was crisp without being too bright or harsh. Bass was minimal, but that's to be expected with almost any earbud design. Busy songs had good definition between instruments; however, quieter, acoustic pieces showed the limitations of the MP3 compression. Overall, I was impressed with the clarity of the sound.

Navigating through the player's menus is simple and intuitive. The display shows music and video files in simple text lists - nothing fancy, but it works. When music is playing, you see the (hyper) equalizer display. Once this novelty wears off, you'll wish that there was a way to turn this off in order to conserve battery life.

Moving content to/from the player is very easy and I appreciated that it required no additional software (aside from converting videos). When you plug the player into your PC, it appears as a detachable USB drive, letting you move files onto it via Windows Explorer.

The unit comes packaged with a nice array of simple, baseline accessories - a silicone case (similar to the Wii remote jacket), a USB charge/sync cable, a neckstrap and the earbuds. All of this further makes the case that the T.sonic 850 would make an excellent all-in-one gift for the right person.

PROS
* Lots of functionality for such a low cost
* Ease of operation
* Surprisingly good audio fidelity

CONS
* Restrictions about file formats supported, especially for video
* Unit must be charged by a computer via USB

CONCLUSION
For the right consumer, the Transcend T.sonic 850 could be the ideal media player. If you're not fixated on perfect, lossless audio and your library is already in MP3 or WMA formats, then it's a great unit. The unbelievably low cost just makes it an even better option. If you plan on using it to play video, just be aware that you'll be spending some time converting your existing files to a format that the reader can process.

I bought this player specifically to play wav files. Amazon's website states that wav is one of the support file formats. However, my wav files were not recognized. I looked at the FAQ on the products website and they state that only wav files in IMA_ADPCM format are recognized. However, even after converting my to this type the device still does not recognize the wav files.

If you need wav format don't rely on this product. My previous (and more expensive) iaudio plays wav just fine and I suggest it instead.