Home > Consumer Reviews > Coby MP305-4G MP3 Player with 4 GB Flash Memory FM Radio, USB Drive and LCD - Black

CUDOS
Good price, even for just a 4G thumb drive.

Relatively small, sleek.

Sound is very crisp, although I did not even try the included headphones (nasty uncomfortable airline/Ipod type headphones). It could be simply that the presets perfectly match my prefered headphones.

Uses AAA battery. It is important to me to have the player continuously available (with the change of battery, as needed), and not have to wait until I can charge an internal battery. Even so, I would have greatly prefered an AA-powered unit, like my Samsung YP--but it seems that no-one makes such MP3 players anymore.

The full size male USB plug nominally makes it possible to plug the unit into a computer without a cable---but in my case, the USB ports of my computer are recessed, so I have to use a short USB cable anyway.

CAVEATS
Non-attached cap and battery cover are potentially loosable.

Cheap plastic. Not necessarily a problem, except for the attachment loop, to attach the player to a lanyard etc. (I use a small "cable tie" to attach the player to a D-ring which I clip to my belt loop).

No easy way to carry (except as I've described above, or with a lanyard, not supplied). No belt clip, or armband is included, and the unit would not be secure in an armband meant for other brands of mp3 players. You could carry it in a pants pocket, if free of keys, change, etc.

To start or resume play, you have to press and hold the "play" button for ca 5 seconds, wait for the system to book up, and then press it 2 more times. On other MP3 players I've had, I only had to press "play" once to resume play.

All controls are 6 identical unlit buttons in a row, which means that you cannot easily operate the unit just by touch, e.g., to pause when someone is speaking to you, or to adjust the volume in a dark room.

Claims to be USB-2 for fast downloads, but in my experience loading an audiobook is agonizingly slow, much slower than other MP3 players I've used, such as a Zen Nano or Samsung YP.

Front of box claims that it holds 2000 songs, back of box claims 1000 songs. Of course that depends on the sampling rate and song length--but it is evidence of poor design that the info on the box is self-contradictory

MAY BE INCONVENIENT FOR AUDIOBOOKS
The Coby has the same "1 folder deep" file system of most MP3 players, which greatly limits taking full advanatage of the 4G capacity. Tracks are played in alpha-numeric order, like most other MP3 players. HOWEVER, folders are played in the order loaded, NOT in alpha-numeric order. Higher level folders (i.e., those containing subfolders) are copied but are ignored as far as navigation or play-order is concerned. Nominally, it is possible to select the folders to play, but the folder name is not displayed. If you have several audiobooks with all the tracts of each book in a single folder (i.e., commercial downloads), you can load multiple audiobooks, but it will be difficult to select between them.

In my case, using Windows Media Player, I rip audiobooks from CD versions, which means I have a folder for each CD (named 01, 02, 03, etc. all in higher level folder such as "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"). Note that if you drag and drop a folder such as my "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" folder, which contains subfolders, that (for some bizarre reason) Windows copies the tracts and folders in random order, which means that on the COBY the folders will play in that same random order. In contrast, with my Zen Nano, Samsung YP, and even a crappy little Phillips MP3 player, I could load a whole book at one time (by just dragging and dropping, for example, my "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" folder), and the player would play the whole book in the correct order. Loading each folder one-at-a-time, in order, on the COBY is a major pain, excacerbated by the excuciatingly slow upload times---it can take 15 minutes or more to upload a typical audiobook.

To load more than one audiobook (containing subfolders for each CD) on the COBY would be even more difficult, I would have to rename the subfolders (e.g. A01, A02, A03, and B01, B02, B03 etc.) and also load them individualy in the correct order.

OTHER
If the included AAA battery doesn't work, take off the nearly invisible plastic wrapping.

VERDICT
A great value for the price. Does the job, but the caveats (above) are significant.

Not at all happy with MP305. Earbuds on original unit chinchy .
Started having problems from start. Player would shut down for no reason.
Initally it could be restarted but on some occasions only light would come on.
Installed new battery, but problem persisted.

Tried deleting all music to fix problem but now player will not even turn on.

At this point i wiil trash unit and buy a MP3 player that works. Will not be a COLBY !!!

Pictures make this device seem small. It's not.
Be prepared to use dry cell battery after dry cell battery. It hasn't an internal rechargable.

This is a great MP3 player for the money. It's very easy to use and add music to it and it's very small so you can take it anywhere. This was my very first time using an MP3 player and it was a good experience.

I wish I had realized it required batteries. I thought it was like one i had in Germany made by Phillips that recharged on any USB port. Who wants to have to buy and dispose of batteries, not green at all.
Performance is fine, just hate the battery thing.