Home > Consumer Reviews > RCA Opal 4 GB Video MP3 player with 1.8-inch Display, FM Radio, and Voice Recording (Blue)

I didn't even read the manual and have been listening every day since I bought it a week ago. The 4GB holds three 12-disc audiobooks, about 25 more hours of music, 28 pictures and 7 short videos. I could probably get more videos on if I deleted the audiobooks! I haven't used the Audible feature yet though I will. A couple of minor things - snipping video from your PC works but the audio is awful so I recommend you don't use this feature. Also if you pause for too long when you go back the file will start from the beginning which is hard to do on a 45 minute file. And last there don't seem to be any instructions on how to use the Audible feature.

I bought one of these for me and one for my nephew. My nephew's has now frozen completely and will not even turn on any longer. It lasted a whopping 4 months. Sheesh.

Mine is working, but here are the pluses and minuses of the one I have:

Pluses:
1) looks nice and is very lightweight;
2) has a radio feature, which I like;
3) has decent graphics with very nice color;
4) has a customizable graphic equalizer;
5) is easy to use and transfer music to.

Minuses:
1) scrolling through options is a pain in the toches--the scrolling is slow and causes the music you're listening to to click quite frequently;
2) loading the player up with music from your own discs often leads to no album information/picture (all the music I downloaded from Rhapsody has album art, but the Springsteen discs I synced from Media Player have no album art at all);
3) figuring out bookmarks for Audible material isn't as user friendly as it could be;
4) when you're listening to music and simply want to locate another album by the same artist, you have to go to the menu and scroll through all the artists to get to the one you're listening to; the program doesn't just take you to that same artist--grrrr;
5) getting a radio station to stay in memory is another pain in the toches;
6) the updates I downloaded (or, shall we say, ATTEMPTED to download) caused even more grief, ending in a flurry of error messages about the downloads themselves (not about my computer, which is a brand-new ACER with all the bells and whistles) and an actual virus warning from McAfee (yikes!); and
7) resetting the player results in it taking 5 to 10 minutes just to fully boot up.

Well, I now know what kind I'm getting next. I should have stuck with Sansa all along, but noooooo. I liked my Creative Zen, but the more time passes, the more I remember my Sansa with great fondness, and now Amazon has a new special deal going with Audible. Woohoo!

I have had two of these RCA Opals. The first one lasted a month and locked up. I got online at the RCA website and did get feed back but it took a week for feedback each time I wrote something to them. Finally, I returned it to the store for the same exact thing and it has worked beautifully since. Now that I have the new one, and have worked with the software, I realize there must have been something wrong with the first one from the beginning. The software for the first one never worked very well, now that I know what it is supposed to do.
The only issue I have is that it is difficult to find adaptors for this unit to pipe it through your car speakers or to be able to plug it into the wall to charge it. I have to hook it up to my computer when I want to charge it. The store where I bought it only carries accessories for iPod and I can't even find much for it online.
I just got some speakers to plug into it so I can listen to my music in the rest of the house without using the earbuds, but the sound quality isn't all that stellar and it operates off the Opal's power source because I don't have an adapter to plug it in the wall to keep it charged.
I am happy with the ease of managing my music on the unit. I find using Windows Media Player is the easiest. I wish there was a way to make playlists on the unit. I seem to be able to make playlists on WMP, but can't upload them to the unit itself.
Overall, I'm fairly happy with it, but it could use some improvement.

I debated between this unit and the 4gb Phillips. They are about the same price, but the menu just looked easier to navigate on the RCA. I am pleased with my choice.
Pros:
Very easy to use with intuitive menu and software: rip and burn from the CD - no downloading to WinMedia or other program first. I loaded about 40 CDs in 2 hours (and still have t0ns of space left). Drop down menu on the device makes it easy to find what you are looking for once the music is loaded. Sturdy with a nice soft case. Excellent sound quality - earbuds that are included in the case are good, and when I plugged in my regular headphones, the music sounded clearer than listening to a CD on the bookcase stereo. Radio topped off the usefulness of this unit. (NPR, on the go!)

When you turn off the player, it will restart at the last place you left off listening. Also, has an automatic shut down feature (you choose after the # of minutes inactive) when paused or set aside. Great power saving option.

Cons:
No clock and date - would be nice to be able to check the time on the player while I am on a walk.
Cannot skip through the alphabetical listing of the song titles - you have to scroll through to get to a particular song (although you can get to it faster by looking for the album name first.)
When recording from the hard drive of your computer, the unit utilizes the virtual memory as a cache; I had to wait for my computer to free up some virtual memory space when I initially started recording. Confused me at first, but once the computer and device synced up, all was easy!

I am currently on my 2nd RCA 4 GB MP3 Player. The first one got stuck in the initializing phase and couldn't get past it. I returned it to the store (product not purchased from Amazon.com) and thankfully they let me trade it for a new one.

I've had my 2nd MP3 player for about a month now and it is working properly.

The sound quality seems pretty good. It's very user friendly. The ear buds are comfortable and you can have a conversation with someone while listening to music if the volume is set on 1 which by the way is quite loud and clear with most of my mp3's.

I have not used the other features as much so I can't tell you about the picture, video, radio or voice recording. I probably would have been just as happy with a device that only let you listen to music but I may use the other features in the future.