Home > Consumer Reviews > Insignia Pilot with Bluetooth NS-4V24 - Digital player / radio - flash 4 GB - WMA, Ogg, MP3, WMAPro, protected WMA (DRM 10) - video playback - display: 2.4"

I bought the 8gb version about a year ago based on features only. I was a little skeptical about straying from more established players from Cowon, Apple, iRiver, Creative and others but took the plunge. I've owned two iPods, a Rio Karma, Rio Carbon(s), an iRiver something, Audible Otis, Rio 500 and several others.

The Pilot has them all beat on features and most on performance. You won't find a player that 'does it all' like the Pilot. As a long time Audible subscriber, the Pilot is perfect. Hard and soft bookmarking, timer and plenty of storage. With an sdhc slot, storage can be increased by at least 2X. Better yet, the Pilot integrates the card completely so you don't have to mess around with annoying navigation from one drive to the next.

Sound quality is a solid B to B+. CNET just chose it as one of their top five audiophile mp3 players. They tested the players with an audio analyzer to eliminate personal bias. Music sounds every bit as dynamic as my iPods (a 2nd and 4th gen).

Battery life is a pretty standard ~20 hours. The FM tuner is surprisingly sensitive. I'm actually able to walk around outside without an unreasonable amount of static or drop out. It's an RDS tuner. You can see song and artist info on the screen from compatible radio stations. You can record FM or from an external, line-out source. There's a video output(or secondary headphone jack depending on how you set it up). I haven't tried it but apparently you can load a video in the Pilot and then connect it to a television.

The Pilot is a ums device so you can plug it in, drag and drop, no drivers required. I bounce back and forth between a mac and pc so having a player that is seen by both as a mass storage device is very convenient. Standard mini usb plug too. No proprietary cables. Video playback isn't a priority for me but I tried a couple videos and in spite of a small screen, was pleasantly surprised by the quality. Very smooth and about 30 fps.

It has stereo bluetooth which I don't use but it would be handy if your car stereo has bluetooth connectivity. Mine doesn't unfortunately. Fast forwarding is audible which makes it much easier to find what you're looking for. The Pilot has proven to be virtually scratch proof. I never use a case and always carry it in a pocket. I've had it in a pocket with keys, change and grit. No scratches. Pretty impressive. It supports several different formats but I use mp3, wmv and aa exclusively. It can display jpg's and txt files as well.

It comes with a pretty good video conversion program but I use Handbrake, a free, open source program that is a lot more capable. The only downside to this player is a somewhat less polished feel than class leaders from Cowon, Creative and Apple. Not to overstate it but the controls could be smoother. The jog wheel is a little cheap feeling and the bookmarking button is a three way design that can prevent a smooth bookmark sometimes. I wish they would have used a single button.

Another nice feature with bookmarking is that when you delete a file with bookmarks, the bookmarks are deleted too. Seems like a no-brainer but my Rio would retain the bookmarks even when the file was deleted. On the other hand, the Rio would let me overwrite bookmarks automatically so old bookmarks weren't much of an annoyance. The Pilot doesn't do this so if you run out of bookmarks, you have to manually remove them or the file to make room for more. Fortunately, you can do all this with the Pilot without having to connect it to your computer. The Pilot has proven to be completely reliable with almost daily use. The only glitch is occasionally (twice I think) having to reset it. Both times it locked with Audible files. I'm willing to give the Pilot the benefit of the doubt as I've had issues with Audible files before with other players. Fortunately, resetting this is a snap. Simply pull back the power switch for about ten seconds and you're done. My Rio Carbon needed a small paperclip inserted into a tiny hole. Not convenient if you're outside without a small paperclip handy.

Bottom line, if you want all the bases covered, this is an excellent choice. Probably the best choice in my opinion. This player has to be the most feature rich dap out there. If you only want to listen to music, this may not be for you. If features, Audible, podcasts, audiobooks, video, file management, expandibility, sound quality, intuitive controls and reliability are priorities, the Pilot is a great buy. The 8gb Pilot frequently goes on sale for $99.00 at the Best Buy website so keep an eye out. Great value, outstanding performance.

Outstanding performance on all levels and loaded to the gills with every feature you could possibly want. At long last someone finally did it right! The only two things this little wonder doesn't do is voice record, or tune in AM radio.

Sound quality: Outstanding! So good in fact that you may notice some of the imperfections of your recordings/files that you may not have noticed in your other player/s. It's output is very full and clean across the entire sound spectrum. The 5 band user adjustable EQ is quite effective as it actually has some gain instead of just attenuating every band that's not maxed out as many others do. Also worth nothing is that it has the best S/N ratio of any PMP currently available.

Line in recording: Duel VU meters and an adjustable recording level as well as the ability to code in CD quality PCM (as well as several levels of WMA) make for a recordist's dream come true.

Battery: Decent run time. It's also user replaceable, but not that easy to replace on the fly as the battery has wires and a plug and the access door is held on with a small screw.

FM: More sensitive and selective than most other PMPs. Pulls in fringe stations with ease. Local stations do not overload at all. Less than great signals can be cleaned up do to the ability to manually switch to mono. Setting and recalling presets (as well as recording) is a breeze. It even displays RDS information form stations that transmit it.

Video: Good picture quality and sound. Video line out works well and has about the same quality as a well recorded on good tape EP or LP mode VHS..i.e not the best, but not half bad.

Photo: again good quality reproduction. Adjustable sideshow options...I just wish you could separate the photos into different groups. Perhaps in the next firmware update?

Folder browsing: Yessssssssssssssssss!

SD card slot: A nice touch. IMHO much better to deal with than MicroSD....and yes it will read SDHC (available up to 32 GB at this point in time!).

Bluetooth: Ok... so this I don't exactly get the point of. Why bother with wireless on a portable device? Nevertheless it's capable if you so desire for whatever reason to use the feature. Haven't tried it myself.

Yes, I could just go on and on about it, but I'm sure you get the point by now. I really like it a lot....like ya couldn't tell...8)

I purchaed my first Insignia Pilot about 6 months ago. I also have a 60 Gig iPod Classic with 10,000 songs and all my photos on it but the Insignia is my choice 95% of the time. I like it so much that I got one for each member of my family for Christmas this year. My girls (10 and 12) both have about 800 songs on the internal drive and I converted all our family videos (over 100 hours of family memories) on to an 8 Gig card for the external slot. I also got them extra 8 Gig cards so they could view new videos or movies so whenever I download some new video clips of their favorite artists for them, they use one player with 2 sets of headphones and sing along with the videos together. The older one uses regular plug in headphones and controls the player while the younger one uses the Bluetooth headphones so she can dance around the room while she sings. What a great gift for them huh?

My wife got one for Christmas as well but hers has all our family pictures on it as well as several audio books that she can listen to while she drives to work. She is actually able to plug the player into our car stereo so she can drive and listen without using the headphones. She also uses hers to record meetings at work so she can take notes on them later if needed as well as making short messages to her self when she doesn't want to key things into her palm. Again, a very good gift for the wife, even though she doesn't ever use it to listen to music.

Some of my favorite features of the player are the removable SD card (which enables us to share cards and keep rotating music and videos), The Bluetooth capabilities (so we can listen to music while running, dancing, working out or any activity that needs wireless headphones) and the multiple media functions of course (FM Radio, MP3 Music, Video, Pictures, Voice Recording and Audio Books). However, my FAVOURITE feature of the Insignia is the FOLDER BROWSER!!!

As I said before, my girls have about 800 songs on their players and the music library is rather confusing as some of the files have numbers on them and are hard to locate. When they use the folder browser and go into their music folder, then can select certain songs or entire albums and add them to their on the go list so they can play them over and over again. I also used windows media player to create a playlist for my own system with about 500 of my fav's so I can just hit shuffle on there or play them in the order I created the list if I want to go with the flow so to speak. I have an 8 gig with a 16 gig card in my player so I have over 5000 songs to keep track of so that folder browser is used all the time. My wife uses the browser to jump to the year or month she wants to view when sharing pictures with her friends. The screen is nice and big (bigger than my iPod) and there is also a zoom button for smaller images.

I work at a night club and have been showing my Insignia to all my friends at the club. It's an easy sell for me (especially since I have such a great collection of music and videos on mine as well as the Bluetooth headphones) so I have sold several of these players to my co-workers and customers at the bar. One guy even had me sell his iPod on Amazon for him because he stopped using it when he bought the Insignia from me for about a third of the cost of the iPod! So I am constantly searching for Insignia Pilots to re-sell to friends and on Amazon as well. I have been getting open box, crushed box or players with minor cosmetic flaws on sale and actually making a few bucks turning them over. The money is a nice bonus but I am really in it to share this awesome product with my friends so they can enjoy using it as much as my family and I do.
Oh, I forgot to add that I recently discovered that the line in jack is great for ripping my cassette tapes right from my boombox. I was a DJ in my younger days and taped most of my air shift's. The tapes will oxidize in the near future but the digital files will last forever. Just one more use for this fantastic little device.

After reading the other positive reviews on Amazon as well as reading the article comparing the sound quality of a handful of DAPs - I decided to buy a used one here.

The MP3 and video playback are great, the software that compresses and re-sizes the videos for playback on the pilot functions well. The Menus are a little less intuitive than an iPod, but this little guy does far more.

One of the most surprising functions is the FM tuner - I'm a radio broadcast engineer, and I expected the built-in tuner to be as bad or worse than all the other junk out there; fortunately I was wrong. It's not as good as a typical automotive tuner, but for its size and antenna( headphone cord) this thing rocks. RDS functions well when in range, and the sound quality is OK.

Despite the CNET review of sound quality, I personally think the iPod sounds better. Signal to noise sounds as advertised, but something just sounds less dynamic than its Apple competitor. When it comes to audio, there's a lot to it than analysis by numbers.

Line - in recording is OK. It appears that gain control has to be done from the setup screen - a real pain if you want to adjust while recording. Records in WMA and WAV. It works, but it's probably not the best A/D converter you've ever heard.

I still give it 5 stars, since most people won't know the difference in the sound quality (I'm just picky). Nothing has a feature set like this thing for the price. Find one and get a good deal on this underrated gem. I find myself listening to the radio more than MP3s, since the tuner actually WORKS and has some amount of SELECTIVITY!

After dishing out a few hundred bucks for my wifes nano, I became frustrated with having to transfer anything and everything through the proprietary i-tunes, so I vowed that I would not get an i-pod. I started looking at Sansa Views since they play the h.264 format, are feature rich (more than i-pods), but were still on the expensive side. Then I cam across the Insignia Pilot. After reading the specs, I couldn't believe what they were going for. So I picked up 20 of them for about $30 each. I kept a few , gave a few out as gifts to family and resold the rest. I had to send a few back because they were defective, but got back some good ones. I use one for my movies, hard core music and photos, and the other one for audio books. (yea yea, I know I don't need two of them ,but what the heck.)

Now for the review:

The Pros: Features, Price, not an i-pod
The darn thing is feature rich. The FM radio works very well. It has two line outs - so I can share what I'm watching with someone else. Or one of the line outs acts as a line-in - perfect for my dad who wants to record from his 8-track or record player or mic. I purchased a set or bluetooth headphones, works like a charm. The sound quality is very good. Movies look just as good as my wifes nano. I was able to throw the SD card from a camera with dead batteries into the player to view the photos for visiting in-laws - awesome feature. I love the drag-and-drop / included Archsoft media converter/ Windows media player/ real player/ win amp.... you get the idea - there's plenty of ways to get stuff into the player. Do you need to get junk from different computers? No problem, just hook it up and drag-and-drop it. Unlike Apple that doesn't let you take your friends stuff from their computer to add to your existing play list.

Now for the Cons:
I filled a 8GB SDHC card with movies - they work great but every once in a while the sound is slightly off - simple fix is to pause the movie and press play and the sound syncs up again where you paused it. That doesn't happen if you have the movie in the on-board memory.
Get a screen protector of some sorts because it scratches easily - like most players.
It does not play H.264 MPEG4 (i-pod), not that I care about the quality or anything, it's just that I already had a ton of movies converted for my wife's i-pod- easy fix - I threw them through the included Arcsoft media converter and converted them into WMV - looks just as good.
If you don't use the Arcsoft Media Converter - you better get the conversion size right in whatever else you're using or this player will not show the movie - easy fix - use the included software - it's fast.

Overall:
I don't only recommend this player, I've sold a bunch of them to people who saw mine and said "I want one of those!" Don't get me wrong, I think the i-pod is a great player, but it's overpriced and I hate that i-tunes is the only way to get things in and out. The only thing i-pod has over this player is that you can throw in any size MP4 movie converted in any which way and it'll play it, and it never gets out of sync with the sound. I consider it a minor issue when the Insignia was nearly 1/6 the price of the nano.