Iomega HipZip MP3 Player 80Mb

Amazon Customer Reviews

(5 out of 5)

The HipZip -- Rockin' Value For Money...

I wasn't particularly interested in acquiring an MP3 player until... the time came when I was tired of my cassette player chewing up tapes, and tired of trying to stuff my portable CD player into an ever-ripping pocket. Having had an abortive flirtation with an el-cheapo MP3 player from PC World, I checked out what else was on offer.

For those of you for whom quantity is more important than portability, I'd recommend the Creative Labs Jukebox - it's got a healthy onboard 6GB drive for those who need to take their entire collection from one place to another without too much fuss. I also checked out the Diamond Rio range, but was disappointed by the paltry on-board memory - a mere 32MB. Further investigation with other makes revealed this to be a major drawback with most other makes and models; in order to go on the road with a decent selection of tracks, one would need to lash out several hundred pounds just on memory cards, just to be able to play eight or nine tracks at reasonable quality. All of a sudden, my dodgy old Walkman started to look very appealing again...

And then along came a review of the HipZip in the ever-dependable T3 mag. First item to catch my eye was Iomega's name -- as a Mac/PC graphics and video artist, I've long been familiar with Iomega's excellent portable storage and backup drives. Secondly was the use of Iomega's own Pocketzip (or "Clik") disks as the medium for music storage: they're only 40MB each, but come in at a mere £10 (approx) in price -- the equivalent memory card would clock in at something like £120. Ouch.

A nicely-moulded casing ensures good grip, and easy access to the control buttons whose functions are displayed on a nicely-sized screen, which also shows you the name of the track and the artist performing it. Perhaps most importantly of all, there's a very decent onboard selection of graphic equalizer presets (with the option to create your own) to get the most out of a track encoded at, say, 128MB. I was personally astonished at the quality of the sound output -- apart from the Rio and the Handspring players, sound quality seems to be the main stumbling point of MP3 players in general, with output ranging from the murky to the downright unlistenable. None of that with the HipZip -- treat yourself to a pair of in-ear 'phones like the Sony Digitals (approx £18) and you're away... simply plug in to your PC or Mac with the supplied USB cable after installing the so-simple-a-baby-could-do-this software, and you're away.

The current packaging also gives you a protective wallet, a pair of headphones (best replaced immediately - see above), USB connectivity and (depending on supply) four PocketZip disks totalling 160MB of space to play around with. Further disks can easily be ordered via computer shops or Dixons' Partmaster service (check in shops for details).

Add all this to the fact that the firmware can easily be updated to handle WMA and LiquidAudio files as well as the venerable MP3, and this is a future-proof and thoroughly to-die-for piece of kit. Car owners should get the stereo adapter as well, to output the HipZip's audio through the in-car hi-fi. Topping all this off is cross-platform PC-to-Mac-and-back-again compatibilty, and the important fact that the PocketZip disks can also be used to cart around your important graphics and ideas files, should you require. Lovely.

An utter joy to play music on whilst bustling about, the HipZip gets my top vote in all departments. Go for it today. You seriously won't regret it.

- Tony Luke, U.K.

(2 out of 5)

It eats disks

I was initially very impressed with the positive reviews for this product both here and on Amazon.com and had decided that this was the portable music player to suit all my needs. However the very same day I purchased my Hipzip it swallowed one of my Clik! disks and promptly broke. The Iomega manual and website offer nothing in the way of troubleshooting stuck disks apart from the advice "If normal eject procedure fails, try again". I did. It didn't help.

The Iomega support forums also had at least one other customer complaining about the issue of stuck disks, and it appears to be a fault in the manufacturing process whereby the little "nubs" on the disks snap off inside the machine. Buyers beware!!!

(5 out of 5)

GREAT!!!

This is definetly the best player I have come across. I was bought the hipzip as a present and was worried about the cost of memory cards. But i couldn't belive it when I saw the price of Clik! discs. This is THE player to buy. Cheap storage, Anti-Skip, Good quality and really easy to use. The best mp3 player there is!!!

(4 out of 5)

A good player but........

This is a good player and the disks are a great idea. My one complaint is that for the money I would have expected better headphones

(5 out of 5)

This is a life upgrade

Forget minidisk, portable cd and flash memory based portatble this wins hand down. This player is so easy to use, similar to using a zip drive, u just drag and drop mp3s or wmas to the drive and thats it! It lightning quick uploading the songs and the sound quality is comparable to cheaper cd players ive heard. u may think 40mb is not a lot, but its enough for 16 tracks in 96kb wma format and this player excels playing wma files. If u make wma direct from cd or a 256kb mp3 quality, then wmas sounds better than 128mp3 on this player, espically on the drums and bass. Guess what else it can do? u can use it to ferry files back and foward between pcs, with the little usb cable and no software required for windows me or 2000. U can store whaterver u like on the discs.

It goes up to 10 hours before needed a recharge. and it can play ANY wma format,so you can put audio books on it 6 hours longs if u want to. THIS IS THE MOST FLEXIBLE PORTABLE DIGITAL MUSIC PLAYER ON THE MARKET. Just make sure u do the simple flash upgades and buy a decent set of headphones, my 15 quid panasonics i have are a massive impovement on the foul el cheapo part that is supplied. One last thing it's designed for heaphones and sounds great with them, but if use the headphone port as a line out on am amp the quality is noticable poorer. Clicks discs are so small and wiegh nothing. if u think a minidisk is small this is half the size and 3 times thinner. One last thing, someone please make a car kit for this baby so i can use it in my car just think of the advantages of that!