I recently ordered two Full Metal Platinum 1.8" 1 GB MP4 players from UXcell. Having owned several iPods and a SanDisk Sansa, I was not sure what to expect from a low cost clone. The order was placed on 2/13/07 and received on 2/22/07. The packaged arrived in a plain brown envelope. Packed inside were two small boxes that they must use for all of their orders.



The contents included the player, driver/software CD, user manual, headphones, wall charger, and USB cable.



Construction:

The player is not at the same construction level of a real iPod Nano. This is to be expected. The player, however, is very well made considering the price point. I am very impressed with the screen. The colors are vivid and the display is bright and crisp. The "click wheel" could be better. The center button sometimes slides under the white ring part of the wheel. This was easily fixed by removing the "click wheel" (pressing and turning the wheel counter clockwise), then using tape to secure the center button to the outer ring. The player features a 3.5mm headphone jack and a standard mini USB connection. The top of the player contains the on/off switch. The aluminum housing is solid and has a nice feel in your hand. There is some roughness in the construction detail on the end caps (Minor issues for me).






Usage:

I plugged the FMP into my Linux box and mounted the player as a USB storage device. I then copied a couple of CD's worth of OGG's to it. Unmounted the player then plugged in the included headphones. They are not the greatest headphones on the planet but get the job done. I used my Apple iPod headphones to test the player. The sound of the player was very good. The highs were crisp and the bass was clean. Overall a very capable music player.

Now off to Windows XP to load up some MP3's, WMA's and some pictures. Windows immediately recognized the player and assigned it a drive letter. Some MP3's, WMA's, and JPEG's were copied to the device. They played just as good as the OGG files did. The pictures all looked very good on the display. After playing through the various music files, it was time to check out the video playback.

As I was waiting for the FMP's to arrive, I was busy doing my homework on the AMV format and working out conversion techniques. I had already converted some animation and some TV shows. Having been an avid KVCD enthusiast a while back, I was busy brushing up on my AviSynth and Virtual Dub. My conversion was as follows: Converted DVD video to high resolution Divx. This was then frameserved into Virtual Dub using AviSynth (AviSynth is a frameserver that will allow you to process video instantly). Virtual Dub was used to save the output from the high res Divx into a 160x128 avi at 12 fps with 22050 Khz mono audio. I then ran it through AMV Convert Tool to get it into the AMV format. The result was very smooth playback on the FMP. The colors were bright and the animation (Clone Wars Season II) was fluid. The live action TV shows looked very good as well. All in all I must say that the playback was very good.

The battery life was a little lacking but still acceptable. I was able to get around 3 hours of continuous video playback with the sound at a moderate level. Music playback was around 6-7 hours. Charging the FMP through the USB port of my computer was typically slow. Using the included charger was considerably faster.

Final Thoughts:

For the price, this is an amazing player. Good looks, great features and a very nice screen make this a tough player to beat. I am thoroughly impressed by what I received. The FMP from UXcell is a solid device that I would recommend to anyone looking for an MPx player. My kids love them. They haven't put them down since getting them. I was so impressed, I ordered one for myself.

Great review! I love the pictures too. Almost makes me want to buy one for myself, but I've sworn of mp4 players for now. Have too many already.

Yes nice review, I orded the silver 1Gig 1.8, should be here this week.

I have a real ipod black nano 1st generation, and I refuse to buy the new one because of apple's "black Tax" they only offer the black nano in 8Gb, I guess when they are not selling anymore they will offer the black in the 2Gb model like they did with the first gen 1gig nano, besides, they will need all the 2x 4 gig chips for the iphone...

I also am waiting to get my hands on the second gen shuffle clone. 256 megs is enough for me, 1 gig is too much, and the original shuffle clip is way too week, I tried it and it fell of my jacket...

I also reviewed the 1.8" 1GB FMP. Excellent review. Really great tip about fixing the clickwheel! (I know one member had this very problem). You must have a very good camera, because the pics are absolutely first rate!

Just my 2 1/2 year old HP 4.1 MP camera in macro mode. The trick is to take about 489,676,324 pics then choose the best 5 or 6!

Update:

When disconnecting the USB cable from the PC, the FMP sometimes resets itself. All settings (display type, LCD Dark mode, system time, etc.) are all reset back to factory defaults. I make sure to use the "Safely Remove Hardware" option in Windows, and unmount the device in Linux. This does not happen every time. It is random and follows no pattern. To avoid this, this is what I have done:

First, I use the "Safely Remove Hardware" option, then shut the player off. I then disconnect the USB cable.

I have tested this over and over and have not had it reset itself yet. This was happening on both of the FMP's. Both have firmware 9.1.50. Anyone else have this happen?

1 GB Black Full Metal Platinum 1.8"

Just received the player a few days ago from UXCell. Shipping was amazingly quick-from Hong Kong to Pennsylvania and in my hands in 5 days.

The player has a fairly solid build, under the quality of the iPod, but not that much. The middle button can slide under, as mentioned above, but doesn't happen too often and is very easy to fix.

The screen is bright and clear and I haven't experienced any problems with ghosting during video playback. The digital radio is CRYSTAL clear, and there are several options for recording radio. You can record to .wav or .mp3, and choose your bitrate from 68kbps to 384kbps. The built-in mic also records decent quality, and has a good pickup range.

The features all have persistence--meaning, if you shut off the player and are reading an ebook, it will retain the page you are on, the spot you were at on a video, the exact second of the song you were on, etc.

Regarding photos--it can automatically size a photo down to view on the screen--it doesn't rotate for different aspect ratios, however. I would recommend sizing them down yourself before transferring to save space, load time, and quality.

You can charge, transfer, or charge & listen/view at the same time. The nice thing about the usb cable is they are readily available and very cheap, so if something happens to the one included it is not a hassle to purchase another.

You can see from the images the placement of the different controls. For $39.99, I am very impressed by the quality and number of features packed into this device. Grade 9/10

Side note: The cd containing the software for converting had some scratches and didn't work. No problem--just search google for AMV Converter--this will have the video conversion tool you need. At least for windows, you don't need to install any drivers since it is used as a storage drive, much like a USB drive.

Excelent review. I've also ordered this mp4 player from UXCell and it's already at customs (need to send them the bill so they will send it to me and possibly charge me with tax). It's a 2GB pink valentine model for my girlfriend. She has birthday in march and I hope she will like it for a gift.

I've also have the Sennheiser CX 300 ear plug phones purchased over ebay. Hope they will work fine together.

Has anyone tried to change the firmware inside it? I would sure like to add Slovenian language to all the menus if possible.

Also can someone please take a screenshot of a turned on device. I would like to see how the menus look like .

I haven't tried to update the firmware yet, but there is an option to do that in the setup menu. There are two different styles of menu navigation-- one that has smaller icons across the bottom that let you see everything (radio, photo, video..etc), and a view that takes up the whole screen for each option.

The screen is hard to take pictures of, and I don't feel that pictures do it justice, as it is much crisper than it will appear--I'll try to upload some later today. The navigation may seem "confusing" at first--but it is really very simple once you understand how to use it.

Thank you for reply. I am starting to get the idea how the menu looks. But if you please could try and snap some images of menu and during song playback. I am guessing ID3 is fully supported? Wonder if menu translation is possible.

I've called the customs and they want me to send receipt for it so they can charge me of possible taxes.

Anyway, thank you again.

PS: Aha. You uploaded them. Sure looks nice! Emm. It trims long filenames to 8 chars with ~ sign or that was the actual filename?

demonstration video

I've uploaded a short video demonstration. The screen is very reflective, which isn't a problem when viewing, but it does make it difficult to take pictures of ....hopefully this will give you an idea, though.

the jasonm~ deal is the folder, because it allows basic file/folder structure.

the song name isn't actually cut off-because it scrolls it marquee style. Yes, it supports ID3 tag information (scrolls this along).

I found it extracted more information about my songs than i realized i had put on, so...

Nice video. Looks great. Hope my gf likes it. It's not that expensive so I might order one for myself .

Don't try to upgrade the firmware. The firmware version on these players is not yet compatible with the extraction/writing software. You may very well brick your FMP.

Great reviews delacerda and shopeda!

Love the screenshots, looks great and definately helps with the review.

Keep up the good work.