Opting for a personal music player today seems to be a meaningless since your smartphone can do it all. However, with your smartphone crying for enough juice to last through the day, would you want to put an additional load of playing music on it? I wouldn't, at least for now. My Smartphone itself lasts me around 8 hours, through my work and commute. Playing music during my morning workout, though essential, drains my smartphone of precious battery life. Hence a discrete music player is what I would prefer.
Transcend earlier introduced its ultra-portable music player, MP710, and it seems like we still have choices for cheaper, yet good quality music players out there. While the Apple and Sony products are great music players, their price tag is not as appealing to the masses. Here fits the Transcend MP710, which is a band for the buck.
The music player sports a 2-inch full-colour TFT screen, good enough for checking out the music tracks, and a few casual movies and photos. Right beneath the screen sits the function and control keys, for navigation, play/pause, locking/unlocking the device. On the bottom edge, the Transcend music player sports the charging port, and a headphone jack and a line-in jack for the microphone or an external source for recording. Additionally, a reset button is provided on the rear panel, incase you need to restore the settings. The music player is almost weightless and will fit easily in your palms, even if you have the tiniest of hands.
The Transcend MP710 music player comes bundled with a pair of earphones with removable earhook. The earhooks are a smart addition to the earphone as it immensely adds to a user’s comfort, especially during workouts and travelling. Two extra pair of earplug-caps in different sizes, a USB cable, an auxiliary cable and a lanyard also accompanies it.
The music player embraces an internal memory of 8GB, but sadly, it cannot be expanded further. Nonetheless, the 8GB storage allows you to store almost 2,000 songs in the device, which should suffice you around a week if you were to use it for a few hours daily. Other than audio, the MP710 player supports AVI videos, images, voice recordings, radio and a fitness tracker.
The music player can also be doubled as a memory stick—use it as a storage drive to tag along important files and stuff. It is compatible with both Windows and Mac OS X 10.5 and later. Transferring content in/out of the device is quite easy too; simply connect it to your PC and move content around how you do with a conventional USB pen drive.
Moving on to the performance, the Transcend MP710 music player is a fairly decent and highly economical replacement for an Apple iPod or alike—in fact, you could actually buy a handful MP710 players in the price of the iPod). The audio quality of this music player is appreciable for casual listening. The headphones that accompany the device are modestly fitting to their use as well. We tested the earphones by comparing its audio with the audio quality of Apple earphone with the same device. Although, the transcend earphones passed the test with fair grades, at high volumes, a crackle in the audio could be easily noticed. We could suggest you use a good quality earphones of your choice if needed.
On the ergonomics front, the Transcend MP710 performs just good. Though it sports a very handy form factor, it feels a bit too plasticky. In the age of multitouch displays, hitting on the plastic buttons feels quite old school, yet it is promising enough since the user interface is very minimalistic, and that's what's needed here.
Priced for an MRP of Rs 3,999, the player is available online at a street price of Rs 3,250. The MP710 music player is a decent device to put money on. The device is especially recommended for people who perpetually stay hooked to the music on their smartphones. Instead of draining out the smartphone battery and filling up its memory with your playlists, a separate music player is a better idea. Also, considering its compact and feather-light factor, it’s easy to carry around and operate. Therefore, unless you are an audiophile and are looking for high quality audio, the Transcend MP710 is a great alternative for casual entertainment on the move.
