Mpio FL100 Multi Format Review

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Mpio FL100 Multi Format
4.8 stars
Average rating for this product is: 4.8 out of 5

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jennanemone's Review of Mpio FL100 Multi Format MP3 Player

4th Jan 2004

Overall Rating

5 stars
  • Value for money
    4.5 stars
  • Sound Quality
    5 stars
Good Points

- beautiful. better looking than an iPod.
- terrific sound.
- functionality out the wazoo.


Bad Points

- mirrored face gets more fingerprints than the LAPD.
- small enough to lose.
- user's manual written in ridiculously broken english.


General Comments

What a jewel. The MPIO FL100 shines like a gem--literally. With a mirrored face and a bright blue backlit screen, this delicate, lightweight MP3 player looks eerily like a buff Zippo lighter from the future. It's no wonder this beautiful gadgetry won design awards in 2003.

Of course, it's not all a matter of looks. The FL100 has terrific sound, a voice recorder (also records .wavs from its FM receiver, good lord), and features an option totally foreign to me, called "Study Mode," which plays mp3s slowly so that one may learn the words to a song at his or her own pace. Sounds like I'll be performing a karaoke "Die Da" for my friends at last!

Perhaps what sold me most of all on the MPIO FL100--besides the capability of taking an SD memory card in addition to the memory already internally stored--is its utter smallness. While I realize some listeners like a buff, durable, hard-to-lose MP3 player that doubles as an external hard drive (which the FL100 might or might not actually do; I should double-check as to its status as a potential storage device), I frankly want an MP3 player to be tiny, flashy, and only for MP3s. The MPIO FL100 suits all this and more. It can be worn "necklace style" or on the arm, or frankly left in your pocket, and you'll never know it's there. That's awesome.

The bad: the user's manual is, at times, very difficult to make sense of. Fortunately, the FL100's menu navigation is extraordinarily comprehensive, and the manual, when not used for reference, makes a cute conversation piece.

The MPIO is also not a gadget you want to throw at walls. Given its size and light weight, you might think it will float to the earth like a feather. It will not. It will break.

In short, the MPIO FL100 is not really a child's MP3 player, or even an active adult's MP3 player. But I've always been an indoors girl, and I like my electronics shiny. Which means I personally give the FL100 my highest recommendation.

(As of Jan 2004, the 256 MB player was priced about US$180.)

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