Neuros Review

An anonymous reader writes "MP3newswire.net has just posted a lengthy review of the Neuros digital music portable. Just recently the company announced native Linux support for synchronizing the Neuros and we all know that Ogg Vorbis support is promised in the near future, so the unit is drawing a lot of interest. For the most part they liked the player, though they found the unit to be relatively big and heavy for a new generation portable. They also found the file transfer interface to be both impressive and glitchy."

Comments

Ogg Vorbis Support

[emptybody]

If they can comeout with a timeline for ogg support and the price is competitive I will buy one.

Another recent review

[blamanj]

...is from USA today. Bottom line, Neuros doesn't match up to the iPod, at least not yet.

Expensive

[daserver]

It's pretty expensive on amazon. 128mb for 240$ and 20gb for $380. You can get an Apple Ipod 10gb for 280$

How's it compare to the Archos

[BFaucet]

What advantages does this have over the Archos player? It's cheaper, has the same amount of drive space, and plays video.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/mp3/5b44/deta il /

Still offering a discount...

[Emmettfish]

Hey, folks. If you like what you see in the Neuros, drop me a line at emmett (at) neurosaudio.com, I'll give you a discount that you can use on the website should you want to buy one.

Also, drop me your mailing address, too; I might be able to send you extra goodies. Don't worry, I'll make sure your E-mail address and mailing address are kept private. Thanks!

Emmett Plant
Community Outreach
Neuros Audio

I'll buy one when...

[Demanche]

They let you replace the damn batterys ;)

Until then I have my trusty AM/FM radio.

MyFi

[Midajo]

MyFi is Neuros' name for the novel FM broadcast feature on the player. Using this feature, one can set the unit to transmit music files remotely through an empty FM frequency on any radio. The advantages are self-evident for anyone who has ever user a cassette adapter to connect their CD player to a car radio, and it is one of the most innovative and convenient features of the Neuros.

Wow. And wow. This is an amazingly cool idea, and not confined to the car.

Re:These harddrive mp3 players cost too much

[Anonymous Coward]

The iPod actually has a 1.8" drive in it. I don't know if this is still true, but when the original 5 GB iPod came out, the retail version of the hard drive they were using, just by itself, cost $399. Same price as the iPod. So basically when you bought an iPod, you bought the hard drive and got all the guts for free.

The iPod is priced right where it oughta be. Sure, we'd all like 'em to be cheaper, but if ifs and buts were candy and nuts... how does that saying go?

claimed "iPod killer" features, no proof

[SuperBanana]

I noticed that at least twice they claim the thing has features to beat the iPod:

"...the Neuros offers features not only unavailable in the iPod..."

"The Neuros has features that could make it an iPod killer..."

It turns out that the only "killer" feature I could come across was "HiSi"(records 30 seconds of radio, then tries to fingerprint it and match the fingerprint to a central database), and the reviewers found it thought random noise was "Benditos Malditos". It thought a rap song was Van Halen. It only managed to recognize two popular songs- and what's the point? Everyone knows the titles of popular songs on the radio. That's a "killer feature"? Nevermind that you're handing them all sorts of listening habit data.

Oh, what's that you say? "It has a radio, that's a killer feature!" Um, if you've got 30GB of MP3s, and you can get the very latest songs off iTunes music service for a buck apiece, why would you want to listen to the radio? Maybe for news or something while riding the commuter train, but you can get practically microscopic FM receivers and just plug the headphones into that if you wanna listen to the radio. It's not about what you think is "cool", it's about what the consumer wants- and my guess is that Apple found most people didn't care about an FM receiver. Can't argue with them, the iPod's STILL the fastest selling player.

What's that you say? "Ogg Vorbis is a killer feature!" Most of the world doesn't even KNOW what Ogg-Vorbis is. The rest don't want to bother reencoding all their CDs, and you can't buy Ogg Vorbis songs ANYWAY. Ogg Vorbis, for now, is moot...and with AAC, do you seriously think Ogg Vorbis will ever be anything more than a plaything of the Super Nerds?

Sorry, this thing is a non-contender for the iPod. It's enormous, heavy, has a completely unoriginal design, and various issues in implementation, like the song title display problem they mention. The iPod is elegant, small, lightweight, and has a simple, good UI(not to mention, read-only address book/calendar stuff). Ogg Vorbis and a radio aren't going to make up for that.

Re:claimed "iPod killer" features, no proof

[Monkeyman334]

The feature that would make me choose a Nueros over other players is the ability to transmit FM radio. My car has no options, and only has an AM/FM radio. It also has this stupid rounded cover so I'd have to do some cutting to get a standard size cd player in there, and pay for installation. I don't even have a tape player, so I can't use a minijack to tape converter with an mp3 player. With the nueros I can just have it next to my radio, have it transmit, and I'm happy.

PS, I'm big on Xiph, don't trust me

Re:Just make it work

[2nd Post!]

So... why not get an iPod?

You're willing to spend a bit more, and you don't have to deal with any product design issues...

And it just works. FAT32 iPod.

DIY
GTKPod

Re:lot of interest?

[Lifewolf]

...but nobody wants to re-encode all their CDs and stuff.

Exactly!

Some time ago I ripped my CDs to Ogg on an external, 40GB USB drive that I've been using at home and at work. Now I'd like to replace that USB drive with a portable player so I can also listen to my files in my car and when I'm mowing the lawn.

I'm not interested in re-ripping my 650+ CDs into a format I don't like as much, so I'm waiting for a decent, Ogg-supporting device.

Rio with OGG and 100Mbit ethernet...

[altman]

On the other hand, the Rio Pearl (though it's not shipping yet) does OGG, MP3, WMA, FLAC and WAV. And crossfading. And parametric EQ. And the battery lasts much longer. And it's very small and light. And it has 100Mbit ethernet (as well as USB2.0) with a built in webserver and Java music management apps for linux users.

What would you prefer?

See http://www.dapreview.com for more info.

Note: I'm biased. I'm working on it.

iPod Sacrifices Features, Affordability For Size

[meehawl]

The iPod is elegant, small, lightweight, and has a simple, good UI(not to mention, read-only address book/calendar stuff).

Yes, iPods are smaller than many other disk-based MP3 players, but they achieve this compactness by sacrificing features and expandability. They cost around 50% more than equivalently featured MP3 hard drive players. They have no digital line-in recording, no mic facility, no FM radio, and no easy way for users to replace or expand the device's batteries or hard drive. Unlike most of the new generation media players they also feature no MPEG 4 video playback or recording. They have a weird, all-or-nothing metadata approach to storing music that forces you to use the moderately featured iTunes freeware to utilise the iPod to its fullest instead of being able to use some other full-featured, non-freeware media jukebox software. Their battery life is shorter than (AFAIK) all other disk-based HD MP3 players. I gather from the iPod usergroups that the new-gen iPods are getting between 5-8 hours of playtime, and this is with new, fully conditioned batteries.

On the plus side, they do look cute, and fit in most pockets easily. Well done to Apple for figuring that a large proportion of potential MP3 player buyers are not interested in advanced features, and will pay a significant premium for compactness and a simple, constrained interface.

In the 90s, AOL similarly spotted that they could capture a large proportion of online users by offering a simple, integrated system. I think iPods are "training wheel" MP3 players for many people. It remains to be seen whether Apple can manage their new users' experience growth and release more compelling iPods using latest technologies so that these maturing users graduate to more fully-featured iPods and do not desert to other manufacturer's media player offerings.

How many crowds are there?

[fm6]

Oh come on. They're both hard-disk-based music players. The first question everybody will ask is, "should I get this instead of some existing jukebox?" It only makes sense to compare it to an existing model. If the Neuros fare badly in the comparison, it's because it's got a lot of problems, not because the comparison was unfair.

I find it rather interesting that MP3Newswire gushed on and on about all the cool features, but said very little about how well they worked. Whereas USA Today reported various problems in detail. Is somebody sucking up to the manufacturer in order to get a freebie?