RCA RD2850 Jukebox 20GB MP3 Player

Function over form

Posted Dec 1, 2005 - I bought one of these refurbished for a little over a hundred dollars and for that price, it's a great deal. The 20gb capacity allows me to store practically all of my music. I currently have 3700+ files and I'm only half full (most files are 96kbs or 128kbs WMA files). It's great having all that music on hand. I like the fact that I can use the player as a portable hard drive (it's mass storage compliant), and that I can use Windows Media Player (WMP) to manage and sync my music. The USB2.0 connection is plenty fast. I initially sent 7gb of music to the player in about 40 minutes. I've been incrementally adding 10-20 CDs since then and WMP automatically syncs just the music I've added in less than 5 minutes. The included software is useful for profiling the unit (separating the music into artist, album, genre, year, etc) so you can browse by ID3 tags. You can also search for the music by file tree/folders and play directly from them. The only difference is that the autoresume feature doesn't fully work in this mode. It will either resume from the beginning of the song (no biggie) or forget where it was all together (somewhat of a pain). If you're playing music via ID3 tags, it does a much better job with the autoresume. The unit can profile itself, but it takes longer and doesn't seem to do as good a job at correctly sorting the tags. Using the included software and profiling via USB connection gives much better (and faster) results. The other included program, Lyra DJ, will automatically generate playlists, but it only works with mp3's, so I haven't been able to test it. The controls aren't that intuitive, but they work okay. The large control on the front allows you to navigate and select, but the play button is on the side, along with a few other functions. It works, but it's not great if you have it in your pocket and trying to blindly control it. The screen is large and easy to read, and it gives you a lot of information about what you're listening to. The unit also plays and records FM radio, though I've yet to really use it. I just know it works, can't really say how well it works. My unit came with a case which is sort of bulky, but gives good protection and allows you access to all the controls. The earphones are the "over the ear" type and sound okay, but I ditched them for a pair of Philips earplugs. You get a cassette adapter (for those of you that still have a cassette player in your car) so you can take all your tunes with you. You also get a USB cable and both a car charger and wall charger. All in all you get everything you'd need for using it in just about all the situations you'd face day to day. One note about buying refurbished - the one I received was refurbished by a third party, and supported by a 6 month third party warranty. So far, I haven't had any problems with that, but most refurbished products I've previously purchased were from the original manufacturer. Again, no difference yet, I just wanted to point that out to people. To summarize, this is a great bargain for just over a hundred. If you start to get up to two hundred, there may be other units to consider, though some of the features here aren't available on anyother unit, AFAIK.

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