Ibiza Rhapsody - Review

I wanted to write about this for a while now. The SVP of my company, Charlie Herrin presented me with this Linux based Personal Music Player . Before I go any further with my own experience of the product here is the list of awesome features of this player from Heir.

1) Rhapsody support
2) Wifi
3) FM Radio
4) Updatable skins via AirSkins
5) Web Browser
6) Video support (AOL)
7) Podcast

The player supports up to a max of 30GB which is quiet impressive. It can connect to any wi-fi network and stream rhapsody music on the fly.  You can store photos and the 2.5-inch LCD screen is very good to watch photos. You can transfer any format you want (my favorite is Youtube videos) using the Rhapsody software. The software actually encodes the videos so they are suitable for viewing in the player. There is no visible glitch when watching the videos mainly due to the linux kernel and the processor.

If you are a Comcast customer like me you can download the Real Rhapsody software for free and listen to up to 25 songs for free. You can actually enter your rhapsody information in the device and listen to songs straight from the device without having to actually download and transfer them. If you have a Rhapsody All subscription then you can download as many songs as you want directly using the device or transfer songs from your computer. The songs will be licensed and you will have to connect the device the computer every 30 days to make sure they don’t expire.

The AirSkins feature is really good as it gives you lot of skins you can choose from and most of the skins are actually very easy to use and pleasant.

The only thing that can work against this player is the appearance. You will either love it or hate it. The User Interface could be better but once you are used it, the experience is not all that bad. The battery is the killer though as it drains very fast. The player actually ships without any equalizer support but the latest update seems to have fixed the problem. The quality of music is not all that great but I think the player works very well with Bose Headphones. There is not too much bass from the player and any typical Bose speaker enhances the bass at Zero to have a good audio experience in the car.

Overall the player is worth the price ( around 250$’s) as it is packed with a lot of cool and useful features.