Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2006/06/16/jvc_aleno_xa-f57/

JVC Alneo XA-F57 'basic' MP3 player

Low in features, but not in price

By Lars-Goran-Nilsson

Posted in Personal Tech, 16th June 2006 11:44 GMT

Review JVC isn't the first company that springs to mind when shopping for an MP3 player, although I'd happily consider many of its other products.

The Alneo range of players consists of two models, the XA-F57 at 512Mb and the XA-F107 at 1GB. It's seems strange to launch such low capacity players when the company's competitors are starting at 1GB...

Both models come in white, silver, blue, pink or red.

My first impression of the Alneo was that it was a "girly" MP3 player, it's just something about the choice of colours and the design. However, this is a matter of taste and there are far worse looking MP3 players out there.

JVC_Alneo_XA-F57

Features wise, the XA-F57 is fairly basic compared to most of the Taiwanese and Korean players you can pick up for quite a small amount of money. There's no FM radio, nor any voice recording options, but at least it has a line input, so you can record directly to it from most audio devices.

One feature JVC is touting is the 18-bit Sigma-Delta D/A Converter which is meant to improve the sound quality. After having used the XA-F57 for over a week I can't say I could really notice a difference with the fairly high quality encoded MP3s I used for testing, compared to other MP3 players.

The line-in and mini USB ports are hidden behind a small flap at the bottom of the player. Suitable cables are supplied in the box. On the front of the player is a small LCD display with a white backlight which supports three lines of text as well as a line of icons. It's not the best screen I've seen, but far from the worst. On the right side of it are three buttons, reverse, forward and play/pause. The play button also doubles up as the power on button.

On the top of the XA-F57 are three more buttons - record, menu and stop. As with the play button, the stop button also acts as power off if pressed for a few seconds. The menu button does as you might have guessed - take you into the menu - which is also basic, just like the player itself, but more on that later.

The right side houses the 3.5mm headphone jack as well as a pair of volume buttons. Finally, around the back you,ll find the hold switch and a small hole which hides the reset button in case the player locks up.

There's a built in lithium-ion battery which according to JVC is good for up to 11 hours of playback, although this has to be taken with a pinch of salt. The battery is charged via the USB connector, which could be a problem if you're away from a computer for a longer period of time, but this is a common issue with many MP3 players.

So, back to the menu, the options are music, navigate, line in, delete, about, reset and set. The first one takes you to the default music playback screen, while navigate lets you browse the files on the XA-F57. Line in is the recording mode and you have to press the record button to start the recording. The next three menu options speaks for themselves, I hope.

JVC_Alneo_XA-F57_colours

Under the set menu option you can change the equaliser options - there are six pre-sets and one custom option. You can also change the play mode, sleep timer, and various screen settings, as well as the recording quality and the language of the XA-F57's menus.

I've seen better navigation systems, but thanks to Creative Labs and Apple we might just end up seeing even worse implementations due to the current law suit over the Zen menu system. It takes a little getting used to, but the XA-F57 is not unusable by any means.

The supplied headphones aren't great, but you can wear the XA-F57 around the neck once you've figured out how it all works. There's a small lanyard in the end of the headphones that attaches to the XA-F57, which was quite tricky to attach. Once fastened, there's a small metal ball which slides up and down the headphone wires, used to secure everything behind your neck.

This means that quite a lot of weight is relying on the headphone cables, but one would presume that JVC has tested this thoroughly before release. Saying that, at 39g the XA-F57 is far from heavy, but it seems like a rather odd setup either which way.

The XA-F57 supports MP3, WMA and WMA DRM files. It can play back MP3s encoded at 8 to 320kbps and WMA files encoded at 32 to 192 kbps. You can synchronise the XA-F57 with Windows Media player and this has to be done for DRM files.

Verdict

Overall, the JVC Alneo XA-F57 isn't a terrible MP3 player, it might look somewhat "girly" but it does the job. However, its biggest flaw is the £79 retail price which is very expensive for a 512MB device, especially one as short on features as the XA-F57.