Mobility Digest Review: Odys Wave Media Player 4GB

So I’ve got a rather large review for you today, it’s got almost 60 pictures and screenshots in it, so yeah it’s kinds long. What I have for review today is the Odys Wave Media player which has a 4gb capacity. I’ve never heard of Odys, but there are plenty of companies out there I’ve never heard of I’m sure. I’m always up for something new, so this work fine with me. The Odys Wave is a media player, and by that I mean it can not only play music but videos, and eBooks, it can also take pictures and videos with the built-in camera and there’s even a calculator and stopwatch built-in. The player can also work as a recording device to take with you for school lectures or whatever. So read on to check it out….

Author: Kristofer Brozio

Vendor: My Trendy Phone

Price: $58.36

Overall Rating: 4/5

 

Specs/Features:

Odys Wave Media Player 4GB – Black

WAVE Media Player & Camera
– MP3-Player, Video Player, USB-Disc, Digital Voice Recorder
– Integrated Digital Photo and Video Camera (VGA)
– Supports MP3, WMA, WAV, JPG, BMP, GIF, AVI
– Music Management, Sorting by Album, Genre, Artist.
– E-Text Reader with Auto Scrolling, Bookmark
– Built-in Rechargeable Li-Polymer Battery

– Display:
Display Art – TFT/LCD
Touch Screen – No
Size (cm) – 4,6
Display Type – Picture / Text

– Equipment:
Radio – No
Earplug – Yes
Interface – USB 2.0

– Power Supply:
Rechargeable Battery – Lithium Polymer
Integrated Rechargeable Battery – Yes
Charge over USB – Yes
Power Pack – No
Max. Music Playback Time (hours) – 7

– Operating System:
Windows ME – Yes
Windows 2000 – Yes
Windows XP – Yes
Windows Vista – Yes
Windows 7 – Yes
MAC – Yes

– General:
Width (mm) – 42,5
Height (mm) – 88,5
Depth (mm) – 10,5
Weight (g) – 32

 

What’s in the Box?

The Odys Wave media player comes in a small plastic box and the instructions were packaged on the side.

Here’s a couple views for the box for you:

So once you get it unpacked you’ll find the player itself, headphones, USB cable and a warranty card.

The Wave media player uses a mini USB connection:

The headphones are the earbud style, not much really special about them.

So here’s the player itself. The screen is about 1.5” by 1.25” in size, so it’s not exactly huge but then again it’s really just for music right?!

Below the screen you’ll find the controls for volume, pause/play, forward/backward and then off to the side is the menu button.

On the back of the player you’ll find a camera and markings for headphones and USB jacks which are on the top of the player.

Here’s the top of the player with the headphones and USB jacks:

The player is made of plastic and metal, the back is metal while the front is mostly plastic.

 

Impressions / Review:

The first thing I did was charge the player over USB, simple to do just like any other portable device.

I plugged it in and up pooped a menu on the screen where you can charge only or use it to transfer your music and anything else.

I opened up the player to check out what was on it and found a surprise, a Video Converter Tool. There were a couple music tracks already on the player as well, nothing special just instrumental.

So I was curious and I installed the video converter tool, simple to do just follow the prompts:

Once installed I used it to convert a 900mb video game capture file into the format for the Odys Wave Media Player. One thing neat about this software is that once the conversion process is done it will automatically transfer it to the media player if it’s attached to your computer.

There are some basic settings to change like the quality, resolution, type and ratio and then there’s a tab to change the converter skin.

The video started out at 904mb and when the conversion was done it was only 53.5mb in size and it only took less than five minutes to complete. Not bad at all.

So the Odys Wave Media player can do many things, and I figure just take a look at each one individually starting with Music. The screen is colorful and looks decent.

When you’re actually playing music you’ll see the title and artist along with a animated equalizer display and time.

Pushing the menu button will give you choices for repeat and EQ really and then there’s another menu for the Equalizer pre-sets.

Playing music with the player is as simple as hitting play, but the headphones are not that great.  The ear buds are not comfortable at all, and the sound quality is very bad. I’ve found that with every MP3 player the included headphones are just not that good so it’s no surprise these are bad.

For the rest of the testing I ended up using my own headphones, a set of V-Moda True Blood Revamp ear buds actually.

Switching headphones greatly increased the sound quality as expected, but it still wasn’t that great. I’m very particular though about my sound so other people will be more than happy with the quality I’m sure.

 

The next menu is Pictures, you can put pictures on the Odys Wave and view them to show to friends or you can browse those you took with the built-in camera.

 

If you have videos on the media player you can find them here under Videos.

That video I converted in the beginning is shown below, well a couple pictures of it anyway. Video seems fine for what it is, it actually looks decent if it is on a small screen. The video was smooth and the audio was fine and in sync.

You can press the menu button to pull up just a very few choices for repeat, shuffle, delete and info.

 

The included camera is accessed by the menu choice for it.

Pushing the menu button you’ll have choices to change the resolution, self-timer and to turn the shutter sound on or off.

 

Video recorder is just that, a video camera. There is no menu for this one, what you see is what you get essentially.

 

The next menu choice is Recordings, the Wave media player can record audio like a school lecture if need be.

The Play/Pause button acts as start and stop for recording. On the screen is the file name, recording time and the time left to record.

 

The next choice is Text, yes the Odys Wave can let you read while on the go, but there are no books on it currently, and they’re just text.

The eBooks can be sorted by standard list or by tags.

It’s a really small screen so I’m not sure you’d want to be reading a book on it.

 

Then there’s the tools section where you’ll find a calculator and a stopwatch.

Both of which I guess can be useful. To use the calculator you have to use the control pad to move the cursor to the numbers, which works fine, but it’s not exactly fast.

 

The next menu option is File Navigation and it’s just that, basic files and folders navigation style.

 

Under Settings you’ll find some basic things like Backlight, Power Saving, Language and an Advanced menu with just choices for Information, Format and Reset.

 

One of the last things to take a look at here is the pictures taken with the camera. Yes you can change the resolution as I’ve shown above, but that doesn’t do much for picture quality. There is a zoom on the camera but that doesn’t help either. The pictures taken with this little MP3 player are horribly washed out.

Here’s a pictures of the earbuds that came wit the player:

Here’s two more pictures for you, one taken with no zoom and then zoomed in from the same distance as the first picture. I tried to pick two objects with good coloring, so a tube of Carmex is yellow with an orange cap and the little Android is bright green. They’re sitting on a dark red mouse pad actually, so no the pictures are not that good.

 

 

Conclusion:

So the Odys Wave media Player only costs a little less than $60, so really I wasn’t expecting much but I was pleasantly surprised by just how much it can do.

Sure it doesn’t take good pictures, and the headphones are dreadful, but other than that it works fine.

The Wave player isn’t a bad little device overall if you want to take music and even videos with you.

Sadly it’s only 4gb and not expandable, so you will be limited as to what you can take with you.

The included video converter tool is a welcome addition that works fast and well.

Overall it’s not a bad product I think, especially if you’re on a budget and can’t afford something like a couple hundred dollar media player with fruit on it!

 

Pros:
+Simple to use
+Well made
+Decent battery life

 

Cons:
-Camera not that great
-Controls not intuitive
-Earbuds not comfortable and not that good sounding

 

The Odys Wave media Player was provided by My Trendy Phone for review where you can get plenty of mobile accessories like a Galaxy S3 mini case, or a Galaxy S3 case or even an HTC One X case.