MusicGremlin MG-1000 Review
The MusicGremlin MG-1000 offers the ability to download music whenever you’re at a Wi-Fi hotspot. Clear sound and a bright 2-inch LCD are nice perks but the battery life is mediocre and the FM radio is poor. Downloading songs without your PC is the real draw but $299 for an 8 GB player is a bit expensive.
Specifications
- 4 by 2.4 by 0.77 inches
- 4 ounces
- 2-inch display
- 8 GB internal memory
- Music formats: MP3, WMA, MusicGremlin Direct (subscription service)
- FM radio tuner
- Li-ion battery life rated at 10 hours
Review by PCMAG
The MusicGremlin MG-1000 is a good first attempt at a Wi-Fi–enabled MP3 player, and I believe strongly in the concept, even if the device itself doesn’t quite live up to my expectations. This 8GB hard-drive–based MP3 player connects to the Internet via Wi-Fi (802.11b) so you can download songs from the MusicGremlin Direct service and share them with other MusicGremlin users without a PC. I had a lot of fun using the service, even though finding and connecting to an open Wi-Fi network was a bit of a challenge. The player costs $299 (direct), and the MusicGremlin service subscription fee is $14.99 per month. I don’t mind the slightly expensive fee, but the player itself needs to be either cheaper or better to appeal to mainstream music fans.
Review by Laptop Magazine
MusicGremlin’s long-awaited Wi-Fi music player is finally here, bringing the future of legal downloads to the next level. The MusicGremlin is a portable music downloading device that attempts to bridge the gap between a standard MP3 player and a cell phone. You can use its built-in Wi-Fi receiver to access MusicGremlin’s proprietary online music catalog and hear whatever your friends (or people standing nearby) are listening to. At $299, the MusicGremlin isn’t about to dethrone the iPod, but it points the way to an alternative musical future.
Review by ZDNET
There are numerous music subscription services on the market (such as those from Virgin, Yahoo, and MTV) that let you download all the music you want to your home computer, then transfer it to your portable player. But what if you can’t wait that long? What if you need to grab some new tunes between classes or on the way to a meeting? For you impatient and forward-looking types, there’s the MusicGremlin, which uses a direct wireless link to a music store to cut out the middleman–your PC–from the music-gathering equation.
Review by I4U News
The first thing I noticed pulling out a 4 x 2.4 x .76-inch MG1000 Gremlin from the box was the surprisingly light weight of the device. I was expecting something along the line of the video iPod, but this 8-gigabyte HDD player (versus 30 GB or more for the iPod) tips the scales at just 4 ounces. That makes it welcome in carry-on luggage when you’re also lugging along a PC, Treo, noise-cancellation headphones and an assortment of chargers.
I like the feel of the Gremlin too. The rubber lining around the sides has the feel of a smooth laminate book cover. You like holding it in your hand. The 2-inch backlit color LCD, with 220 x 160-pixel resolution, is plenty sharp enough to see the thumbnail album cover, track, album title, date, time of day, time of song, time remaining and other icons that indicate progress along the way (my photos would look good on it, too, and look for that option in the future). Menu pages top out at six lines of text which are easy to read and navigate.
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