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Review: Visual Land VL-335 MP3 player/projectile

Mairi’s Dad bought this in one of his eBay frenzies. He didn’t like it, and I didn’t have an iPod at the time, so I nicked it and tried it for a while.

It came in a nice satin-lined box with magnetic closure, little plastic window, and dodgy design on lid – not bad so far. When I opened the box, I found the player itself was a nice size and weight, with a rubbery coating which could be peeled off with effort. I didn’t much care for the colour, but I guess thieves can’t be picky.

I had a quick flip through the User Guide, just enough to see that you could just stick it in a USB port and it would appear as a drive. Drag’n’drop your MP3s or WMAs, and you’re good to go. Unfortunately it was written in such impenetrable sino-pidgin-koringrish, that I had to give up. Still, I knew what I needed to know. It had a slide-out USB connector, which was good, and the built-in replaceable rechargeable battery was charged through the USB. A good start.

Then came the first problem. The thing used USB 1.1, which was designed in conjunction with Andrex and PG tips. During the extremely slow transfer process, go to the loo or have a cup of tea. Or put the kettle on, then go to the loo, and then make a cup of tea. After you’ve washed your hands, of course. And flushed.

Once I had some tracks transferred (some old Aphex Twin and Hawkwind, if you must know) I experimented with the lush user experience (this is sarcasm).

First off, there was no shuffle feature. You will listen to the tracks in order! Then when I switched the player off, it went back to the beginning of the first track. No storage of your position in the memory, which means when I turned it back on, I had to navigate to the track I was playing before. And then I come across the next, and to my mind the worst, problem.

There was a 1-second lag between button presses, and no buffering.

Think of your CD player. When you want to listen to track 10 on a CD, you put the CD in, close the drawer, and press the ‘next’ button 10 times quickly, and then the Play button, knowing that the player will remember the presses and do what you want, like so:
next-next-next-next-next-next-next-next-next-next-PLAY. And away you go!

On this piece of crap (yeah, I said it) though, if you want to listen to the 10th track, you have to press the ‘next track’ button, wait a second for it to react,
then press it again, wait for it to react,
then press it again, wait for it to react,
then press it again, wait for it to react,
then press it again, wait for it to react,
then press it again, wait for it to react,
then press it again, wait for it to react,
then press it again, wait for it to react,
then press it again, wait for it to react,
then press it again, wait for it to react, and then you’re there.
Both at track 10 and your train destination (ho ho).

Just to add insult to injury, it had a 2.5mm headphone jack for that lovely ‘can’t use normal headphones without an adaptor‘ feeling.

And finally, did I mention it had an FM radio? No, because while one was included, it wasn’t built in. It was a separate button-cell-powered FM tuner on an awkward pendant neckband arrangement, mixed in with the supplied crappy earbuds for extra entanglement.

The VL-335 is no longer available, as far as I can tell, but Amazon are selling the VL-340A, which has a wonderful product description which includes the line, “Features of this MP3 player go above and beyond the regular requirements of inferior players”, which means, “This MP3 Player is better than MP3 Players which are not as good as this one”. And that’s the best you can say about it.

I gave it back.