Review: Transcend T.sonic 620

Posted Sunday, November 27th 2005

I got tired of lugging around my aging Sony cd walkman. I love that thing to bits - I’ve had it for over 3 years now, and it has served me very well - in fact, it still works as flawlessly as the first day I got it. But it’s rather heavy and large, and I got somewhat tired of carrying it around, so I decided to get an mp3 player!

There are two main types of mp3 players out there - hard disk based (iPod & co.) and the flash memory based - the group that today’s topic of discussion belongs to. The Transcend T.sonic 620.

Main Features:
Capacity: 1 GB
Supported Formats: Mp3, WMA, WAV
Battery: 1 AAA battery, good for 15 hours (manufacturer’s claim)
Up to 20 preset radio stations.
Voice Recording
Repeat Function
User EQ & built-in EQ presets
+ more

Daily Use
I guess most people use their MP3 players on a daily basis. Using the 620 was easy enough. On Windows XP, you just plug it in an available USB port (either through the long USB cable, or the mini USB jack), and XP will recognize it as a removable hard disk. Then you just copy files onto it. The good thing here is that you can use it to move files around as well.
It’s limited to 450 files and 50 folders, which is probably more then anyone will ever want (or be able to fit on a 1 gb mp3 player), so that’s not really an issue. It’s also very light. Weighing in at 36 grams (without a battery, ~50 with), it’s very light and doesn’t get in the way. In the box, you’ll find a neck strap, a wrist strap, a carrying pouch (really nice), the earbuds, and 2 USB connectors (one with a cable, long enough, one direct connection jack) and a driver CD.

Sound quality is pretty good, although the earbuds that come with it are quite bad, and a bit too big, so they wouldn’t fit in my ears right. Luckily, I got my hands on some Philips earbuds that work much better, the sound is much clearer and much louder.
Navigating through the player is pretty straightforward, although a rocker-like button would have been much easier to use. Nevertheless, getting around all the options (and there are a lot) is quite easy, and all settings can be easily found.
The one thing that I found to be quite annoying is that there’s no dedicated shuffle button. Instead, I had to go in the options and select the ‘Random Repeat’ option. Not a big hassle, but it would have been easier if there was a dedicated shuffle button, or some sort of shortcut to take care of it.

Otherwise, moving around files is pretty easy. The file browser is easy to navigate, and it’s easy to skip tracks, fast forward through them or rewind them, and the play button doubles as a pause button aswell.

The T.sonic 620 also has a built in radio and a voice recorder. The radio performs quite well and reception is good. Obviously, because of the lack of a dedicated antenna, there is interference, but it’s good nevertheless. The voice recording function might come in handy if you want to take a quick note of something, and there are various levels of quality for voice recording, so potentially, hours can be recorded. Might come in handy if at some sort of a presentation. But ultimatively, I don’t see a real use for it. Still a nice option to have.

According to the manufacturer, battery life is expected to be around 15 hours. While I do think that this is a bit of an over estimation, and that in reality, battery life is around the 12 hour mark, 15 hours can be possible if the player is not tinkered with a lot. It has a screen saver option to preserve battery life aswell. It uses one AAA battery, and I think that this is an advantage over USB-charged MP3 players because there’s less of a dependency on a single point of charging. It also has an auto-power-off feature if the player has been idle for 5 or 10 minutes, and a really good OLED display, which is easy to see at all times.

So to sum up, the Transcend T.sonic 620 is a pretty good little mp3 player. It’s feature packed, has a decent battery life and it’s light enough to carry around and not be a hassle. On the other hand, the crappy earbuds that come with it, and the lack of a dedicated shuffle button are a bit of a letdown. It also takes a while to turn on when there are a lot of files, but that is to be expected.

Positive
- Small & Light
- Good sound quality
- Packed with features!
- Decent battery life.
- Easy to use and to upload files
- Can be used as a removable drive.
- Lots of accessories come out of the box.
- Good display.

Negative
- No dedicated shuffle key
- Crappy standard earbuds

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