Mitashi MPS 1001

I was never a huge fan of Mitashi products, even though their uncertified DivX players received a fair bit of our appreciation, back when the big names weren’t in the game. But off late, Philips and LG have been churning out better products, so Mitashi’s been left behind. Recently, they launched a few MP3 players that didn’t look all that bad, for example the MPS 1001.

Or is it the MPF 1001? The box says MPF 1001, calling it the ‘Flat Style MP3 Player’ while the website says MPS 1001, or the ‘Slim MP3’ player.

Its pretty slim, but not as slim as the older iPod shuffle. It has a rubbery matte finish which feels quite soft and different from the run-of-the-mill cheap Chinese products we’re being fed in the name of ‘value’ MP3 players. It has a cap for the USB connector, but the cap can’t be put on the other side of the player, increasing the chances of it getting lost while using the player as a USB drive.

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It has a familiar five-way navigation pad, but it doesn’t operate the way you’d expect it to, i.e., like an iPod. The player is meant to be used in a landscape orientation with the buttons on the left side and the display on the other, but going up/down in the submenu requires using the left/right keys, which I found rather unintuitive. The main menu is left to right though. Also, the center button, which is the play/pause button, doesn’t work as an ok/select button, further adding to the inconvenience. The up button, marked ‘M’, is for ok/select.

The display is a two-color OLED display, mainly being blue, with a few yellow icons along the top line. The main menu system consists of icons for music, recorder, FM, and telephone book. Once inside, it gives you a flat list of items to choose from. The menu system itself is not very difficult to understand, other than its somewhat slow response time, but coming to terms with the behaviour of the buttons is a problem.

We’ve seen this same display and even the menu system on a number of other ‘value’ MP3 players such as the Transcend T.sonic 610, so the MPS 1001 is simply a re-branded OEM player, like most other Mitashi products.
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The MPS 1001, however, has an interesting ‘social’ feature: two earphone sockets instead of one. This way, you won’t have to share just one earphone in the bus or train. With two pairs of earphones, both the listeners can enjoy stereo sound in both their ears. Both the sockets are standard 3.5mm jacks so you can plug in any pair of earphones or headphones. The box, however, comes with just a single pair of earphones.

Sound quality of the MPS 1001 was surprisingly, extremely good. The highs were clean and crisp, while the lows were full-bodied and deep. The player also has an equalizer with presets which didn’t sound too different from each other, but the DBB preset generally enhanced the sound. There was no way to adjust the EQ manually. The player supports MP3, WMA and WAV files.

I don’t want to make any claims about this sounding as good as the iPod or Sansa, but I sure as hell did not have any complaints in the quality department, unless you consider the quality of the provided earphones. I test all the MP3 players with my own Sony Fontopia earphones or Philips headphones, which give me really good quality sound, but the bundled earphones sounded very flat and were also uncomfortable in the ear.

The MPS 1001 comes with 1GB of built-in memory. As mentioned before, it has a standard USB connector that lets the drive be used as a thumbdrive. There is no software required to add or remove music from the drive. Just drag and drop. Just like any other ‘value’ MP3 player in the market.

There is also an FM radio receiver in the MPS 1001. Reception and quality was alright; not the best I’ve used. But I don’t listen to radio much anyway. There is also a recorder that can pick up voice and FM for later listening.

Battery life of an MP3 player is an important test and one that the MPS 1001 doesn’t fare well in. A simple half an hour worth of battery should last for at least a couple of hours; after all it’s only playing MP3s. The MPS 1001 died an hour later.

The MPS 1001 retails for around Rs. 3,600. While that may sound a little overpriced for a 1GB player, the MPS 1001 is a more decent looking player with good sound quality and dual earphone outputs for the ‘social experience’. I’d like to recommend this to anyone looking for a value MP3 player, but the battery life is not up to the mark.