This post was published 3 years 5 months 7 days ago.
It\'s is possible that the information within this article is now out of date or updated.

JVC has joined the mp3 ranks with it’s new MP3 players. The Alneo range of players consists of two models, the XA-F57 at 512Mb and the XA-F107 at 1GB. It’s seems strange to launch such low capacity players when the company’s competitors are starting at 1GB but hey, who am I to say what will sell.

Both models come in white, silver, blue, pink or red. and it was described to me as a bit ‘girly’ by a friend but this is just a matter of taste, there are far uglier MP3 players on the market.

The XA-F57 is fairly basic compared to most of the Taiwanese and Korean players you can pick up for quite a small amount of money. There’s no FM radio, nor any voice recording options, but at least it has a line input, so you can record directly to it from most audio devices.

One feature JVC is touting is the 18-bit Sigma-Delta D/A Converter which is meant to improve the sound quality. A long term test of the device would be needed to test this so we will just have to take their word on it..

On the front of the player is a small LCD display with a white backlight which supports three lines of text as well as a line of icons. It’s not the biggest screen , but far from the smallest. There’s a built in lithium-ion battery which according to JVC is good for up to 11 hours of playback. The battery is charged via the USB connector, which could be a problem if you’re away from a computer for a longer period of time, but this is a common issue with many MP3 players.

The XA-F57 supports MP3, WMA and WMA DRM files. It can play back MP3s encoded at 8 to 320kbps and WMA files encoded at 32 to 192 kbps. You can synchronise the XA-F57 with Windows Media player and this has to be done for DRM files.

Overall, the JVC Alneo XA-F57 isn’t a terrible MP3 player, it might look somewhat "girly" but it will do the job. However, its biggest flaw is the £79 retail price which is very expensive for a 512MB device, especially one as short on features as the XA-F57

More info: Here

Chris Leckness (3549 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

Chris Leckness is the Owner/Administrator of Mobilitysite. He is a Microsoft MVP, Mobile Devices and a member of the exclusive focus group, Mobius. Chris runs a Mobilitysite, GotZune, and a few other smaller sites and blogs. His personal blog is chris.leckness.com.