SUMMARY
Pros: Size, sound quality, hardware design
Cons: Price, software design, lacks iTunes and Firewire support

A company called e.Digital made some waves in the Mac world a few months ago when they announced a new mp3 player that, well, looks a lot like the iPod. The forthcoming Odyssey 1000 is, in fact, a hard drive based mp3 player that eDigital claims will have storage, functionality and a form factor very similar to that of Apple's industry leading portable music player. The press photo even shows a circular control panel on the front of the Odyssey 1000 that looks suspiciously like the iPod's thumb dial (a closer look reveals the Odyssey to have a scroll wheel and not a jog dial, but on first glace it's hard to tell the difference). The catch is that e.Digital has not yet announced a price point for the 20GB unit. The company has since announced a deal to sell their products at CompUSA stores nationwide and so is poised to make run at the portable music market.

While the Odyssey 1000 isn't yet available, e.Digital did send me a review model of one of their other music players, the flash memory-based Odyssey 200. At just 3.3" x 2.4" by 0.7" deep and weighing under 2.5 ounces, the Odyssey 200 is a tiny device that appeals to people who listen to music while exercising or commuting, or those folks who want the tiniest, lightest weight gadgets available. Though there are smaller mp3 players on the market, the Odyssey 200 boasts a 128 x 48 LCD screen, 128 MB of built-in memory (expandable to 256 with a Smart Media card) and built-in FM Tuner and voice recorder. The recorder records from a built-in microphone direct to 32 kbps mono WAV files, so while it may not be the device of choice for bootlegging concerts, it would certainly come in handy for recording lectures. It's tiny size may tempt students to hide the unit and listen to music during class, but how you choose to employ such technology is, of course, up to you.

The Odyssey 200 connects to your Mac (or PC) via an included USB 1.1 cable and Odyssey Manager and MusicMatch software. The unit does not support iTunes, though eDigital says that the 1000 model will do so. MusicMatch handles mp3 encoding tasks and Odyssey Manager interfaces with the player itself. Odyssey Manager does not come in an OS X version, though it ran just fine in Classic Mode under 10.2. While USB transfer of files is quite fast, it's not as fast as Firewire. The Odyssey Manager software is also kind of clunky -- once songs are copied to the player, they cannot be re-ordered without deleting and recopying them. Since there's no way to create playlists on the player itself, once you've downloaded the songs that's the order they'll stay in. You can use the player's shuffle function which puts the songs into random order but has an annoying tendency to start repeating certain tracks before getting through all of them once. The player also features several repeat modes and an "Intro" mode that plays only the first 10 seconds of each song.

The player is controlled via a clever thumb joystick on the front of the unit and four additional buttons on its side. The joystick handles file navigation and volume control while the buttons take care of Mode (play/record/FM tuner), Repeat, EQ and A-B Loop functionality. There's also a sliding Hold switch that locks all keys. The USB port (and what looks to be a non-functional AC adapter jack) is on the other side of the unit, and the battery cover and Smart Media slot are on the back. One note about the Smart Media functionality: Music stored on expansion cards is played separately from files kept in internal memory. This means that the Odyssey 200 will not automatically start playing songs from the expansion card once it's gotten through all of the songs in internal memory. Nor will it lump all of your songs together during Shuffle play. I found this to be a really annoying design flaw -- if you're going to take the time to load your mp3 player up with 4 hours of music, you really shouldn't have to press any extra buttons in order to listen to all of it. Especially if you like to use Shuffle play, which I do ... Variety's the spice of life, right?

Sound quality is very good using the included earbud phones and even better when patched into higher quality headphones or amplified speakers. Five preset equalization settings help shape the sound of the music to your liking, though there are no user-definable settings. The player includes a handy, detachable wired remote control and a carry case with belt clip. One AA battery powers the Odyssey 200 and while I didn't quite get the 12 hours of play time per battery that the manual boasts of, I did come pretty close. The large, easy to read LCD display is backlit and displays battery life information along with file name, time, compression and repeat/EQ mode settings. A VU meter also shows up during play so you can see just how loud your music is -- I sometimes get mesmorized by things like this, but that's just me. The player doesn't recognize ID3 tags, so file names are displayed onscreen instead -- this can be bothersome, especially if you have any Windows-created files whose names are truncated. At this point in the game companies should really be addressing convenience issues like this before releasing new products. Apple (and Sony, and a few others) has proven time and time again that smart design and UI go a long way towards justifying high costs in the consumer's eye -- if new brands like e.Digital are going to take design cues from the big boys, they should pay similar attention to the details.

Overall, the Odyssey 200 boasts great industrial design and pretty mediocre software design. The unit itself is small, lightweight, easy-to-use and stylish. The sound quality is excellent and the battery lasts a long time. However, the software-based functionality of the Odyssey 200 leaves much to be desired. Files stored on flash memory should be integrated into one master playlist with the files in internal memory. ID3 tags should show up onscreen. The Odyssey Manager software needs some work or, better yet, Mac users should get iTunes support -- no point in trying to reinvent the wheel here.

The Odyssey 200 sells for $179 directly from the company's online store. With refurbished 5GB iPods showing up for as little as $219 in recent weeks on dealmac -- as of my writing this they can be had for $235 from Small Dog Electronics -- it's hard for me to recommend purchasing a 128 MB flash memory player at that price. While on the one hand it's unfair to compare a factory new product with a refurbished competitor, on the other hand the reality is that the refurbished iPods have a longer warranty (1 year versus 180 days) and for roughly 50 bucks more they give you almost 40 times the storage capacity, Firewire and iTunes support, a rechargable battery and a far superior user experience. The iPod is bigger and heavier, but you gain a lot with that added size (which really isn't all that much). The Odyssey 200 isn't a bad mp3 player by any means -- but in a world where iPods rule, unless you really want to record voice memos or listen to FM radio it's hard to look at the e.Digital and not start thinking of ways to scrape together a few more bucks for an Apple.

Me, I'm going to wait a few more weeks to see when the Odyssey 1000 is coming out and what it's going to cost. By then maybe the price of refurbished iPods will have dropped a little more, too ...

For more information, check the e.Digital website.