Hyperion188 said:
How long is the battery life for the X Drive PRO? Thinking of using it for MP3 playback.
For MP3 playback, the X-Drive battery only last for 1 hour, so you may have thousands of songs in them, but only enough battery to finish 1 CD worth of songs.
The MP3 function is also very basic, just playback, no fancy features like playlist, equalizer, wma support. So don't expect an ipod.
We are the distributor of both the X-Drive & CompactDrive, so we are well aware of both product features. The CompactDrive was specifically brought in to replace the X-Drive & Nixvue portable storage device (PSD), so most users prefer a faster & longer battery life PSD, the fact that it uses standard easy replaceable AA batteries in also an advantage.
Since the launch of the CompactDrive in June 2004, the CompactDrive is now Singapore's best selling PSD.
Main advantage of CompactDrive over the X-Drive
1) Transfer speed (4~5MB/s)
2) Battery life (transfer 35GB of photos on a single charge)
3) Aluminium Casing with dust covers
4) Uses standard AA size battery (buy spare batteries anytime or use alkalines during emergencies)
5) Slightly smaller than X-Drive
6) More reliable (although sales of PD7X have surpassed the X-Drive, the return rate is much lesser than X-Drive)
Disadvantage of X-Drive
1) Slow Transfer speed (0.8MB/s)
2) Short Battery life (transfer 2 GB of photos on a single charge)
3) Plastic Casing with exposed card slots (users have reported cracked casing due to heat)
4) Built-in Propietary battery (difficult to replace and recharge via AC when unit runs out of battery)
5) Bulky
6) Some corruption problems, reasons unknown.
In a recent review by HWM (August 2004),
Fast and Furious - Blazing fast and tremendous battery life; leaving other similar products in their wake
In our tests, we are delighted to find that its transfer speed and battery life beats the immensely successful X-Drives hands-down...it took us only 4 mins 45 sec to complete copying about 1GB worth of files as opposed to 20 mins and 52 sec we got from our X-Drive...even after repeating the process about 8 times, the battery indicator was still at 2 out of 3 bars!
If you are looking for a fast portable media reader/storage device with neck-breaking transfer speed and incredible battery life...the CompactDrive is hard to beat
You can read the full review here:
http://www.eastgear.com/catalog/images/PD6A-HWZ-AUG04.pdf