Inexpensively does it's job, but not much else
Written: Mar 16 '01 (Updated Mar 16 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Inexpensive, includes headphones and AC adaptor
Cons: devours batteries like there's no tomorrow, skips excessively, limiting display
The Bottom Line: Despite mediocre skip protection and battery life, the Kanguru still has one of the best feature sets for sub-$100 MP3 CD players. Good for stationary use in airplane or car-rides.
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| bdines's Full Review: Kanguru KanguruCD MP3 Player |
I bought the Kanguru CD MP3 because, at the time, I found it to be the best bang for the buck MP3 CD player. I still think it’s a decent product, if it's what you are looking for, but I also think that there are better, if more expensive alternatives on the market now. The Kanguru does just about everything a CD MP3 player needs too, but that’s about all.
Just like all CD MP3 players the Kanguru plays both standard audio CDs and ISO CDs with MP3 files arranged in any kind of directory structure. The supported bitrates for the Kanguru are 16 kbps – 256 kbps, and although I never got the chance to try out any bitrates outside of the range of 128-192, I never found a file that wouldn’t play or gave any other kind of problems.
The display on the Kanguru leaves much to be desired. Since the Kanguru’s display is only a 1 line numeric display, there is a limited amount of information that can be shown at any given time. Although under normal use, all you really need to see is track number and elapsed time anyway, the display also can only show a two-digit track number, which means that on a large MP3 CD, if the track you’re listening to is over 99, the Kanguru only displays 99. There also isn’t any ID3 tag support for the MP3 files, not that there would be anywhere to show them anyway. The display also lacks a backlight which, while isn’t an essential feature, is still nice to have if you’re using the CD player in low light conditions.
The Kanguru’s playback features are pretty standard. For any audio CD, or MP3 CD, you have the option of repeat, repeat track, shuffle, intro scan, and program. The execution of these features, however, can be a little confusing at first, as for all but repeat and repeat track, you have to stop the CD from playing and then activate the play mode and then press play again. This also gets somewhat annoying since any time you turn the CD player off, you have to go through everything again starting from the scanning of files and directories. There is also no way to repeat or shuffle the entire CD while in MP3 mode, you can only repeat or shuffle within a directory.
While playing a track on the Kanguru, you have the option of activating one of the repeat modes, skipping to the next track, going back to the beginning of the current track, or going back to the previous track (unless you are in shuffle mode, where previous track is disabled). In addition to these options, if you are playing an audio CD, you can fast forward and rewind within the current track, but not if you are playing MP3s. One nice feature is the built in audio processor. A button on the face of the Kanguru gives you the option of three different acoustic modes: rock, jazz, and classical, each with its own parts of the audio spectrum highlighted. There is also a separate bass boost switch on the side, which makes the sound a bit fuller. A feature that is missing from the Kanguru, however, is a resume option; there isn’t even a way to do this while listening to an audio CD.
Now, I am brought to the two most sore parts of the Kanguru: the skip protection, and the battery life. Just about all MP3 CD players have electronic skip protection (ESP), and for most of these the buffer holds around three times as much of the music for MP3s as for CD audio. On the Kanguru, however, you are given a switch to turn on the ESP (which actually only works for audio CDs, as it can’t be turned off for MP3s) which gives you 10 seconds of protection for audio CDs, but somehow, only 8 seconds of protection for MP3s. I’m not sure why you get less of a buffer for a format which uses roughly 11 times less memory, but this is just how it works. It doesn’t really matter however, since the ESP on the Kanguru is mostly ineffective.
Because of how the ESP system on the Kanguru works, I’m convinced that under specific circumstances, you’re actually better off without the ESP in the first place. What happens in most CD players is that when the ESP is activated, the disc spins about twice as fast as it otherwise would, reading ahead until the buffer is full. As long as the buffer is full, the laser moves at about half speed until the CD player is jarred enough for tracking to be lost. Then, once the CD player figures out where the laser should be, it goes there and starts reading ahead to fill the buffer back up. All the while the listener doesn’t know the difference unless it takes longer for the CD player to find its place than the size of the buffer. On the Kanguru, the disc spins twice as fast, as long as the buffer is being filled, if it is not, then the disc goes back to a normal speed. If the CD player senses a skip, it must find its place, and then spin back up to twice the speed so that it can read ahead. The problem with this system is that, whereas on another CD player, you only have to wait for it to find its place before it can read ahead, on the Kanguru, you must wait for it to find its place and then spin back up, which really reduces the effectiveness of the ESP from the listed 10 seconds to about 3 to 5 seconds. I can see why it was designed this way though. As long as the CD player isn’t skipping, you save battery life by only having to spin at a lower speed. If you only get a skip very rarely, this wouldn’t matter very much, but if you are trying to walk somewhere with the Kanguru, then all the skipping, spinning up, and reading ahead causes the system to work very poorly, making it very difficult to listen. This phenomena only happens with audio CDs with ESP turned on, as a constant spin speed is maintained for MP3s due to their smaller size, however, the Kanguru offers an even smaller buffer for MP3 audio making it skip very badly while walking in MP3 mode as well.
This brings me to the battery life. The Kanguru claims to get up to 3 hours of play off of a set of AA batteries. I could see this being true if the Kanguru was sitting in a very still place, not skipping at all for the whole time, but in real world circumstances, I think that is even optimistic. After the first set of alkaline batteries I put in started giving me low battery warnings within the first half of an audio CD that I played, I went out and bought a few sets of NiMH batteries to use. Even using NiMH batteries, the Kanguru would eat them up within one day’s worth of walking from class to class on my college’s campus (which is a relatively small “walking” campus). Another annoying quirk is that when the batteries start to get low, the audio processing ability of the Kanguru is compromised, causing weird, loud, and staticy audio glitches, and also causing the sound to randomly cut from stereo to mono.
When it really comes down to it, however, if all you want or need is an inexpensive MP3 player that can store many many times more audio than a solid state memory model costing 2-3 times more, then the Kanguru humbly, but reliably does it’s job. As long as you have a wall outlet nearby, you can plug the Kanguru in using it’s included AC adapter, and it will play up to 13 hours of near-CD quality music off of a single 5.25 inch disc. Ultimately, I decided to return my Kanguru however, and buy the recently released Rio Volt from SonicBlue. I made that decision because I felt that, despite the added cost (the Rio Volt costs around $70 more than the Kanguru), it fit my needs better as a CD player that I would be walking around with and putting through more use. The Kanguru is still one of the least expensive MP3 CD players on the market right now, while still having a much better feature set than similarly priced comptetitors, and if that’s what you’re looking for and you’re only going to use it to listen to music while studying, while on an airplane, or a long car ride, then the Kanguru could be very much worth it to you.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
bdines
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Location: Atlanta, GA
Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 0 members
About Me:
I go to GA Tech, I like cars, mountain bikes, electronics, and Kevin Smith movies.
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