Mambo Digital P353 Photobank Jukebox

Intro

With the edition of a few good firmware upgrades the Mambo Digital P353 Photobank Jukebox could be an amazing portable mp3 player. As it stands it is not so great. All the right ideas are there, they have just been implemented badly. At the end of the day it is a very simple player, the problem is that it boasts a whole lot of advanced features which in fact are very limited. They are on the right track, but this is not the player it is made out to be.

Look and feel

Its not quite a brick but its getting there. It fits OK in my baggy pockets, but you won't get it into a pair or tight fitting jeans! It feels a bit too light, (I know light is good but..) if you know what I mean. I opened it up and there is a lot of fresh air inside, easily enough space for an extra battery. The bare bones (battery, HDD and circuit boards) take up very little space.

You can tell it is not the most expensive product. Its all plastic, no nicely polished aluminium case etc.

Display is good though a remote would be nice. Buttons are fine, fits in your hand just right, though again a remote would be great.

Recording feature

The manual states that it is only possible to record in high quality for 4 minutes at a time. This does not seem to be so on my P353. I guess this is one of the things that was changed in the firmware update (would be nice to know what they do change though). It seems now possible to record indefinitely at high quality. The feature is really simple and easy to use. would be nice to be able to name the tracks though.

SD card

The reviews and spec boast that it is possible to transfer any data to and from the HDD to the SD, this is not true. It is only possible to transfer dater stored in one of the previous backup store folders (i.e. not just any file on the HDD). This is a real shame. When I first bought the player my intention was to use it as a base for my music which I could copy different albums from every day, onto a SD card and use that in a small MP3 player, such as the Panasonic E-Wear SD SV-SD85. I feel this is a missed opportunity and very misleading on the website. If this is truly a new wave of media freedom, then it needs a few more options.

Also the card is wiped before each transfer, meaning it is not possible to retain two sets of data transferred.

The transfer from and to the card is a bit slow, roughly 10MB a minute.

I have read on the net that people have had problems getting the door open on the SD slot, I cant seem to get mine to stay closed! This is definitely a bad design.

HDD

Functions as a USB 2 external hard drive. Contains a 2.5" hard drive, which I assume can be replaced.

Play lists

The P353 plays .PLS play lists that you can make using the player. It will not however play .PLS files made in a third party program like win amp. It also will not play .M3U files. I find this all very frustrating.

Play lists can be made on the fly whilst listening to other songs, however it is not possible to make a play list whilst listening to a play list. It is not possible to delete a song from a play list or rename the play list. It is not possible to edit the play list (except the file name and location) using your PC.

Playback Quality

Sound quality is good, however it appears that the first half a second of every song played on the P353 is silent. This may not seem like a big problem but can be very annoying as some songs start with a strong first beet which is not heard.

Also when the P353 comes to the end of a song there is a 2 second pause before the next song whilst it spins up the hard drive and copies the next song to the buffer. This again can be very annoying when listening to music with no brakes between tracks, such as live recordings and dance music. Hopefully it is possible to rewrite the firmware so that it copies the next song to the buffer whilst still playing the previous song, thus producing no delay between tracks.

Navigation

Navigation is simple and easy, though scrolling within a large folder is not tremendously fast. If you have loads of albums you might want to put them in separate folders i.e. A-D, E-H...

One problem is as follows; whilst listening to a song you can brows the hard drive for other music. When a file is highlighted it starts to scroll the name so that you can reed large file names on the small screen. However, after about 2 seconds of not pressing any buttons the screen turns back showing the details of the song currently being played. So the only way of reading the whole file name of your songs is to either play the song itself or to stop the music first. This is not a major issue, though I feel other companies might have got it right.

Accessories

Every single page on the net I have come across referring to the P353 states that it is possible to buy an external battery, a wired remote, and a media expansion box (to play images and videos on a TV). I have yet to find a website anywhere in the world (in English) that sells these products. In the end I emailed Mambo-x tech support and eventually got the following reply;

"Dear Customer,

Thanks for purchasing our product.

We're so regretted to tell you that we must stop some optional accessary

prodution for a while because of technical issue.

Maybe we'll restart to product soon, if any news, we'll let you know

priority.

Thanks for your mail! See you

Customer Service"

I find this very annoying, not just because I would very much like to purchase a remote and an external battery, but because they still state on there own website that they are available. One thought I have had is that the accessories have never been produced in the first place, the connections are on the player so the thought is there, maybe they never followed through with the production.

Firmware

The player came with firmware version 1.17M. Once I got it I updated to the newest (and only) firmware on the website 1.18M released 09/07/03. It would be nice if they had an article on each update to explain what exactly has changed. The update process is as simple as it describes in the manual, and the system check feature is a nice touch.

Options

There are options, but they are limited.

A feature which is not so critical but I feel would be a nice touch is a resume option. When the player is switched off and then back on again it would be nice to have the option to start playing where you left off, rather than having to scroll through the HDD and find the song.

A text viewer and a FM radio would be nice.

I think Mambo Digital should have a look at a few competitors products and learn a few things. Take a look at the manuals for some of the IRiver products and see how many options they have.

Battery

The manual quotes 8 hours of playback with the internal battery. I did a test; a full charge from empty batteries and then play an album on repeat at medium volume, I only got 4 hours out of it! I'm not impressed.

As the external battery pack is not available I bought a second battery from an Australian web site as they don't seem to be available in Europe. This is an alternative though it is a pain to have to take the battery out and swap them all the time.

Headphones

Not good. Buy some Sony's and use them!

Price

You simply cant beet it in terms of GB's per £. But in terms of quality for money I would still expect more.

Manufacturer

The question of who actually makes the P353 is a mystery to me, maybe someone could fill me in. There is a www.mambox.com who claim they are Mambo Digital (formerly Tagram Technology, the www.tagram.com domain is for sale!) and they produce the P353. There is also a www.mambox.au which then reroutes to www.efx.com.au who I assume are the Australian distributors of Mambo Digital. Then there is www.wealper.com (of Taiwan) who claim they make the P353. Confused? Me too!

Contact Mambo digital

I contacted mambo digital regarding the delay between songs and the silence at the start of the songs and weather they will be corrected in the next firmware. I have yet to receive an answer.

Conclusion

It needs some new firmware. As it stands I would give it a 5 out of 10. If they fix the silence between and at the start of the tracks then I would up it to a 7. If they fixed all the other stuff I have mentioned then I would give it a 9 out of 10.

Links

www.mambox.com/UserM1.html Manual

www.mambox.com/firmware.html firmware updates. Or see www.efx.com.au/support/downloads.asp

www.angelfire.com/electronic2/mymamboxjb/ and independent review of the P350, the same model without the SD slot

www.specialreserve.com where I bought it from.