Packard Bell Vibe 500 review

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Verdict:

Transferring music to the Vibe 500 is very quick and its battery life is just acceptable, but there's no other reason to recommend it. It costs only £16 less than the Zen Vision M, and although Creative's player isn't perfect it's far superior to the Vibe.

Review Date: 20 Dec 2006

Price when reviewed: inc. VAT

Reviewed By: Simon Handby

Our Rating 1 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

Packard Bell's Vibe 500 is the more affordable of the two 30GB MP3 players in this test. Though it's priced quite competitively, it doesn't feel like a £160 player and its design looks a little bland and outdated.

The Vibe has dedicated power and hold buttons at the side, and four touch-sensitive buttons on the front. There's a short touch-sensitive scroll strip in the middle, but we found that this was imprecise. Though it's reasonably easy to understand the player's menus, their layout isn't good. Tapping the menu button during playback brings up a quick menu that lets you change the equaliser mode, but you can't modify the custom equaliser settings without navigating back to the top-level menu.

Packard Bell supplies the Vibe 500 with sports-style headphones that include a soft plastic ear loop. This holds them in place, but the player's hard disk means it isn't the best choice for active users. You'll want to replace the headphones anyway, as they're by far the worst here. Even with a decent pair of headphones, the Vibe 500 doesn't sound very good. As with the 80GB iPod and iPod nano, the music distorts if you enhance the bass level using the equaliser.

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