Latte ice Portable Media Player

Handheld entertainment devices come in all shapes and sizes, with all sorts of bells and whistles to satisfy your technology cravings. The most basic devices are capable only of playing music, but more and more advanced features are being packed into these small gadgets. The Latte ice Flash PMP (portable media player) is one of the new generation of handheld players that attempts to do just about everything short of making phone calls and taking digital pictures. With a budget price that is nearly $100 less than comparable iPod players, lets take a close look at the Latte ice to find out how “cool” it really is!

Design

The Latte ice is a silver colored portable audio and video player that features a photo viewer, FM radio, voice recorder, MicroSD expansion drive and a text viewer. The ice sports a 2.8-inch TFT LCD display with a resolution of (320x240). It includes either 2GB or 4GB of built-in memory, with the MicroSD slot allowing you to expand the available storage space even further.

The ice is a very small and thin player, measuring only 4” x 2.1” x .4” (W x H x D). While it wouldn’t fit into a wallet, it is easily portable as it would fit easily into a jacket pocket or pants pocket. It has a smooth, glossy face with basic Play/Pause, Forward and Backward buttons slightly raised on the face. The back of the player has a silver matte finish, and the side of the player allows you to access the On/Off button, the 3.5mm earphone jack and the MicroSD slot.

The ice includes a built-in microphone for voice recording in WAV format, and also includes a built-in speaker that is activated when the headphones are not connected to the 3.5mm headphone jack. This is a nice feature which saves you the hassle of having to change any settings on the player when you switch from headphones to the speaker.

Files can be transferred from your PC or laptop to the ice via USB 2.0. All file types can be transferred to the player, so the ice also functions as a USB flash drive for portable file storage.

Power is supplied by the built-in rechargeable 3.7V lithium-ion battery. The battery is rated to last for 3-4 hours of video playback, 6-8 hours of audio playback or up to 10 hours of audio recording.

In the Box

• Latte ice 2GB PMP
• Stereo earphones
• USB cable
• Worldwide AC charger
• Software disk
• User manual

Features

• Built-in Memory: 2GB or 4GB
• External Memory Support: MiniSD Card (128MB to 2GB)
• LCD Size: 2.8 inches
• Resolution: 260K QVGA TFT, 320 X 240
• Audio: MP3, WMA
• Video: AVI
• Voice Record: WAV
• Picture: JPEG
• MP3 Bit Rate: 64Kbps-384Kbps
• WMA Bit Rate: 64Kbps-320Kbps
• Frequency Response: 20Hz-20KHz
• Language Support: English, Spanish
• FM Radio: 78MHz-108MHz
• Built-in EQ: Normal, 3D, Rock, Pop, Classic, Bass, Jazz and user-defined
• USB: 2.0 High Speed
• Power: Lithium Ion battery

Out of the Box Setup and Usage

Testing and usage of the Latte ice was performed by using all of the available functions as you would normally use a PMP for. I have mainly used the iPod Nano and iPod Video in the past, so my experiences with the ice were compared to those iPods.

The first task after opening the box was to charge the player. This actually turned out to be much more complicated than it needed to be, as the On/Off button has to be set to the Off position in order for the player to be charged. It took me a minute or two to figure this out, and I probably should have read the user manual first. But who reads the manual, right??

After charging the player using the included wall charger, which took a couple of hours, the first thing I did was to transfer some MP3 and JPEG files using the USB2.0 connection. The transfer speeds were adequate, but not overly impressive – averaging about 4MB/sec. writing files to the drive. No special software is needed to transfer files to the drive – it is truly plug-and-play.

After transferring the files, I began browsing through the menu and found that the ice has a very straightforward user interface. Menu items for Music, Video, FM radio, Photo, Text, Record, Games, File Explorer, and Settings are listed in the interface. Scrolling is done by using the up/down/left/right buttons on the left side of the player. After selecting a menu item with the “OK” button, the appropriate set of files or folders are displayed and you can easily select the file you wish to play.

Use of the buttons on the player is easy enough, but they are not as easy to use as the clickwheel on the iPod. I often had to press the a button more than once to get the player to respond – usually it was because I hadn't pressed the button hard enough or long enough. This is one of the few downsides of the ice – it requires both hands to hold the player and operate it at the same time. There is no denying the fact that the iPod still sports the best user interface of any portable media device that I have ever used.

Another annoyance of the player is the slight lag time between pressing the buttons and the response time. For large video files, and even during playback of some MP3s, there is a slight delay (perhaps ¼ - ½ of a second) after pressing the button and when the player responds. Other users may not notice this as much, but I was annoyed by the delay and it made me feel like I was accessing files across a network rather than directly on the player itself.