Product Review: MEElectronic's MiniMEE

I decided to do a product review. Today I will be reviewing the MEElectronic's MiniMEE MP3 player.

I will start by saying a bit about my old MP3 player. I had (and still have actually) a Craig 256mb MP3 player. It's ok, has a expansion slot for an sd card (which I never got around to getting) also able to record (a feature I never used). The problem with my old MP3 player is that when I would turn it off, it went back to the beginning of the very first file. This might be ok, if I listened to music on my player, but I don't. For some reason I find that irritating. I listen to audio books and podcasts. Well, I only paid $10.00 for it, so it was all right,I could only use it though when I had a lot of time to listen.

I decided that I wanted a new MP3 player. One with a bookmarking system, or at least one where I could pick up where I left off in the file. I did some research and comparisons and found the one I wanted. A thing of beauty it is. Plays video (not that I actually care about that), full touch screen. Of course it was (and is) out of stock. So, I dug a little further and found a (slightly) cheaper one. This one had mixed reviews (so did the one I wanted) but was made by the same company and seemed like it should work for my purposes. It didn't have a bookmarking system, but you could get it (so the reviews said) to keep it's place by pausing and then turning it off.

Well, I won't describe the long wait I had for it, since they sent it via U.S.P.S. (that is a rant for another day), but I finally got it. First of all, to describe it. In a word, small. When I read all the descriptions everyone commented on the size, I believe terms like tiny and minuscule were thrown about. When I read the dimensions, I thought, “Huh, seems to be a bit smaller than mine.”. I didn't pull out a ruler to do comparisons. Well, I got it and found that I was wrong. This MP3 player is not a lot bigger than a postage stamp. You get used to the size though, I now forget that it is really small until I show it to people and they react to it's size.

Well, enough about that, it's not the size of the boat, it's...well, you know. It has an on/off button and you can use the play button as an on/off button if the real on/off button is set for on. If you are like me and only use the player to play audio books, you might do well to use the play button as the on/off button. I say this because, if you use the real on/off button, it comes up in a selection mode where you have to pick which mode to go into. You use the ff/rw buttons to move around, then the M enter the mode you want. However, most of the time when I press the M button it thinks I have pressed either the ff or rw button and moves to the left or the right. It sometimes takes me 5 minutes to get my MP3 player to a usable state.

That would be bad enough, but no, it gets worse. While it remembers the position that it last left, all the time, about half of the time (maybe a little less) right after it starts, it will go back to zero. If I have remembered and looked quickly, I can see where I stopped. Not bad if you have nice short files, but the last time I had to fast Forward it 6.5 hours. Must have taken me 20 minutes.

So on a rating system with 5 stars, I would probably give this 2. I wouldn't buy it again.