Coby C941 mp3 player

I recently bought one even not trusting the coby brand from years past. It serves my own purposes as a utilitarian DAP with these features:

1. No proprietary software, in fact none except win98 usb drivers

2. mp3,ogg,wma,wav support

3. 20 gigs or more and fast usb interface


On the no software issue, or feature, I use unix windows and mac and needed a player that just allows me to directly throw files on the device. This device allows that, and reads your tags while playing the file but it does not do an device based "index" as a rio carbon does. Its best to have your library already layed out logically as I did.
artist/album/files.mp3

This works for me, as I found that searching for songs via genre, or id3 based album was more of a chore than just creating the more logical subdirectories.

Sonically, I would put the output on par with IPOD and many others, but not as good as Rio, which I consider as the best sounding mp3 players.

The joystick is actually useful for navigating the music directories and was easy to learn to navigate. After a couple of days, I was able to move forward in an album and change the volume while not looking and driving with the other hand.

The only downside is that I have not figured out what format the m3u files should be in that allows it to play playlists. I still have a few days to test it out, and if I can't figure it out I _may_ get something else, but I hate software, sloppy build and other useless things that DAPS have now a days.

The archos xs202 was my first choice in this arena, but is no longer available. The archos xs202 did everything this player does, plus has a player based index feature, plus accepts DRM wma files.

I bought this toy for a friend, and wow - i was absolutely stunned how easy it is to set up... The directions are easy to ready, finally a user manual that doesnt take a college degree to get thru., and it basically is extremely user friendly.. I like the fact it comes with a disc for 98 windows, which is quite nice - not to assume everyone is a savy rich computer gnome, -- if you have ME, Pro, XP, all ya gotta do is plug USB into computer, and copy and paste songs to your new music player... _ BONUS: The Harddrive used by the coby is a TOSHIBA 20GB - << not a shabby off name brand, or the ones we all know are pron to fail...
Coby has a 12 hr, battery life, compared to 6hrs on ipod - and has a voice recorder, FM TUNER < user selectable EQ settings, cable for 1/8 plug to 1/8 plug stereo, and rca to 1/8 jack to plug into car or home stereo... has a line in, to record your records DIRECTLY... or cds, or Tapes... and amazingly without any needed software...automatically converts to MP3...
I ripped 9 Gigs of music from my computer to the Coby unit in less than 15mins - Amazing & fast.. and effortless. Also a cool feature, once you load all your music into the main root folder, you can make specialized playlists... _ really sweet if you like to seperate your music or have picky friends...
20GB of space to record your record collection, Mp3s off music sites stored in your computer, Voice Recorder - to caputre important lectures or notes - wow, this would have been sweet for the college dayz, no-one would be the wizer I was actually listening to the professor.. hehe., and an FM TUNER - I was so stoked my friend liked it... and was jealous, i didnt buy one for myself. So, of course I checked the internet for some stores locally to me and walla got it in 2 days - from www.mobile-emotions.com -

I know I am late to the party so to speak, but I'll offer my opinion.
The Coby MP-c941 is a great player in terms of its capacity/price value. The player can hold more than enough music for a person who just has to have their library with them. Then you throw in features like the FM radio, voice recorder and the ability to record sound with the line in cord.

But with the good came the bad. Last week, a friend of mine was listening to music on the player, pressed stop(to ofcourse stop the track) and all of a sudden the LCD display went totally blank. She pressed play and music resumed...but the screen never came back. The player wasn't dropped or exposed to extreme temperatures so I have no explanation for what happened.
I have emailed and called Coby but the best solution they had was to send the player back(if its under the 90 warranty) or take it back to the store where it was purchased. What made things a little more confusing was that the manual states that a person should call Coby for a "hot-key reboot" to correct that particular problem. When I called coby again, I found out that they do not offer that service. So now I have an overall good player with a messed up screen.