Photos: MPIO FL500

You have to hand it to MPIO for bringing back knobs in the face of our collective excitement over futuristic touch screens.

The USB door on the MPIO FL500 is thinly tethered to the body by a fragile piece of rubber. The switch on the left side of this photo controls play/pause and skip/scan. We found it too easy to accidentally trigger it.

I bet there will be a beeper revival in the future. Clipping the FL500 to my pocket felt like wearing a cool pager from the year 2020.

I can't look at this thing without thinking of the car race in Tron. Notice how the display squeezes a whole mess of information (too much) into the small space.

Here we see the profile of the MPIO FL500's metal clip. The hold switch was often useful, given the FL500's distinctively oversized controls. Hopefully, that reset switch won't see much action.

The MPIO FL500 was a bit awkward to hold, but its clip-on design was really made to be worn--not held.

...but don't let the looks fool you. Those two dials closest to you are plastic (and feel like it).