Olympus m:robe MR-100 5GB Review
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Battery Life
Olympus claims a battery life of 8 hours for WMA files, and 12 hours for MP3, which means it is comparable to the Zen Micro and iRiver H10.
One thing though, Olympus chose to take the conservative route. Instead of other manufacturers that test battery life under extremely optimal (and unrealistic) conditions, Olympus claims they test the battery life with the backlight on. Wow. So if that's the case, we should expect better timings for our test, which has the backlight turned off after 5 secs.
When testing the Zen Micro, we set the Zen Micro's volume at 20 out of 25. Using our recording software, we set the MR-100 to output the same volume as the Zen Micro. The resulting volume level on the MR-100 was about 95%. So take note that the power output is on the low side for the MR-100. It may not be able to power the better-quality headphones. We also set the EQ to R&B. Tracks are played by the album.
A 3.5mm-3.5mm audio cable was used to connect the player to the line-in of a computer, with software recoding the audio input. The battery life is considered to be the time from which music starts playing till it stops (when the player switches off due to insufficient power).
Click for larger picture.
The first test we did was using WMA 64kbps files. The MR-100 lasted 9 hours, 44 minutes when playing WMA files, overshooting the claimed 8 hours. Given this unexpected results, we were hoping for battery life of more than 12 hours for MP3 files. We were wrong. Playing MP3 128kbps files, the MR-100 lasted only 8 hours 22 minutes. Surprised at this result, we tested using WMA 128kbps files. This time, we got a timing of 8 hours 56 minutes. We were sure there was probably an error somewhere, and retested WMA 64kbps and MP3 128kbps, but ended with similar timings as before (+/- 2 minutes). This is definitely strange, as MP3 playback was supposed to be longer than WMA.
I was unable to reach Olympus regarding the above anomaly by press time.
Problems
Granted, the m:robe MR-100 and MR-500i are Olympus' first attempt to enter the portable digital audio player market. Maybe, then, that is why the MR-100 is so problematic.
Right out of the box, both m:trip and the MR-100 were buggy. I kept getting errors when trying to add my music into the m:trip library. Using the "Link to files" option ended up with no files being added. When I use "Make a copy", halfway through the copying, m:trip told me it could not find some file, and stopped like that. On the next import, m:trip then made duplicates of those files that were already copied. When I tried to sort the tracks in m:trip, the tracks would not get sorted. Or rather, most of the tracks would be sorted, but some would not. For example, when I sorted by "Albums", most of the tracks would be grouped by the album, while a few albums would be mixed up with each other. Even for those grouped by albums, they were not sorted alphabetically.
If you thought that was buggy, after syncing the library with the MR-100, the tracks were totally messed up. There was no form of sorting at all! Browsing "Evanescence" would give me some Evanescence songs, and also Ronan Keating, Five For Fighting, Do As Infinity... You get the idea. The only kind of sorting the MR-100 could get correct was the "All", which it managed to list all tracks in alphabetical order. You can imagine my frustration when using the MR-100.
Luckily, Olympus has released an update for m:trip, as well as a firmware update for the MR-100. The update for m:trip went smoothly enough. The firmware update was what nearly left me crazy. I had run the firmware update software possibly five times, all unsuccessfully. I get all sorts of error messages, until I got one that (I thought) killed the MR-100: Not enough disk space. This error came while it was transferring the firmware to the MR-100. There's actually two problems with this. First, the software failed to check the MR-100 for sufficient diskspace before initiaiting the update. And secondly, somehow, m:trip did not delete the music files in the player when syncing an empty library (I intentionally deleted my music library and synchronised it with the MR-100 before running the firmware update). The player showed a "Missing/Invalid File" when I pressed the power button, and then would not respond to other buttons at all. Resetting the player only showed the same error message.
I was prepared to call Olympus the next day. But just out of curiousity, I put it in the dock, and amazingly, it managed to connect to the computer! I manually deleted all the music files, as well as the music library files, and tried running the firmware update again. Thankfully, it completed this time round.
There are probably plenty of reasons why I would encounter so much problems, but the fact that it happened, well, let the buyer beware.
Once updated, the inital problems disappeared, and everything was working as it should have.
There are still other minor issues I have with the MR-100.
The MR-100 is unable to display track info in Chinese. Instead, it shows "???". Hopefully, Olympus will release a firmware update for that.
Next, m:trip is unable to process files in Unicode. Take note if you have files with Unicode file names.
The MR-100 can only be charged in the dock, unless you use USB charging. Also, the MR-100 uses a proprietary connector. A standard USB connector like on the Zen Micro would have been preferred.
The startup of the MR-100 is quite long. Unlike other players which use a "suspend" mode, the MR-100 prefers instead to do a complete shut down and power up. Thus, switching on the MR-100 takes about 13 seconds each time. The MR-100 does have a "suspend" mode, but after a short while, it will still shut down completely.
Also, the LCD cannot be seen without the backlight (unless you are in bright sunlight). So in most situations, if you want to see the track currently playing, you will have to activate the backlight. Talking about bright sunlight, the display looks like total crap if you view it under bright sunlight.
The MR-100 has some form of "smart" charging, so it does not do a complete charge cycle like the iPod Mini. However, it still also not as "smart" as the Zen Micro. If you remove the MR-100 from the dock and place it back in, the MR-100 will still charge for another 10 or 15 minutes.
Finally, the firmware is still not very stable yet. You may still encounter occasional "hanging". It might be wise to keep a paperclip with you. While the Zen Micro is also prone to hanging, the removable battery means just removing, and re-inserting the battery to reset it.