Beatman Flash MP3 Recorder

Review:
'Keep it simple' says Freecom Technologies about its Beatman Flash MP3 recorder. In addition to being small and light weight, this 128M-byte Digital Audio player/recorder is as claimed truly simple to use.

The Beatman arrived in a stylish package, snuggly tucked in black silk like cloth surrounded by Sennheiser in-ear headphones, AAA battery, USB cable, line in cable, neck strap, pouch, wired remote control, luxury carrying case , Quick Start guide and CD.

The unit is a little larger than a Triscuit and just as easy to lose between the couch pillows, small and light enough to strap to your arm for a workout. Or use the included neck strap or carry case.

Beatman has controls and connections on almost every side. Multi-function encoders on the right and left side control the playback and navigation, A 3-position mode switch on the top switches from FM to Music to Hold, one-touch recording button and EQ/music play mode switches are on the front. A wired remote is included that controls volume, play, rewind etc. USB, line input and headphone jacks are on top. The backlit LCD display keeps you up-to-date with the status of the device and is a compliment to its ease of use.

The included Sennheiser headphones are better than what most portable devices come with. An on-board EQ makes up for the lost bass response from the in-ear headphones.

Freecom's MP3 manager and driver software installation was easy, although we did receive a warning from XP saying that this software has not passed Windows Logo testing. This software is an MP3 manager only. Connect the Beatman to your USB port and drag and drop to move your files. Additional software is needed to convert CD music to MP3s.

No PC? No MP3s? No Problem. A stereo line in recording feature makes the Beatman a nifty little portable MP3 recorder. Take the line output from a CD player, computer, TV or mixing console, and with one touch of a button you are recording quality MP3s at up to 256K bit/sec @ 48 KHz. A built-in microphone is just one more means of getting audio into this device. It is suitable for capturing meetings and lectures. Playback speed can be slowed down by 1/2 or 2/3 while listening to MP3s, which is quite useful for learning note for note speed metal guitar licks, and can make some of your voice recording easier to transcribe.

After you've exhausted your 8-hour music collection, flip over to FM mode, engage the Auto-Search mode and the Beatman will find 16 stations and automatically add them to the 16 user preset locations. Hear something you like? Press the one-touch record button on the front panel.

A multilingual Quick start manual is provided, the complete manual is available on the included CD, and further support for the product is available worldwide through freecom.com. Freecom backs up this quality device with a confident 2-year warranty.

This is a hip little device. The line input recording is a great feature.

Note -- We looked at the 128M-byte version. Freecom also makes a 256M-byte version ($219) and a 512M-byte version ($329).

Reviewed by Brian Wood