Meizu M6 8 GigByte Review

Meizu M6 8 GigByte Review

Introduction

This blog entry deals with my review of the Meizu MP6 from a "new information" point of view. What I outline below is information that adds to other's reviews of the Meizu MP6. I have put a list of references at the bottom to make learning more about the MP6 easier.

I received my new 8 Gbyte Meizu MP6 about three weeks ago. I have been thoroughly impressed with all the functions of the player. This player is packed with features, but the bottom line for me is sound quality. My entire collection of music is Q7 or higher Ogg Vorbis. {At Q6, you have lossless stereo coupling}. This is roughly comparable to 224 kb/sec MP3, however, it is ~25% smaller than a 224 kb/sec MP3.

The player itself feels nice and solid, with a definite eye toward quality. From the metal backing to the pre-installed protective coverings to the feel of the buttons, this player just speaks "solid" from the get go.

Why Meizu?

Of course, for me a player is useless if it doesn't also support Linux. The players that were in the running, the Cowon D2, Iriver Clix and Meizu MP3 (again OGG support with all three), all work as USB mass storage devices. For those who don't know, this is the true "Plays For Sure" version of an audio player. It shows up on your screen as a simple hard drive, and you can drag and drop music/videos/pictures to it, however, it is also easy to manage your music using MusicMatch or Winamp in Windows or Amarok in Linux. All of the above can be put into MTP mode if you purchase music online. Buying music infected with DRM is of no interest to me, however, they all support it.

What nailed it, after meeting my critical criteria is "Virtual 3D". If you have never heard a high quality song with expanded stereo/virtual 3D/etc you don't know what you are missing. This is not simply an equalizer setting but a way, through advanced digital signal processing, to cause a stereo track to literally come alive. The comparison of Virtual 3D to regular stereo is as stark as the difference between mono vs stereo. More on that later.

Overall Rating

4.5 Stars out of a possible 5. It lost a 1/4 of one point because it does not handle large play lists gracefully (i.e. 120 or more song play list). 1/4 of a point is lost because no player is ever perfect, even if it functions perfectly. I don't think this will be an iPod killer, simply because of the HUGE ecosystem of accessories, however, this player has never failed to make anyone who has a flash based iPod envious (the older non video capable Nano, Apple released the new Nano today that supports video). For the same money as the new Nano, you get superior sound quality, a bigger screen, 4 GBytes more storage and a player as refined as the iPod series. If you need or want the iTunes integration and are willing to spend more money, then iPod is for you. If you are looking for sound quality and capabilities, $ for $, this player beats any flash based iPod hands down.

There is no point in comparing this to an iPhone or an HD based iPod (or any MP3 phone, etc) because they are literally two different animals.

Sound Quality

The sound quality is phenomenal. I connect it to my home stereo through this FM Transmitter. It has replaced the DVD playing an MP3 DVD (and the pain to mass convert from Ogg to MP3), because of Virtual 3D.

I have never heard better from any portable player. The player comes with so many ways to customize your music that is actually a lot of fun just playing with settings. There are an abundance of pre-programmed equalizers, there is a bass boost setting (those of you old enough to remember will recognize this as the loudness button), treble boost and of course, Virtual 3D. There really is no way to describe it to do it justice. I have the setting on 3 and everyone who hears it on/off on my stereo just doesn't believe the sound difference. A final note, the low end bass on this thing is amazing. There is no other player I have ever encountered that can surpass this player in terms of quality and many (virtually any Ipod) it simply leaves in the dust.

Aside: There is no better FM transmitter, and using this modification you will get a range of about 150 feet circular. More than enough to cover a very large lot, allowing you to transmit to all your stereos, including the ratty pair of headphone radios I use when cutting the grass.

Another perk is the Headphone, Speaker, Earphones setting under "Spatializer" it is a one click option to change the acoustics to adapt to however you are listening the the player.

Video Quality

Video quality is amazingly clear. Converting into the desired AVI the player wants is desperatley easy with Linux (more below). The default of 366 kb/sec (to the max the player is 500), you get a picture that literally looks perfect. I may play with the maximum rate supported if I see any reason to. Since I travel a lot, and all of you know just how inconvenient it actually is watching a movie with your laptop on a plane, this player will come in very handy.

I think a couple of pictures are in order. These pictures do not do justice to the clarity and quality of the screen, but will demonstrate how great the screen is. What you see below are screenshots of almost actual size. When you click on them to expand them, keep in mind that these are pictures of a 2.4" screen blown up to 5 times it's original size. Seeing how clear the image is blown up to this size should give an idea of how good the screen is.

Scenery Picture


Movie Photo (tried my best to get a good picture)



Capacity

I have upwards of 1400+ songs and 5 (about 250 MBytes/90 minutes) movies, about 40 Mbytes of pictures, and am approaching 7.5 GBytes. I could compress the pictures down, and reduce the default rate from 366 kbytes/sec, however, if the above is not enough to satisfy you in the interim you are away from your computer, you probably need a non flash HD based player anyway.

Issues I don't have with the player.

In doing research into this player, I came across posts and reviews of things that have obviously been fixed in the current version of the player. This list includes.

1) OGG tags (artist, album, etc), no problems at all.
2) Some seem to be under the impression that images must be 1024X1024 or less. I tested, and then left all pictures I put on the player at 2288x1712 from my 4 Mpixel camera, no trouble viewing the pictures.
3) Automatically rebuilds the library on computer disconnect. No need to update it manually

Playlists and the reason for 1/4 star lost

There seems to be a flaw in the logic on how the player reads playlists. For smaller playlists, (20 or less), there is no problem. I also have some large playlists (200+ songs) in broad categories like "Party Music", "Mellow", etc. (I used vi and Amarok to create these playlists, but that's another post, no I did not create using dynamic playlists on the player itself, lol )

When you enter a playlist, all the songs are listed, however, as soon as you center tap or select enter, the player appears to freeze. It has not frozen, however, it takes a full 3 minutes before the songs start playing. The playlist (next, random, etc) all work normally from this point on, and turning on/off is fine. As long as you don't leave this playlist, the problem never happens again. If, however, you leave and immediately come back to it, the same 3 minute wait happens. I suspect it is doing a complete "rebuild DB" behind the scenes any time you enter a playlist. Is this a heartache, not really. From the All Music, start a song, then go into the playlist, listen to the current song while the playlist "loads"

Managing the player. Amarok auto-detected it, and poof, installation complete. I did configure the player to add all music relative to /Music which is the default location. Amarok does a flawless job of adding by Artists, Album, etc relative to that. For Windows users, if using in USB mode, WinAmp (and I believe MusicMatch) operate the same way, it just works, allowing you to avoid Windows Media Player.

Hint: If Windows gives the option to manage using WMP and the player is in USB mass storage mode, DO NOT allow it. You will see the device, but drag and drop will fail with "an error occured" because you are not using MTP. Why it detects it when it won't work, who knows, but avoid WMP.

Video Conversion and Linux

This was a trivial task. I already knew how to use Cinelera to create the required format, and DVD:RIP for Linux and K3B make it easy to create AVI's from your DVDs into your computer. All it took to install the supplied Windows application was to click on the exe, (my computer has wine, it is the default application to open executables), select the Next->Next->Next with all the defaults and there it was, an icon on the desktop. [Ignore the error about registering a DLL for autoplay or some such during the install]



Here is a screenshot of the application in action (notice the wine glass in the upper left) running on Linux.



NOTE: For the technical, the movie is being transcoded both from/to the same external USB drive, making it convert at a lowly 40 frames/second (~2 times normal speed), hence the performance hit.

General Customization.

There is simply too much to list.
You can edit any menu item to add/remove any options.
You can change the font colors, you can change the background to anything you want, even uploaded pictures. One for Music playback, one for calendar, etc.

Other References:
Rather than just re-list everything that others have already covered.

YouTube Meizu Demo
Narrated YouTube Review
[NOTE:] You can find lots of video if you search on "Meizu M6" on YouTube, the above two are top rated.

More General Review of Meizu M6
CNET Review NOTE: This is an older review, the M6 does support Protected. I linked this because you basically watch the video to get an idea, then read the reviews, the opinions that matter to most.

Good review from the Meizu Forum with comparison chart with Nano, Ipod, Creative and more product shots

TripleII