Sangean PR-D14 AM/FM-RDS Portbale Receiver with USB-White

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Price: $65.52 $64.95   

Product Feature

• 10 Station Presets (5 FM, 5 AM)
• Clock Available for FM RDS-CT
• USB MP3 / WMA Playback
• Dual Alarm Timer by Radio, Buzzer or Media by USB
• I/O jacks: DC-in, Aux-in and Headphone

Product Description

PR-D14 AM/FM-RDS Portable Receiver w/ USB

Sangean PR-D14 AM/FM-RDS Portbale Receiver with USB-White Review

Initially I rated this 1 star because like another reviewer here, the USB would NOT play my MP3'S.

However, I subsequently discovered the bug that I believe causes this and have contacted the manufacturer (and they have confirmed this problem). More info below - I was able to get mp3's to play, but note that there are still a number of other issues and quirks detailed below.

First, let's cover the positives of this unit:

Positives:
(1) This thing can play mp3's - sometimes anyway - there are definitely issues (see negatives below)
(2) It sounds pretty good for the type of unit it is (not "tiny" sounding - packs a decent "punch")
(3) It does NOT have a "cheap" feel or look - it has a "quality" feel
(4) The radio seems to be pretty good with decent reception
(5) The sleep timer works well
(6) The alarm works well
(7) It runs off the electricity OR you can use it as a portable unit via 4 "D" batteries

Negatives:

Most of the negatives center around the USB and there are a boatload of them...

(1) The bug that prevented my mp3's from playing is that this unit cannot handle any mp3 file that is over 65MB or so in file size and will refuse to even read the flash drive if even 1 file on the drive is over 65MB. Most standard individual songs are much less than this of course. But, audio books, messages, and CD's that have been burned to 1 mp3 (which for some types of CD's like relaxation ones can be good), etc. will likely hit this limitation. That means if you want to use this player to listen say to an audio book or a message or any other type of longer file (which is what I wanted it for when going to sleep to play messages and so forth), you may well hit this limit.

(2) If you have a flash drive that has a large amount of mp3's on it, it might take the unit 4 or 5 minutes to start playing again after the unit has been off, or it might not play at all unless you cycle through the sources numerous times. Eventually it will probably play, but if you're like me, you will get very frustrated very quickly.

(3) After the unit is turned off when in USB mode, when turned back on, while it says USB mode, the player often won't read the flash drive unless you cycle through the sources to get back to USB again. This may be related to #2 above. What it should do is not start playing right away, but when you press Play it should then read the USB and play.

(4) This thing sometimes likes to skip the first several seconds of a song - especially when the mp3 is larger (i.e. >10MB). I've noticed no definite pattern but have observed that this seems more common with some of my flash drives than others, but doesn't seem to be based on how fast the drive is as one of my faster USB 2.0 drives exhibits this.

(5) Unfortunately, this unit plays by "written order" rather than by alphabetical. So, for example, it doesn't care if you've got 2 folders on it that say "1FolderA" and "2FolderB" - if "2FolderB" is written to the flash drive first, it will play first. This is not the first mp3 device with this problem, but I just don't understand why all these years later after mp3 hit the scene do we still have players being released that don't go alphabetically. This is especially problematic because when you copy and paste files to a flash drive using Windows Explorer, Explorer has a longtime bug (still in Windows 7) where it FREQUENTLY copies out of order (i.e. it will copy the last folder you selected first etc.). I know their are 3rd-party solutions to the "out of order copying" problem (I use one) but I shouldn't have to..

(6) I must offer this warning: I noted with one of my flash drives that it always seemed to be "electrically charged" after being plugged into this unit and would produce a "shock" when plugged back in to my computer. I must have tried it a dozen times and it did it every single time. I have a sneaky suspicion, but cannot prove, that this unit is improperly powering the USB and is pumping too much power to its USB port. If so, this could conceivably cause very serious problems down the road (i.e. including theoretically ruining a flash drive) so I personally would not use any USB drive with this that has any other important non-music data on it, just in case...

(7) There's a limit of 200 folders or 9999 files that you can use on the flash drive: So if you're thinking you're going to plop a 32GB flash drive in this sucker with your entire 400 album collection on it (each album in its own folder), think again... This isn't the first mp3 player with these types of limits. But I don't understand why we're in 2012 and players are being released with limits like these, especially the folder one. Most people don't have 10,000 mp3's but 200 folders is not that uncommon these days.

(8) The physical USB slot itself is on the top and rather than being in the center of the place allotted for it, it is flush with one of the sides. This means that USB drives that are fatter I'm wondering if they may not fit and really small ones you may get in but have trouble trying to remove. For the record, I have a tiny 32GB Sandisk Cruzer Fit drive that seems to fit OK and is "doable" but it's not the easiest thing to remove. I don't like the USB being on top of the unit, but I haven't come up with a better option, but what I can say is that I definitely do NOT like the rubber "cover" they used (it just gets in the way!) - they should rework this.

(9) I wish one of its "play mode" options was just to play the current song and then stop. For me, I like to listen to a specific file (a relaxation type of CD that's all in one mp3) that I go to sleep to and I use the sleep timer. I don't want the player to go to the next track when it ends, but rather just end. Instead I have to set it to repeat the track, which is ok, but I would rather it offered the ability to just "play once and then stop playing" like my other mp3 player does.

Final Analysis:
All things considered, this product shows GREAT promise and might be worthwhile for some, but Sangean needs to fix their USB issues. Releasing a product that's centerpiece feature is mp3 playing via USB that has such major USB bugs is really not acceptable and they need to remedy this. If they could address the negatives above, I'd say they could easily have a 5-star product (that is very much needed in the marketplace!)

Note: I originally rated this 1 star, then upped it to 4 after "working around" the 65MB bug, but after using the unit for a while, have bumped it down to 3 stars due to the major annoyance of the other USB problems.

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