Interface & Features

Now, if you thought its hardware design was somewhat of a "knock-off", wait till you see the GUI's main menu!

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Yep that's right, that's no iPod or iPhone screenshot but rather the main GUI menu you'll see after somewhat getting over the cheesy startup screen upon power-up.  Other than a similar menu you'll find under Settings, the rest of its interface is not as appealing.  Also, this player does have plenty of features and the main menu consists of nine submenus.  However, some are really not necessary and I will only cover those that are most useful and of interest to many.

Music

As I was expecting, the VIDEGO28 does not support ID3 tag browsing and you're stuck with browsing your music in a file list view just like you would normally browse files in Windows Explorer.  However, what I immediately did not like was that there apparently wasn't a way to set the player to auto-scroll file names, making it impossible to know what file you are choosing at times.  Fortunately though, you can somewhat improve navigation by uploading your music in folders rather than just files.  The player will read them as folders, making it easier to browse by Artist.

Video

Again, if you do not organize your files properly before uploading, getting to your videos won't be easy.  However, uploading them in their own folder will at least let you navigate to them easier.  Upon playing a video, the player will automatically play them in landscape view.  Slightly tapping on the screen will reveal a somewhat appealing control menu that will allow you to pause or seek through your vids with ease. 

Photo

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Nothing much to cover about its photo viewing features, especially after finding that the player struggles quite a bit when loading hi-res images.  You'll see that dreaded hour glass for a few seconds before it can load another picture.  However, what I will say is that the quality is very impressive, something I will elaborate on further in the performance section of this review.  You can view your pics individually or activate a slideshow by taping on the screen and pressing the play button.

FM

What is always a nice feature to find in a digital media player is a built-in FM Tuner.  The VIDEGO28 not only has one, but also allows you to record from it as well.  However, recording is a bit tricky though.  Tap slightly on the screen and you'll see a nav menu with a mic icon on the top bar.  Tap on this and it will take you to the recording menu, where you'll have to patiently wait a few seconds and tap the screen a couple of more times before you can actually start the recording.  Yes, this feature is always nice, but activating it could be much simpler.

E-Book

The "E-Book" menu basically means this player is capable of reading text files.  Any text file you load will be identified and can be read, regardless of source.  For long files such as e-books, you have a bookmark option as well.  Also, this player is, or should I say was capable of supporting lyrics as well.  I say this because when you read the manual, it is not only very specific as to how you should take advantage of this feature, but also refers you to a website/service that is actually no longer available.  I was actually quite shocked and appalled by this.  Anyways, to keep things short, it claims you can load ".lrc" files from a website that is obviously no longer in operation.  Yes, you can still get away with this by loading your own text files, but the way it appeared to function was actually pretty useful. 

Record

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This player is also capable of voice recordings and this can be done via the Record Menu.  Nothing much to cover here as it will basically load a status screen and you'll have to tap the screen a few more times before you can actually start a recording.  All recordings are saved as standard WAV files.

Game

This player happens to also support games but I find this feature to be completely useless and I won't even bother to go into it much.  Not only is there just one Tetris game loaded, but activating the game is a real pain in the ***.  When you refer to the manual, it instructs you to actually use the power/hold switch to start the game.  However, mostly all attempts failed and it is practically impossible to get the only game loaded started.  Why you can't control it via the touch screen or even get out of game mode this way still boggles me.

Settings

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Finally, you have the always important Settings Menu...the only other menu that has that more appealing Apple-like structure.  While it happens to have many submenus available, not very many are actually useful and not many actually work.

Starting with what I find to be the most important settings menu, the Music Settings doesn't really offer much in terms of playback features.  Yes, you can set the play mode and repeat option, but the "User EQ" on this player is completely useless.  Adjusting to the desired setting and hitting that "OK" button would do absolutely nothing and it would not retain these settings.  I was forced to choose from its preset options available depending on the music being played.

From the Radio Menu, you can set your FM region and also make changes to its recording capabilities, including quality and volume level.

The Display Settings menu will just confuse you more and the options here are unclear and playing with them still didn't make things any better.  There is a final settings menu where you can select your language of choice and even calibrate the touch screen, which I high recommend.  However, there's a menu titled "Bee" which I'm still unclear as to what it actually does.  I tried activating and deactivating it, but could not figure out what change it made.

Finally, you have options in the Settings Menu to restore all settings to default or upgrade firmware, when or if it becomes available.

Next: Performance