RCA TH1102 Pearl Series 2 GB MP3 Player

Pro: This compact MP3 player with voice recording is a great and inexpensive alternative to certain I-'s! It connects to the computer and comes up as a thumb drive for easy drag and drop song insertion. No complicated software to learn (or be tied to).

Con: Doesn't come with a belt clip or a case, battery is inside a hump which give the case a bulky look. Should use rechargeable coin style batteries. The unit could be a little bigger with bigger easier to press buttons. For those of us with fat fingers!

The price is right the quality is very good. I own four of them! I am still working on wearing out my first one that I have had for over a year. I am finally starting to wear the paint off of it. The most notable feature to me is the fact that it plays folders. Just pop the songs you want into a folder on your pc and then download them to your RCA Pearl MP3 player and they play in the same order as they are in the folder. Hence for albums there is no trying to figure out where each song goes to the original album. They play in order. People pay for pocket PC style mp3 players or Ipods to get this same feature. To have this feature on such a low cost player is outstanding. Give props to RCA for this well overdue feature on a low cost player. As far as not having the two gigs of space as advertised I had no problem with it. Make sure to format using fat 32 and you will be able to use the entire two gig. I have had the same problem with SD memory cards not using the whole space formated...Read more

I've tried a lot of MP3 players. This is much better than the rest.

The RCA Pearl is super easy to use. It can make 96kb MP3, or even 48kb WMA (and everything larger too), sound like CD quality. Now, that's a winner! It has a replacable AAA battery so you're never out of action to wait on a recharge. Its fully compatible with the common recharable battery kits, so you can have the best of both worlds. Internal sound technology is similar to Creative X-fi, but this RCA product is easier to use, sounds better, lower priced, and more durable. With that technology, of course it can play back highly compressed files with fantastic quality. So, you can fit one heck of a lot of songs on here. For great music, this is just the thing.
For extra fun,
There's a simple cord available at Radio Shack that hooks this up to your home stereo. Aha! No more need to mess with a bunch of CDs. I love this little thing.
Caveat? No caveat, considering its...Read more