SuperTalent Vidego24 - Printer Friendly version

1. Features

Super Talent is a well known designer and manufacturer of DRAM and Flash memory products for the computer industry. Recently the company entered the market of portable audio/video players and kindly provided us with its latest mp4 player, the vidego 24. This product aims for the road warrior that wish to buy an affordable and at the same time powerful Mp3/Video player for most of its needs. At this review we will examine what we like and don't about this small MP4 player and write down our thoughts and conlusion.

- SuperTalent VIDEGO 24 MP4 Player

The SuperTalent VIDEOGO 24 MP4 player is a small device that can playback most digital compressed formats, starting from MP3 to MP4 and of course pictures and why not, even play games with such small device. The retail price is small and you need to get inside to get an idea how small this player is.. This little and elegant mp4 player comes with an arsenal full of features in order to take a good place among other similar products. Let's have a closer look at what Super Talent's new player offers.

- 2.4" TFT 262K-true color display
- Touch panel controls
- 1GB memory capacity
- Mini SD card slot for storage expansion
- Ultra slim design
- Mp3,wma support
- Video support (avi)
- e-book reader (txt format)
- Built-in FM Tuner
- Built-in Mic for voice recording
- Games (?)
- Rechargeable Lithium Battery with up to 8 Hours Audio Playback
- Hi-Speed USB 2.0

The audio controller of the player is manufactured by SigmaTel a market leader for MP3 players whose audio chipsets are currently used by most consumer electronics manufacturers for handheld MP3 player designs.

2. Package

Now that we've seen what it offers let's open the box and take a closer look.

The retail package includes the player, a pair of white earphones, a USB cable, a lanyard, the software CD and the manual. The front end of the player has a glossy look and features the TFT display along with the main touch sensitive controls.

The Vidego 24 is a very small device and has the size of a credit card. It's amazing how such a small device bares such a great screen.

No, I don't have big hands...

On the right side we have the On/Off/Hold switch and the power button.

On the left side we find the earphones jack and the miniSD slot.

On the bottom end we have the USB jack, the mic and the lanyard hole.

Finally the back end...

3. Operation

In order to turn on the player we have to set the On/Off/Hold switch to the middle (On), which proved a bit tricky since the switch can easily slip in the 'Hold' position. Afterwards we press the power button next to the switch for a few seconds. I wonder why they made so complicated to power on... We loaded the device with some mp3s, videos, pictures and texts in order to test it. To fully load the 1GB of internal memory took us approximately 9,5 min. over a USB2.0 connection which is a very fast result. As the device is activated we see the keys light up in bright red color and we are welcomed with Super Talent's logo on the screen. After a short moment and the "Building Database" message we have access to the main menu.

This player has a very good looking interface with allot of functions. It features a music and video player, a picture viewer, FM radio, an e-book reader, a voice recorder and games (but we didn't find any installed).

The music, video and photo playback is very good but basic. You can't create playlists but you can overcome this obstacle by separating your music in different folders (e.g. by albums). Also by using the build-in file explorer you can listen to your music by artist/album/genre. The same applies in video playback and picture viewing. The controls are touch sensitive and the navigation is very easy. < and > to go left or right, the M for going a step back and the Play/pause for going a step forward. The -/+ keys are used for volume regulation.

The sound quality is average even at high bitrates (320bps) but we didn't find that annoying. The build-in equalizer has 5 presets and you can also create your own preset. We sticked with the "normal" preset since it was the most pleasant to our ears.

playing an mp3 file

The video playback isn't great and the motion is jumpy due to the fact that it plays video at 20 fps. The player comes with a very simple PC software for converting your videos in order to be playable from the device. A negative point is that it stretches a 16:9 video in order to fit to its 4:3 screen resulting in a distorted picture. But what the heck, this is just for viewing some videos not your entire movie collection.

video pulldown...

In the other hand the photo previewing is awesome! The pictures have excellent colors and you can store pictures of any size, the player will downscale them for fitting in the screen.

The FM tuner has all the basic radio functions plus a record function in order to save your favorite show or some songs you like. The record function enables you to take notes on the fly or even record an interview. Don't expect from the e-book reader to display your pdf files. This little reader can only read simple text files, but don't worry there are many books online in simple text format.

The reader has a slight problem in word wrapping...

Concerning the games we didn't find anything installed in the device nor in the included CD, even the manual doesn't have a reference to the games.

4. Conclusion

Super Talents offers a very good player with allot of capabilities. It's really small and the touch controls makes it very impressive and easy to use. It has many functions but only few of them really work. Basically you can listen to your music or favorite radio station, view your videos and pictures, take voice notes and read some text files. For the price of $70,00 this little shiny devil is a good choice.

Pros
- Small size
- Excellent screen quality
- Touch controls
- Radio
- Memory upgrade through miniSD cards

Cons
- Slow startup ("building database" message)
- Cranky video playback
- Medium sound quality