JetAudio iAudio 5 (1GB)

The iAudio 5 digital music player is as big as a wide stick of chewing gum and weighs almost nothing. The lone triple-AAA battery (non-rechargeable) gets you up and running right away. This pint-size 1GB player comes with a display, built-in voice recorder, and FM radio with recording option, which are all nice features, but are these perks worth a $50 premium over the iPod Shuffle?

We think the iAudio5 is a little thick at 0.7 inches, but its light weight, approximately one ounce. The buttons on the iAudio 5 stick, click, crack, and generally feel like a cheap toy.

We decided to forego reading the instructions at first in order to test the iAudio5's ease of use. Using Windows XP, setup takes about 10 seconds. Plug the included USB cable into the iAudio 5, and insert the other end into a free USB port on your notebook. Windows will detect it as a flash drive and automatically install the necessary drivers.

Once the driver installation is completed, the iAudio 5's 1GB drive shows up in "My Computer." Copy your music files to the player and off you go. The iAudio 5 supports a range of formats, including MP3, OGG, WAV, and WMA files. File transfers happen quickly thanks to USB 2.0 support. Individual 128-Kbps MP3 files take only a second or two; a complete 70 minute, 192-Kbps MP3-encoded album took just 48 seconds to copy.

While playing MP3s, the iAudio 5's overly-busy display is surprisingly informative. At a glance you can tell the artist, title, bit rate, file format, track number, time expired, and EQ preset setting. There's a nifty real-time level meter and that much-touted color backlight feature that gives you about 1,000 different colors. You can set these individually for different modes (voice recorder, MP3, FM tuner, etc.).

The iAudio 5 includes a number of sound algorithms under the "JetEffect" menu, including BBE sound enhancement and Mach3Bass, a pseudo-surround algorithm, yet another bass enhancement, and a series of EQ presets. All of these do a good job of masking the mediocre quality of the earbuds themselves.

We applaud the extra functionality, though it gives you plenty of ways to mangle the sound. We're not sure a 5-band EQ with a 48 dB range (+24 to -24 dB) for each band is necessary. However, the BBE enhancement and Mach3Bass feature are enough to quell any complaints, and the EQ is fully user adjustable.

Battery life is average. JetAudio rated the player at 20 hours, but we could manage only 9 hours 31 minutes on our listening test (with the backlight off) before the iAudio 5 shut down.

The included JetAudio 6 software acts as a decent stripped down alternative to Windows Media Player 10. There's no good reason to use this player over the one included with Windows, but it's nice to have an alternative. We tested it over a variety of functions (ripping, playlists, playback, etc.) and it worked well.

It's hard to recommend a chintzy-feeling 1GB flash player at $199 when you can buy the 4GB Creative Zen Micro or Apple iPod Mini for the same price. By itself, the iAudio 5 is a colorful MP3 player that takes good advantage of the huge advances in flash memory technology in recent years. Stacked up against the competition, however, it's just a pricey, me-too competitor in a crowded field.