[shifuimam]

So I caved and bought a Chinese 2G Shuffle knockoff from eBay. I, for one, have always wondered about these, and since it was only $20 shipped, I figured I'd try it.


And here's the rest of the photo set.

So now that you know what it looks like, how about figuring out how it works?

First off, the shuffle switch doesn't work. At all. I think it might just be a dummy switch to make it look more like a shuffle, or else my particular shuffle is busted. Either way, it doesn't work for me.

It charges via USB, and it charged up pretty quickly. The power LED is only one color (red), so it's impossible to know when the battery's getting low.

Playback is easy, since there's no GUI. It crossfades the music when you skip between tracks, and fades in/out when you play/pause. It doesn't, however, remember what song you were on or where you were in a track, so if you turn it off, it'll start from the beginning.

It feel surprisingly solid. The clip's hinge doesn't feel weak, and it IS made of aluminum, so it doesn't feel too cheap. The buttons are a little mushier than the real Shuffle's. The headphone jack is stable, and sound quality is like the real Shuffle - not the best, but not the worst, either. The earphones it came with were a horrible knockoff of the old-style iPod earphones...the wires were ridiculously thin, and I can hear the magnets in the phones rolling round inside their casings. They don't sound too bad, though.

The verdict? I satisifed my curiosity, and this thing wouldn't be bad for using when I'm working out. It syncs with Windows Media Player since it shows up as just a removable disk, and WMP11 will let me randomly sync music to it, so I'm hoping that syncing it will replace the music with new stuff every time. Otherwise, I know that Winamp has an autofill feature that is known to do a randomized sync.

I wouldn't pay more than $20 for one, but all in all it's not bad. Of course, the Creative Zen Stone has a warranty (and probably can remember the track you were playing when it turns off) for only $20 more, but it doesn't have that classy fake Shuffle look.

The end.

[vmarks]

I would be curious to know who made these.

Any markings on yours so I can search at alibaba?

EDIT: could be this? Sell MP3 player (YH-MP174N) (Yahee Technologies Corp. Limited,China) -- they don't mark what the shuffle switch does either

Or this: Sell MP3 Player (Windigital Technology Development Ltd.,Hong Kong)

[shifuimam]

I think it's the first one.

I saw the second one on eBay, but the prices were higher - I think it was $30 BIN instead of $20. It's a direct ripoff of the shuffle, right down to the Apple logo on the back of the clip...so it might be a little better (or, at the very least, a little slimmer than mine). Those ones also, at least on one eBay store I found, came in the same plastic box as the real shuffle.

Mine has NO identifying markings on it. It came in a little bubble wrap thing inside a small Ziploc bag - the cheesiest of the cheese!

I'm thinking about pulling it apart to see if the shuffle switch is actually wired to anything. Maybe I just need to find other firmware to install on it to make it work like an actual Shuffle.

[vmarks]

Check the shuffle switch and see if it acts as keylock?

I'm seeing some clones that are using the switch for that function.

How much storage is in yours?

How do you sync it, just dragging files in finder? Will it play recursively into folders?