Insignia Pilot Video MP3 Player: Review

I must admit, there is truth to the old adage "you get what you pay for," especially in the high-tech market. The Insignia Pilot, an off-brand media player offered by the Best Buy subsidiary (Insignia), boasts a staggering list of features at a good price. This device does many things right, but sadly it fails in its most important task: delivering clean, rich-sounding audio. The simple fact is that even with good headphones or speakers, the Pilot falls well short of the sound quality I've come to expect from my digital players, which makes it a poor choice despite all its bells and whistles.

Aesthetically, the Pilot looks stylish. It weighs just a couple of ounces and measures approximately four inches in length, just under two inches in width, and under half an inch thick. This makes it ultra-thin, but a little on the long side, and therefore not as easily pocketed as other players. The player's face is dominated by a 2.4" LCD screen - a considerably larger screen than found on competing devices. To the right is the click wheel, the primary tool for menu navigation. The wheel also has four directional buttons at the twelve, three, six, and nine o'clock positions. The wheel works well as a means of navigation, but is entirely plastic and squeaks occasionally, which makes me wonder about the long-term durability. The wheel is topped with blue lights that light up when any button is pressed. The face of the device features two other buttons, "play/pause," and "menu." The top has a power/lock switch, and a little "joystick" switch whose only function is to let you rate songs on a scale of one to five stars, which is a pretty useless feature. The right side features two headphone jacks (one of which doubles as an audio-in port) and a USB port. The bottom side has an SD card slot, which is quite tricky to uncover. The pilot is black plastic with a metal band running around the sides; it probably wouldn't fare well if dropped. The face of the device is glossy, which means that it will inevitably pick up fingerprints and smudges. Also, you will begin noticing little scratches and nicks on the screen over time, so a case would be a wise investment.

The Pilot has 8GB of internal flash memory. That's a lot of space - probably more than enough to hold most users' entire music collections. If that isn't enough, the Pilot supports standard SD cards as well as the new "high capacity" cards, which means that you could theoretically double the device's memory. It also supports Bluetooth headphones, though users with Bluetooth headphones have complained about much faster battery drain. It has a built-in FM tuner. Video can apparently be patched out to a television via a special cable (sold separately). It can record from an external audio source through one of the headphone jacks. There is a voice recorder as well - a feature made all but useless by the fact that you need an external microphone. The Pilot supports JPEG images and MPEG-4 and WMA videos. As for audio formats, it supports MP3, WAV, WMA, OGG, and Audible files.

The Pilot's box boasts an impressive 25-hour battery life. Of course that number is theoretical. In most cases, a product's advertised battery life is based on variables like using low volume settings, lowering the brightness on the display, and not constantly manhandling the controls. I set the screen to turn itself off after a few seconds of inactivity, and put the player through a fairly average cycle of use. Beginning with a full charge, I listened to music while frequently adjusting the volume and equalizers, and navigating various folders. I viewed movie clips for no more than a few minutes. And it seemed like the player was pretty much tapped out (having no bars left in the battery indicator) in less than 10 hours. Be advised that that the Pilot can only be charged via a USB port, making it less viable for those who don't have constant access to a PC. Also be aware that viewing pictures and movies and using Bluetooth headphones will apparently drain the battery faster.

I found the Pilot's menu navigation intuitive and straightforward. Pressing the "Menu" button gives access to a number of icons such as "Video," "Settings," "FM Radio," etc. These are all accessed via a combination of wheel turns and button presses. The music library can be categorized by genre, artist, etc. But since my mp3s are a hodgepodge of material with badly labeled ID3 tags, I used the Folder Browser so I could keep files organized and easy to find in their own custom folders. There isn't a lot of customization that can be done, but you can choose between a few background colors, select how icons are laid out, format memory, and manage some power and connection settings. The device itself was plug-and-play, and adding files was a simple matter of dragging and dropping to the appropriate folder on the player.

The Pilot's FM tuner receives consistently clear signals. After an initial scan the stations are memorized, allowing you to jump back and forth between them by clicking up or down on the wheel. While in FM mode the display will show the station identification, and, in some cases, even the name of the artist and title of the song currently playing. It is also possible to record from the FM stations.

I like the Pilot's LCD screen. It's bright and clear, and text and icons are sharp. Color balance is good. There is a "light leak," where the backlight shows through as two points of white light on the right edge of my screen. If this were a high-def TV, it would be a pretty big deal. On a 2.4-inch LCD display... not so much. Photos and videos look as good as can be reasonably expected when crammed onto a screen of this size. I noticed that when scrolling through photos of large file size there is a rather lengthy two-second "loading time" before the next image appears. The device actually froze up on me a couple of times while waiting for the next photo to load. Videos run at 30 fps; any very fast onscreen movements will result in minor artifacting or screen tear. And while the image may be a little blurry at times, I think it does an admirable job for the screen size. I only wish the Pilot sounded as good as it looks.

So what's wrong with the Pilot's sound quality? I don't consider myself to be a hardcore "audiophile," but I listen to all kinds of music, and I know when it sounds right. And it doesn't sound right on the Pilot. For one thing the bass is weak. Fiddling with the "custom" equalizer setting can remedy this slightly, but it still doesn't thump as deeply as it should. Perhaps most annoyingly, all audio seems to have a subtle tinny edge to it, no matter what equalizer setting you use. I also noticed a crackling, buzzing distortion accompanying certain notes, most often with high piano or opera notes, but sometimes also appearing with bass backbeats. And it seemed as though any clicks or pops that happened to be lurking in the sound files were more pronounced on the Pilot than on any of my other players. And in case you were wondering, I tested with my good Sony ear buds and my PC speakers, not the included cheap ear buds. I also made sure to try both headphone jacks, and they were equally bad. While the Pilot doesn't deliver the worst sounding audio I've ever heard, I think I can safely say that it is below average. I've paid a lot less money for players that have sounded much clearer and had a far better range.

As if that weren't bad enough, I've also experienced a number of annoying, random glitches in my short time with the Pilot. The device has frozen on me a few times. It occurred twice when flipping between photos and once while navigating through folders looking for songs. Having the FM tuner running in the background may have been a factor, but I'm not certain. In any case, it totally froze and became unresponsive to all controls, including the power switch. I had to remove the screw from the back with a tiny screwdriver, and unplug the Lithium battery from its socket. After putting it back together, the device turned on as usual. Another time, I left it plugged into the USB port to charge, and accidentally turned off the PC. The next time I checked on it, the Pilot no longer displayed the names of my files. The music was all still there, but with no titles or info, the files were impossible to navigate. I had to format and re-add everything.

In conclusion, I liked the Insignia Pilot's versatility, expandability, sharp display, good radio, and straightforward user interface. I did not, however, like the unpredictable glitches, and I was appalled by the sub par sound quality. It bears repeating: this player made my music sound terrible, when it sounds fine on my old player that I paid fifty bucks for. For that reason, I can't possibly recommend the Insignia Pilot. I couldn't possibly justify keeping it, either. I returned it with no hassle on the grounds that it randomly freezes up. For just a few dollars more than the Pilot, one can buy such popular and critically acclaimed devices as the Sony Walkman, the Creative Zen V, the iPod Nano, and the Zune. I plan to walk this route myself in the near future, after doing a little research.