Trio Clip: A Decent Low-Cost Media Player

About a year ago, I killed my Creative MuVo digital media player. It was no great surprise - I had it for quite awhile, and it received punishment few media players deserve. Its carcass is still caked in salt from being drenched in my sweat during 10-mile runs in the Arizona summer.

When the MuVo croaked, I decided to look at other brands just out of curiosity. In general, I favor AAA battery-powered media players. But I ran into a decent deal ($50) for a 2-gigabyte media player called the Trio Clip. Since it had a nifty integrated belt clip, I decided to pick it up. For a price that low, I didn't mind if it died fairly soon. (The extra good news - the price has plummeted to $12 for this model.)

After about a year of running with it, here are my thoughts on this media player called a Mach Speed Technologies.

1. The buttons are hard to work. They're small bumps on either side of the player, and it's often hard to tell if you've actually pushed them.

2. The integrated belt clip is too wide to be useful. It seems more suited to clipping onto jeans that to running shorts. And it's metal, which is less than comfortable for runners. The ad copy on the website mentions skiers - the clip seems well-suited to attaching to their gear.

3. Some parts are a bit flimsy. The small rubber hatch covering the USB port broke within days.

4. Its controls are kind of idiosyncratic. It has a master on-off switch, but you also need to push and hold the Play button to get it started.

5. If you use the master power button, the player defaults to the first song alphabetically. That's annoying. I'd rather it picked up wherever I left off.

6. You use a special USB cable to charge the battery and transfer songs. I don't want to think about how inconvenient it would be to lose that cable.

7. The package includes several different colors of faceplates. Nice way to accessorize - or just make the Trio Clip harder to lose in a dark place.

8. The headphones aren't very good, but for the price it's hard to quibble much.

9. The sound quality really depends on the headphones.

The bottom line is the Trio Clip has some faults. But for the price, it's good to have a few for those occasions when you might not want to abuse something fancy like a Creative Zen or an iPod - like while exercising or going on vacation. And it still works after a good amount of abuse. With a few refinements, it could be move up a few notches and threaten some of the better-known brands.