Detailed Pikaone Groovecase MP3 Player Description & Review

Pikaone: Groovecase £199.00inc. VAT  &  Delivery

The groovecase 20GB Jukebox from Pikaone. A nice machine. So annoying that the marketing material that comes with it has to tarnish the pleasant reality of this cool Jukebox with ... non-facts.

According to the Marketing bumpf it "Reads all current music formats : MP3, WMA and WAV". It puts you in mind of the great line from The Blues Brothers - when a redneck barmaid is asked what kind of music they play in the bar she responds "Both kinds: Country and Western". Fans of the OGG and AAC music formats will no doubt take further umbrage at being ignored again. Anyway - enough unpleasantness. On with the criticism of the marketing semantics.

"Huge capacity: 20GB" Hmm not really that huge by today's standards as you can see from other players on this site. Having said that 20GB is more than enough for most people as it will easily hold ...

" up to 700 hours of music (more than 9 000 MP3 songs)." More shonky maths afoot? Absolutely! Feel free to skip this bit if you don't like maths. It's safe to start reading again where you see this *

To get 9000 song on to 20GB of HD in MP3 you would have to compress the music to such a degree as to make it unsuitable for human ears. Perhaps they meant to say you can fit 700 hours of music compressed in WMA?

Let's check: 20GB = 20,000MB = 20,000,000KB. Using the WMA format you can compress songs at 96kbps without any (noticeable) loss of sound quality. 96 kilo bits per second = 12 Kilo Bytes per second

20,000,000/12 =1,666,666.7 seconds = 27,777.8 minutes = 462.93 Hours. Way short of the 700 Hours of music claimed.

* Still, using WMA at 96kbps, as we have already proved, you can store more than 450 hours of music on the Groovecase jukebox, so it really is pretty good. Do you own 450 hours of music?

Record Features

Unlike the Archos Gmini 120, the Pikaone Groovecase Jukebox comes with record enabled, not something that has to be switched on through software download. You can record directly from any audio source CD, Hi-Fi, etc. that has small standard line-out connection via the included connector cables. E.g. you can record your favourite radio shows off your radio, or you can record yourself and your mates murdering Led Zeppelin tunes direct from the output, so that you don't get all the sundry 'live' sounds. If you prefer, however, you could record the same thing using the Groovecase's built in microphone so that you do get the live sounds; the murmurs between tracks and that.

You convert your CD collection using MusicMatch Jukebox, which has become a bit of an industry standard. Its very easy to use.

Battery News

Batteries included as standard and spare batteries sold as accessories. Battery life for play back is only 8 hours, which the marketing material claim is "Excellent", but you can get 16 hours with optional clip-on battery pack. Spare batteries/ additional batteries are something that Jukebox users have been crying out for since the dawn of MP3 and we're glad to say that in this instance you can get them.

Other features:

Works well as a external USB hard-disk drive. You can store your digital photos, video, MP3 and data on one device. Move files, applications, etc. too and from work with ease. 20GB is more than adequate to handle both hundreds of hours of music and gigabytes of data.

E-Z Navigator music library/ data file browsing system. It has a look and feel similar to Windows Explorer so it really is easy to use. 6-mode graphic equalizer too.

Lightweight, Small and Easy to handle. Weighs only 280g (9.8oz) and fits in your pocket, just like it should. We have been highly critical of the Groovecase's marketing material, but on the whole it's a very good player (even if its not quite as Excellent! as the material claims) and it's a very good price. You will not find a higher specification jukebox for this kind of price. It's a high powered bargain.

Optional accessories: In car stereo and charger kit Clip-on battery pack for additional 8 hours of playback (available soon)