Just when you thought the MP3 player market couldn't get any more saturated in comes Mattel with a great idea - take one of biggest selling toys of the last 50 years and turn it into an MP3 player.
The Barbie Girl MP3 player is 11.5cm sized plastic doll which can plug directly into any computer by taking off the dolls shoes to reveal a USB plug.
It has 512MB of storage space but this can be expanded using a MiniSD card slot.
The Barbie Girl MP3 player comes complete with head phones with 3 different sized ear plugs so you can get a good fit, which can often be difficult for children.
It also has a docking station to recharge the lithium polymer battery and allow for the easy upload of music, a belt clip, plus a small range of clothing and accessories which can be clipped on and removed to personalise it.
On top of you also get access to the Barbiegirls.com online world which can be explored and customised and used to chat and play with other Barbie owners world wide.
My 6-year-old daughter loved the Barbie Girl MP3, despite the fact she already owned a pink IPOD shuffle, she found it easy to use and loved that she could adjust the clothing and accessories. Battery life (rated at 10 hours between charges) didn't seem to be an issue as she listened to the High School Musical sound track over and over again, with out a recharge.
Overall the unit is a good easy to use, stable MP3 player which looks like it can take the knocks a young girl might throw at it.
The one aspect I didn't like about this player was the lack of the ability to set a maximum volume level, like you can with other MP3 players.
As this player is designed with children in mind, I was highly disappointed that this function wasn't included.
Other than that for a 512MB MP3 player the unit is a tad on the large size and the sound quality wasn't as good as similar priced MP3 players, but then again other players can't double as dolls as well.
It plays MP3s, WMAs and copy-protected WMAs. Windows only.
No comments:
Post a Comment