Coby - PMP-3520 Review

The Coby PMP-3520 appealed to me first for its 20GB capacity. Wow - I can fit a LOT of songs on there! I got it at a great bargain (retail was just under $400), brand new, but I realize now that it must have been a discontinued model. It plays movies on a 3x2" screen, records your voice, acts as a photo frame, and includes an SD/MMC card slot.

Now that I've been using it for about 3 months, I'm not quite as pleased as I hoped. Not that it's a bad machine. And very possibly, some of the issues are user-induced. But it seems outdated in a number of ways. And while the Coby PMP-3520 is portable, it's too heavy and clunky for a shirt pocket.

First, you have to rename almost every file you want to include - it only allows 15 characters. If it's longer than 15 characters, rather than truncate the title, the file just won't appear as an option, even though you can see it on your PC. It will not give you any info regarding the song, album, artist, etc. If you don't know that info off the top of your head, too bad. That means that if you want to rearrange your files by album or artist, you have to guess at what's what. You cannot search or sort - your playlist is in alpha order. Period. With 180 files possible in each folder, it takes forever to scroll to a particular song!

I have yet to watch a video on my Coby PMP-3520. I tried to load one movie but all I got was a blank screen. It may just be that particular file, but I haven't looked into it yet. And of course, the screen can't really be seen outdoors. You can record video directly from an external source by simply connecting with the included cables. And you can record video or voice on a timer - another feature I've not delved into, but would likely be quite handy for me if I'd just take the time to do it once.

The battery life seems short and may not carry through the end of a long movie. (I generally use this machine at work just for music, but I've learned to plug it into my PC rather than run it from the battery.) You can choose to turn off the LCD display, but I get a strong hiss when I do that, so I leave it on.

The photos can be played as a slide show, but a couple of the images I've loaded are stretched out, making everyone look short and fat. Not sure why those are different from the others, since they are all the same type of file.

The voice recording works quite well - I've only recorded a couple of things, but I didn't run into any difficulties.

Dragging and dropping files of any type is very fast and very simple. Just plug in the USB cable, move the cursor to USB, locate the folder on your PC and drag it into whatever folder you want on your Coby PMP-3520.

Navigation is pretty easy and the joystick is responsive. As mentioned earlier, it's not a bad little machine for 20GB, especially for the great price I paid.

Overall, I'd say don't shy away from the Coby PMP-3520, but you want to do your homework and understand its capabilities and limitations before committing to it. Not being an in-depth user, it does ok for me - after all, the capacity was my main interest.