If I bought a pair of headphones and got a free MP3 player with it in this day and age (let alone it actually being fairly competent), I'd be happier than a pig in the mud on a hot day.
I wish I could stilll buy something like this. Powered by a replaceable, non-proprietary battery, takes SD cards, simple controls. No planned obsolescence, especially if Rockbox could be installed on it.
I have a Sandisk Cruzer memory stick (256MB) and the matching MP3 player ... just slide the stick in the player and plug in the earphones ... used it way back when connected to the car stereo through a cassette adapter, great for long trips. Also ran off a single AAA
@@patrickcardon1643 When you say „Memory Stick“ do you mean the memory card format invented by Sony, or simply the generic term for a flash drive? The only MP3 players I heard of SanDisk making were the _Sansa_ series (I had the earlier Clip generation; No SD slot in those 🙁) and they only take SD cards. 😇
Just like Techmoan!! I personally prefer this editing style over all the overrated radom out-of-context meme segments in most YT videos nowadays. Even though VWestlife does put some pop-culture memes and references in some of his videos for humor, they are not as intrusive as people adding random memes or random opinions by blacking out the screen or zooming in on their face (they also do that to emphasize what they are saying, but I still find that stuff overused and overrated). VWestlife and Techmoan still has that GOOD OL' FASHIONED traditional editing style that ain't overrated or intrusive, and even as a 2004-born Gen-Z, I absolutely love it. Pretty much gives me a break from all those overrated and intrusive YT random meme effect BS.
I had a rca Lyra, and I loved it for work. It used full sized SD cards, but really wasn't much bigger than one. And it was small enough to be put into a baggie so it wouldn't get wet. I miss it...
Yeah, I'm a little sad that I didn't hang onto any of my Sansa players from that era. Somehow I managed to lose them all over the years, unfortunately.
@@alisharifian535 If you think a Smartphone is cumbersome try it with a Walkman or Discman. My discman doubled as my CD player for a while until I bought a Sega CD.
Rounder is a fantastic label for folk, Americana, and world music. Many of the greatest bluegrass artists of all time have recorded for Rounder and their entire catalog is worth diving into.
I live in Newfoundland and the closing track is from here, Great Big Sea is from St Johns NL Canada. lead singer is good friends Russell Crowe and has him sometimes perform with him at local bars.
I have a set of fairly new Bose desktop speakers that I use with my laptop and they are fantastic - really incredible sound for their size. But - always love the fun things from the past - thanks!
Thanks for mentioning Slaid Cleaves, he is one of my favorite folk singers, he is from Maine but has lived in Texas a good chunk of his life. His type of music doesn't get much radio play time, so it was a pleasant surprise to hear you mention him
I'm watching this wearing a pair of Bose Triport AE/AE1 headphones which sound pretty amazing. Reviews were complaining about the $150 U.S. suggested retail price when these were new in 2004 saying you could get better-sounding headphones for the price but, considering i bought them from a thrift store for only $7 or $8 Canadian a couple of months ago, they're well-worth what I paid.
I had this mp3 player back in the late 2000s. Bought off eBay for pretty cheap and use it for years. It had a great sound when paired with good headphone or earbuds from that time. I loved it!
Thanks for the video Kevin. I saw another Lexar MP3 player you used in much older video when you tried to record from it on a Jensen boombox on cassette.
I had that Bose headphones it was so good and got the lexar mp3 player too it was a nice gift from Bose. Thanks Kevin for bringing me good old memories. Miguel.
Hey, I have one of these mp3 players. I can't recall how It came into my possession, but it was my primary mp3 player with a 1gb SD card in the mid/late-2000s.
I got a logik 128mb player around 2003, and i thought it was the best thing ever, until creative brought out the zen series, and i still have one to this day! It's a shame a lot of manufacturer's pulled out of the market, due to the rise of smartphones though.
I would like to buy a dedicated music player with a quality interface that runs on regular batteries and has both a 3.5 mini-jack and USA-C in/ out, plus supports a wide variety of file formats. I don't like using my phone for music.
I had Bose QC25 headphones, I have QC35 now that I use daily (I listened to your video through them). I really love them, you just have to change the foam that goes over your ears once every 2 years. QC25 was better though because it used standard batteries that you can replace. I don't think by reading the reviews that the sound quality or noise cancelling has improved that much up to this day... I wonder where my iPod nano is. I have to look for it.
As a young teenager I had the album that Slaid Cleaves song comes from; it was just being given away at an event I was at. Nice to hear that song again; I've got to find the CD again at some point. It's full of true-story songs like that one. I really liked it.
Good that it supports various formats, including wav and the sound quality is not bad. However, the extreme sluggishness of the UI is simply inexcusable.
Seeing that mp3 player just brought back nostalgic memories of the 2000s which was the decade of technology renaissance. I remember my first MP3 player was a blue SanDisk SDMX1 that I bought in 2005. Unfortunately the backlight stopped working so I had to return it and got a Samsung YP-T7JX instead which I then bought my third and final mp3 player, the iPod Nano (4th gen). I sold my iPod to buy the iPhone 4 and since then I just use smartphones to listen to mp3 files.
Wish I knew about them during the timeframe. Might not have been the mp3 player that was the iPod (both the classic and assorted variations) of the era but with the option of expandable memory of the full size SD cards and convenience of using AAA batteries, plus paired with Bose headphones, it would’ve been sufficient to listen to tunes while on the go without the bulky CD Walkman
1:05 - My first MP3 player (128MB! So impressive!) ran on a AAA battery. I wish some models still did, not render the entire player "disposable" when the rechargeable battery dies. 13:00 - I just bought a new MP3 player, and it didn't even include a lanyard, despite having a place for one.
I like those little companion speakers. I'm looking for a good find on an older Bose Wave Radio for my office to replace my awesome-but-failing Boston Acoustics Horizon Duo.
I actually need something kind of like that. I used to have one that is shaped like a USB stick, does have USB mass storage support, ran on a single "AAA" but only had 128MB and zero expandability. No, I don't have a phone...I do have a blank cassette that awaits for some recording!
Nice idea, because these ANC Headphones were rather used outdoors/on the go (unlike open-backs) a simple demo CD or even MiniDisc would have been rather pointless (portable CD/MD Players "Discman" were still around but went downhill it was already the era of MP3 players with flash storage/hard drive) unless it's a CD-ROM where the songs are like self-extracting so you don't need to rip and could directly transfer these to an existing MP3 Player/iPod. I don't call Bose flatout crap, some of their stuff sounds not bad at first glance, I like the pair of Computer MusicMonitor, these were smaller but much more expensive than the Companion, it's quite impressive how good they sound for that small housing, same for their Wave systems. However IMHO a lot of them is low-mid to mid tier in sound quality (their build quality "behind the curtain" seems to be infamous) and some sound really terrible if not correctly positioned or used without the equalizer like the 901...
Based on the wording of that SD card ad, I think the player has 512MB of storage not 256. Another 512MB would double it, while a 1GB card would bring the total storage to 1.5GB, or 3x the original capacity.
Around that time, i was commuting to work on subway and bus. I bought a HDD-based .mp3 player from Archos, I think it was the Jukebox Recorder. It was such a game changer for me. I'd used a Minidisc player just previously, but i could put almost my entire collection on that Archos! I used to listen to old radio plays, like Fibber McGee and Molly, and CBS Radio Mystery Theater, while riding to work.
I quite like those little MP3 players, especially if you stumble across a good one, they can sound surprisngly nice! Always bothered me that the track name and artist scroll along though, they have enough verical room to put the track and artist stacked!
@@dlarge6502 this is true, the encoders back then were pretty shoddy, which is why WMA at 128 kb was better for many. WMA is an interesting format as the same container can do lossy and lossless which is pretty unique
Bose is high end and makes insanely accurate sounding speakers. many people that hate Bose have no clue how smart Dr. Amar Bose was. Amar Bose invented the world's first pair of noise cancelling headphones in the 90's and he also invented the Bose Direct/Reflecting sound technology found in their home audio speakers. He was a very smart audio designer. I've been a fan of Bose for years and their products sound great
I bought my wife a set of Bose speakers for her Birthday about 10 years ago. I swear my JBL Bluetooth speaker sounds better than those overpriced POS's.
I always wished there was a portable MP3 player that took full-size SD cards. I wonder why it never caught on (if it was a read speed issue or a cost issue)
I miss these little mp3 players. I really don't listen to music as much anymore because my phone distracts me too much from it. It was nice having a small device you could just focus on music. WMA was a popular format back then that supposedly had better quality than mp3.
Well, I kinda liked how that Below song sounded (I passed that one off to mom to put in the playlist of story songs to listen to if the immediate family is ever together again for long enough to go on another trip). Now I'm reading a bunch about Flagstaff and Dead River (as much as I can come across anyway, much of the coverage I could find referenced thus far is in semi-broken web archives on the wayback machine).
For a free add on with your purchase, this is actually a decent player! There are lots of players that are worse than this one. Sure it’s no iPod, but it’s definitely usable! Great video!
Probably 256 since it's in the model name. Edit, and also back then 256 and 512MB sd cards were more common and much cheaper than finding a 1GB or higher card. A high capacity card would have run a lot of money. I have some leftover cards from that timeframe and they are 64- 256mb, I didn't get a 512mb card till it was cheap.
@@KarlHamilton guess I wasn't fully paying attention to that part! I heard double or triple, but didn't recall the capacities... Man, that thing would be brutal to use with 1.5GB of songs on it with how slow it is to search...
2006/7, so nostalgic. I still have my generic 512mb MP3 player bought in 2005. It still work. P.S. 512mb/1GB, in the early 2000's that was generally considered a good quantity of memory 😆
I can’t imagine buying anything other than an iPod in 2007. I’m sure whoever spent $300 on those headphones plugged them into a 6th gen iPod when they got home and this went right into a closet never to be seen again.
This player was obviously made as one of those cheap promo models given to BOSE. You could buy these all day long in 2007 for like $40. I had a nice 4Gb SONY walkman mp3 player in 2008 for about the price of a good cd player at the time. $60-70.
I have a pair of QC15's if that means anything. sound quality is pretty good, but noise cancelling is reasonable, but you can get just as much inactive noise cancelling out of a $20 pair of IEMs. I do like the fact that I can get bluetooth dongles that are made for the 2/15's though and the battery is a replaceable AAA that I stick a NiMh in and it lasts a week. also the pads are the same ones they still use on the QC35's so you can still buy new ones directly from bose, but honestly it's not worth it, just get a higher quality aftermarket for 4x less. overall not bad for a $30 ebay purchase
Decent enough quality for a freebie, dare I say good!? This little guy brings back memories of the mp3 players you'd find at Walgreens crammed between the 75% off 100ct CD-Rs, blank cassette tapes, Fuji rolls and other obsolete technologies 😂
I bought a Sandisk .MP3 player back in the ipod days. Unlike an ipod, I just slide in a new AAA when the battery runs down. The unit still works just like new.
Contrary to the "no highs, no lows" joke, Bose uses that typical V-shaped EQ curve any company does to make something cheaply made sound subjectively good. Dr. Amar Bose was an expert in psychoacoustics and applied that knowledge well to his products, but the approach of going for subjectively enjoyable sound over objectively accurate sound is definitely going to win a few detractors... especially with the profit margins Bose has. No shame in liking the way something sounds when a brilliant engineer and academic deliberately designed it to sound pleasant. It just means Dr. Bose knew what he was doing.
In redards to the maximum storage you can expand this to, though 4gb cards were most commonly SDHC, If I recall correct there were some 4gb cards that were still standard SD and thus could be read by deviced that didn't have SDHC support. How common they were, I cannot say.
Yeah, I remember the same. I had a pocketpc around this time without SDHC support and I remember a lot of discussion on forums at the time about supposed 4GB SD cards and eventually was able to buy one and it worked. Whether they worked in all devices I'm not sure, possibly they weren't part of the official SD specification as the vast majority of 4GB cards were SDHC.
Around the time that thing was new, I had an MP3 player that was a chunky USB thumbstick that was a reasonably decent player, that is until the lanyard I put on it got sucked up by one of my Kirbys when vacuuming (and I hadn't moved it far enough to safety), and it smashed to bits when it impacted the nozzle as the lanyard wrapped round the brushroll, that was fun, and disappointing!!! :P
Presumably, you could blank out the internal memory by connecting the player to a computer? Would be kinda funny if the only way you could get other music onto the player is with an SD card.
IIRC, you used to have the exact same Lexar player years ago and showed it in a few speaker test videos - when I saw the thumbnail, I thought you’ll gonna do a review on that one you used to have, but I wasn’t that much lucky. At first, I was like “why Bose decided to give their customers that piece of crap as a gift when they make hi-quality products, they should’ve went with a Samsung YEPP! or a Philips GoGear (not sure if those were sold in the States) instead” but I was surprised how good that player was in the terms of sound quality and performance! 😢 Wasn’t expecting that from a player like this… I also have a question: is this player compatible with Macs or even PCs running Vista or newer Windows versions?
"It's small" I had a Sansa Clip MP3 player from around that era which was much smaller and it had a color screen. I even installed Rockbox on it, and I could play Doom on that tiny screen. I wish I still had it, but with it's non removable battery it would've been toast by now. :-/
WMA. Back in 2006 i had an MP3 player, not this one but it did have 256MB of storage. I used to rip to 64k WMA files because, on my crap PC speakers and earphones, they sounded fine and i wanted as many songs as possible. These days i have better headphones, better speakers and rip my CDs to FLAC.
WMA was a superior codec to MP3 on purely technical merits, but suffered from proprietary lock-in. It also got a reputation for being dangerous because the format supported a fairly elaborate DRM scheme that could be adapted to spread malware - it was supposed to be able to launch a web browser to go to a page and fetch licencing information and decryption keys for the file, but it could just as easily launch a browser to open a page with a browser exploit in. The Vorbis codec beat them both though, and today Opus improves further upon even that.
@@vylbird8014 i vaguely recall using it over MP3 for technical reasons. I used OGG Vorbis for a time too but during lockdown i deleted everything and re-ripped my entire CD collection to FLAC. I also ensured everything had embedded artwork, the tags were consistent (my old tagging was a complete mess and done manually over a period of years nothing was consistent) and that the folder structure was consistent too.
Vwestlife, I had an mp3 player similar to this by iRiver that remains probably the best sounding "personal stereo" I've ever had. Unfortunately, mine had no expansion slot. Was that banjo jazz track Bela Fleck?
There's a certain simplicity to portable audio players. I dislike listening to music only to have it interrupted by a notification or a call. I like to put my headphones in, and it's down to *me* when I turn it off! I still have my original 2nd gen iPod Mini from around 2005 that I bought second hand from cashies (though my hold button is broken now) which i've flashmodded with a 256gb card and slowly trying to collect all the colours of 1st gen and 2nd gen, since out of the iPods they're the easiest to maintain... It's also the reason why I like writing documents on vintage computers. Only distracted when I wanna be! :)
Not sure if anyone else has nitpicked on this, but: 512 MB base storage would mean with 512 MB SD you double and with 1 GB you triple your storage. Not 256 MB as you said. 🙃
Yoooo. I found one in a second hand store still in the box for $5. All but the player and the Bose leaflet were missing. I don't need it. I put music on it and now it's tucked away until I feel nostalgic to enough to use it.
I don't get it. Making a whole player deal was cheaper then just making an sd card? Also love this little guys. My sansa clip plus still rock solid with a rockbox firmware, driving my coss porta pro from time to time at the weekends)
I've never owned any Bose stuff (way too expensive for me) but I have heard a few of their products, and they sounded excellent to me. I don't think it's bad stuff, just over-priced.
Ooh that was nice peeling the film off that display without using a cheesy sound sample. Keeping it unpredictable - and saving time in editing. Looking at these crappy old MP3 plyers, it's no wonder the iPod obliterated them. Bose do sound pretty good. The criticisms are rooted in the fact that Bose gear costs loads and many other things sound much, much better for way less. But Bose is aimed at people who want a good experience with minimal investment of time and effort but have plenty of cash. Bose is also a bit of a walled garden... A bit like the people that brought us the iPod...
Nearly twenty years ago doesn’t seem that long ago to me but in the realm of technology it has become very dated. In just twenty years mp3 players have went from cutting edge technology to almost extinct. If you are in the market for a new mp3 player today you cannot find any major brands that are still manufacturing them today.
Lexar basically licensed premium brands like Bose, Dell, and Kodak in the 2000s for digital devices and memory cards. I’m surprised that Bose never made their own dedicated MP3 player, probably Bose had a deal with Apple to make premium iPod accessories.
Came for the mp3 player and left listening to the Below song Whats even the point of buying land and building the house and setling there, if they can take it all away (they dont care how much work and money u put into it, they just take it all away)
@@vwestlife oh that's awesome! Thanks for letting me know. I wasn't aware you had listing of songs in your description As a fellow Newfoundlander, I guess I can pick their music out pretty well then lol
When they said double or triple storage with a 512MB or 1GB SD card, I kinda thought that would mean it already had 512MB of storage built in, rather than just 256. If that's the case, guess that 2GB card would let you nonuple it's total storage.
Say what you want about Bose, at least their products have more value than the $1200 power cables the audiophiles who criticize them buy. 😂
Not to mention their apparent obsession with B&O ;-)
"BuT tHe ShIeLdInG!!!!!1!!11!" 😡
I have an old AM/FM wave radio, it sounds pretty good! Unfortunately I think needs all new caps though.
B&O, over-rated and over-priced!
@@damouze Sounds like they need deodorant more than Denon... 🙃
Best feature: no annoying rubbery casing that goes sticky.
The nugget goo
Rubber reversion is hell
Just noticed this starting to happen on my Kingston hyperx cloud 2 headphones. Sad too they still work well.
@@RemoWilliams1227 you can remove the coating with IPA and elbow grease
@@RemoWilliams1227 as previous comment has mentioned, I've removed it with IPA and lots of paper towels.
Alice Condo of New Jersey (the original purchaser) is now the Director of Regulatory Compliance at Johnson & Johnson. So there you go.
If I bought a pair of headphones and got a free MP3 player with it in this day and age (let alone it actually being fairly competent), I'd be happier than a pig in the mud on a hot day.
Back in about 1990 we bought a Logitech Mouse at work and it came with a free Watch similar to a Swatch.
@@StatetrooperBillyBill Meanwhile Audiophiles will spend $319 on an oxygen free solid silver mains cable 🙂
@@StatetrooperBillyBilldon’t even pay $100. Get a pair of Koss headphones for $20-$40 for the best sound you’ve likely ever heard
I wish I could stilll buy something like this. Powered by a replaceable, non-proprietary battery, takes SD cards, simple controls. No planned obsolescence, especially if Rockbox could be installed on it.
Can probably still get a Sansa Clip out there, runs Rockbox very stable!
@@greatquuxyep, they still make and sell em new
I have a Sandisk Cruzer memory stick (256MB) and the matching MP3 player ... just slide the stick in the player and plug in the earphones ... used it way back when connected to the car stereo through a cassette adapter, great for long trips. Also ran off a single AAA
@@patrickcardon1643 When you say „Memory Stick“ do you mean the memory card format invented by Sony, or simply the generic term for a flash drive?
The only MP3 players I heard of SanDisk making were the _Sansa_ series (I had the earlier Clip generation; No SD slot in those 🙁) and they only take SD cards. 😇
genuinely thought it was a 2006 video, your camera and overall editing composition, are just like that
@@AndreasJordanidis Neo-nostalgic video production at its finest
Just like Techmoan!! I personally prefer this editing style over all the overrated radom out-of-context meme segments in most YT videos nowadays. Even though VWestlife does put some pop-culture memes and references in some of his videos for humor, they are not as intrusive as people adding random memes or random opinions by blacking out the screen or zooming in on their face (they also do that to emphasize what they are saying, but I still find that stuff overused and overrated). VWestlife and Techmoan still has that GOOD OL' FASHIONED traditional editing style that ain't overrated or intrusive, and even as a 2004-born Gen-Z, I absolutely love it. Pretty much gives me a break from all those overrated and intrusive YT random meme effect BS.
I remember buying an MP3 player for $50 back in the mid-2000's. I can't believe I miss it, but I do.
Mp3 players were indeed useful. I miss mine too because running and cycling with a smartphone in the pocket is not the most comfortable experience.
I had a rca Lyra, and I loved it for work. It used full sized SD cards, but really wasn't much bigger than one. And it was small enough to be put into a baggie so it wouldn't get wet. I miss it...
Yeah, I'm a little sad that I didn't hang onto any of my Sansa players from that era. Somehow I managed to lose them all over the years, unfortunately.
@@alisharifian535 If you think a Smartphone is cumbersome try it with a Walkman or Discman. My discman doubled as my CD player for a while until I bought a Sega CD.
@@jasonblalock4429SanDisk still sells their "Clip" line new surprisingly enough. I think they're $20-$30
My uncle gave me this player, probably because he bought himself Bose headphones. That little guy is surprisingly good.
🙄
Rounder is a fantastic label for folk, Americana, and world music. Many of the greatest bluegrass artists of all time have recorded for Rounder and their entire catalog is worth diving into.
I love some bluegrass
*Or, I should say not so much world music per se, but rather more like American Cultural, such as Cajun, Chicano, etc...*
"Never seen that little rounder run so fast." - "On The Road Again" - Grateful Dead.
@@TechGorilla1987 Sure as you're born!
Forget the mp3 player, tell us more about that water toy on the left
It's a oil and water hourglass. Pretty cool.
I think you can generally find them in seaside gift shops and whatnot? I remember getting one in Cape May when I was a kid. They're kinda hypnotic.
I live in Newfoundland and the closing track is from here, Great Big Sea is from St Johns NL Canada. lead singer is good friends Russell Crowe and has him sometimes perform with him at local bars.
the french on the info cards... the music selection.. sure seems like it was a promo started by the canadian branch of bose
@@xcreeperify id like to see thr complete list of tracks, i bet theres more canadian acts
I saw Bruce Cockburn and Natalie McMaster listed in the playlist as well. Both Canadians. @@DaiAtlus79
VW probably know that the historical town of Boonton is under water. They flooded it to make a reservoir to supply water for Jersey City.
I have a set of fairly new Bose desktop speakers that I use with my laptop and they are fantastic - really incredible sound for their size. But - always love the fun things from the past - thanks!
People rip on Bose but their products are pretty nice for consumer stuff, if not a bit pricy
Thanks for mentioning Slaid Cleaves, he is one of my favorite folk singers, he is from Maine but has lived in Texas a good chunk of his life. His type of music doesn't get much radio play time, so it was a pleasant surprise to hear you mention him
I'm watching this wearing a pair of Bose Triport AE/AE1 headphones which sound pretty amazing. Reviews were complaining about the $150 U.S. suggested retail price when these were new in 2004 saying you could get better-sounding headphones for the price but, considering i bought them from a thrift store for only $7 or $8 Canadian a couple of months ago, they're well-worth what I paid.
I had this mp3 player back in the late 2000s. Bought off eBay for pretty cheap and use it for years. It had a great sound when paired with good headphone or earbuds from that time. I loved it!
I still have some Lexar SD cards from back then and even years before that are still good. (I prefer using "smaller" cards in my "still" cams.
Thanks for the video Kevin. I saw another Lexar MP3 player you used in much older video when you tried to record from it on a Jensen boombox on cassette.
Hello from Newfoundland Canada. Surprised to hear Alan Doyle and possibly The ennis sisters in your video.
Always enjoy the content.
I had that Bose headphones it was so good and got the lexar mp3 player too it was a nice gift from Bose. Thanks Kevin for bringing me good old memories. Miguel.
this is the exact LAST place I would expect someone to comment with a alexios pfp
Bose is junk
@@HazardousEnvironmentsI just likes him so much
@@gamingguy9006it was almost 20 years
Hey, I have one of these mp3 players. I can't recall how It came into my possession, but it was my primary mp3 player with a 1gb SD card in the mid/late-2000s.
I got a logik 128mb player around 2003, and i thought it was the best thing ever, until creative brought out the zen series, and i still have one to this day! It's a shame a lot of manufacturer's pulled out of the market, due to the rise of smartphones though.
I would like to buy a dedicated music player with a quality interface that runs on regular batteries and has both a 3.5 mini-jack and USA-C in/ out, plus supports a wide variety of file formats. I don't like using my phone for music.
I had Bose QC25 headphones, I have QC35 now that I use daily (I listened to your video through them). I really love them, you just have to change the foam that goes over your ears once every 2 years. QC25 was better though because it used standard batteries that you can replace. I don't think by reading the reviews that the sound quality or noise cancelling has improved that much up to this day... I wonder where my iPod nano is. I have to look for it.
You gotta ship this nugget to Australia now
_Scarlet Fire starts playing in the background_
No he needs to do more Dankmus vids
Lol
1 grit it
Aw, my Pkcell!
As a young teenager I had the album that Slaid Cleaves song comes from; it was just being given away at an event I was at. Nice to hear that song again; I've got to find the CD again at some point. It's full of true-story songs like that one. I really liked it.
That’s actually really cool to have gotten a free half decent mp3 player
Just a nice little player that does it's job very good. Nice gift at the time and still useful today.
*its
Good that it supports various formats, including wav and the sound quality is not bad. However, the extreme sluggishness of the UI is simply inexcusable.
Ah, the Bridgewater mall! I remember the Bose store, as I briefly worked at that mall.
Seeing that mp3 player just brought back nostalgic memories of the 2000s which was the decade of technology renaissance. I remember my first MP3 player was a blue SanDisk SDMX1 that I bought in 2005. Unfortunately the backlight stopped working so I had to return it and got a Samsung YP-T7JX instead which I then bought my third and final mp3 player, the iPod Nano (4th gen). I sold my iPod to buy the iPhone 4 and since then I just use smartphones to listen to mp3 files.
I remember from that time, I've had Iriver IHP-120... was using it at least 4-5 yrs.
Wow, I've actually been inside the BOSE store at Bridgewater Commons.
Wish I knew about them during the timeframe. Might not have been the mp3 player that was the iPod (both the classic and assorted variations) of the era but with the option of expandable memory of the full size SD cards and convenience of using AAA batteries, plus paired with Bose headphones, it would’ve been sufficient to listen to tunes while on the go without the bulky CD Walkman
1:05 - My first MP3 player (128MB! So impressive!) ran on a AAA battery. I wish some models still did, not render the entire player "disposable" when the rechargeable battery dies.
13:00 - I just bought a new MP3 player, and it didn't even include a lanyard, despite having a place for one.
Or they could make the battery easily replaceable, like cameras.
I like those little companion speakers. I'm looking for a good find on an older Bose Wave Radio for my office to replace my awesome-but-failing Boston Acoustics Horizon Duo.
I actually need something kind of like that. I used to have one that is shaped like a USB stick, does have USB mass storage support, ran on a single "AAA" but only had 128MB and zero expandability. No, I don't have a phone...I do have a blank cassette that awaits for some recording!
Opening comment - Finally - a Bose product worth the price.
I keed, I keed.
I see we have a new camera today
"New" as of 2011.
Woah, record Skyrim LE gameplay next!
Nice idea, because these ANC Headphones were rather used outdoors/on the go (unlike open-backs) a simple demo CD or even MiniDisc would have been rather pointless (portable CD/MD Players "Discman" were still around but went downhill it was already the era of MP3 players with flash storage/hard drive) unless it's a CD-ROM where the songs are like self-extracting so you don't need to rip and could directly transfer these to an existing MP3 Player/iPod.
I don't call Bose flatout crap, some of their stuff sounds not bad at first glance, I like the pair of Computer MusicMonitor, these were smaller but much more expensive than the Companion, it's quite impressive how good they sound for that small housing, same for their Wave systems.
However IMHO a lot of them is low-mid to mid tier in sound quality (their build quality "behind the curtain" seems to be infamous) and some sound really terrible if not correctly positioned or used without the equalizer like the 901...
By the looks of it, it's based on Sigmatel STMP 35xx SoC that unfortunately does not support SDHC.
Free gift with my QC2 headphones. It didn't last long, but the headphones are still going strong and still sound amazing.
Based on the wording of that SD card ad, I think the player has 512MB of storage not 256. Another 512MB would double it, while a 1GB card would bring the total storage to 1.5GB, or 3x the original capacity.
oh damn i use to go hiking up around flagstaff lake
Around that time, i was commuting to work on subway and bus. I bought a HDD-based .mp3 player from Archos, I think it was the Jukebox Recorder. It was such a game changer for me. I'd used a Minidisc player just previously, but i could put almost my entire collection on that Archos! I used to listen to old radio plays, like Fibber McGee and Molly, and CBS Radio Mystery Theater, while riding to work.
I quite like those little MP3 players, especially if you stumble across a good one, they can sound surprisngly nice! Always bothered me that the track name and artist scroll along though, they have enough verical room to put the track and artist stacked!
Preloaded with music for Bose, and they didn't even load it with 320kbps MP3's.
192 can be pretty transparent
I mean they probably didn't have an mp3 player they could give out for free that could hand it
@@JonnyInfinite Not on a high end system, which is what Bose market themselves as.
Most people back then were encoding to 128k
@@dlarge6502 this is true, the encoders back then were pretty shoddy, which is why WMA at 128 kb was better for many. WMA is an interesting format as the same container can do lossy and lossless which is pretty unique
Bose is high end and makes insanely accurate sounding speakers. many people that hate Bose have no clue how smart Dr. Amar Bose was. Amar Bose invented the world's first pair of noise cancelling headphones in the 90's and he also invented the Bose Direct/Reflecting sound technology found in their home audio speakers. He was a very smart audio designer. I've been a fan of Bose for years and their products sound great
I wouldn't call them high end at all. Upmarket is probably more accurate.
Only someone who wouuld call themselves "a fan for years" would say something like that :D
I bought my wife a set of Bose speakers for her Birthday about 10 years ago. I swear my JBL Bluetooth speaker sounds better than those overpriced POS's.
@@cebruthius Yep you're right. I'm a fan of quality products. That's why I choose Bose
@@PlatinumEagleStudios Ah yes, Cheaper Parts Through Research
I always wished there was a portable MP3 player that took full-size SD cards. I wonder why it never caught on (if it was a read speed issue or a cost issue)
At least the left and right channels are correct. I had a Philips Go Gear Vibe that had the left and right channels switched around.
I have those same Bose speakers hooked up to my tv which I watched this video on.
I miss these little mp3 players. I really don't listen to music as much anymore because my phone distracts me too much from it. It was nice having a small device you could just focus on music. WMA was a popular format back then that supposedly had better quality than mp3.
Have you noticed that the audio is panned to the left?
I use a stereo microphone, so whatever side of the camcorder I am on while I'm talking, you'll be able to hear it.
@VWestlife, Watching this with my Bose 901 and 501 Speakers from 1961 and 1975!
Well, I kinda liked how that Below song sounded (I passed that one off to mom to put in the playlist of story songs to listen to if the immediate family is ever together again for long enough to go on another trip).
Now I'm reading a bunch about Flagstaff and Dead River (as much as I can come across anyway, much of the coverage I could find referenced thus far is in semi-broken web archives on the wayback machine).
For a free add on with your purchase, this is actually a decent player! There are lots of players that are worse than this one. Sure it’s no iPod, but it’s definitely usable! Great video!
These were sold with QC3 headphones in 2006. I had one
Surely it must be 512MB (doubling takes it to 1GB and tripling takes it to 1.5GB)
Probably 256 since it's in the model name.
Edit, and also back then 256 and 512MB sd cards were more common and much cheaper than finding a 1GB or higher card. A high capacity card would have run a lot of money.
I have some leftover cards from that timeframe and they are 64- 256mb, I didn't get a 512mb card till it was cheap.
@@volvo09nope. It clearly says "Double or Triple the capacity of your MP3 player when you purchase a 512MB or 1GB SD Card"
Simple maths.
@@KarlHamilton guess I wasn't fully paying attention to that part! I heard double or triple, but didn't recall the capacities...
Man, that thing would be brutal to use with 1.5GB of songs on it with how slow it is to search...
@@volvo09 256gb in that time? you sure?
@@afan64 oops, typo!
2006/7, so nostalgic.
I still have my generic 512mb MP3 player bought in 2005.
It still work.
P.S. 512mb/1GB, in the early 2000's that was generally considered a good quantity of memory 😆
I can’t imagine buying anything other than an iPod in 2007.
I’m sure whoever spent $300 on those headphones plugged them into a 6th gen iPod when they got home and this went right into a closet never to be seen again.
This player was obviously made as one of those cheap promo models given to BOSE. You could buy these all day long in 2007 for like $40. I had a nice 4Gb SONY walkman mp3 player in 2008 for about the price of a good cd player at the time. $60-70.
I always thought WMA and WMV files were pretty efficient. In fact my channel videos are rendered to 1080p WMV files.
Interesting video
I have a pair of QC15's if that means anything. sound quality is pretty good, but noise cancelling is reasonable, but you can get just as much inactive noise cancelling out of a $20 pair of IEMs. I do like the fact that I can get bluetooth dongles that are made for the 2/15's though and the battery is a replaceable AAA that I stick a NiMh in and it lasts a week. also the pads are the same ones they still use on the QC35's so you can still buy new ones directly from bose, but honestly it's not worth it, just get a higher quality aftermarket for 4x less.
overall not bad for a $30 ebay purchase
Decent enough quality for a freebie, dare I say good!? This little guy brings back memories of the mp3 players you'd find at Walgreens crammed between the 75% off 100ct CD-Rs, blank cassette tapes, Fuji rolls and other obsolete technologies 😂
I bought a Sandisk .MP3 player back in the ipod days. Unlike an ipod, I just slide in a new AAA when the battery runs down. The unit still works just like new.
Contrary to the "no highs, no lows" joke, Bose uses that typical V-shaped EQ curve any company does to make something cheaply made sound subjectively good.
Dr. Amar Bose was an expert in psychoacoustics and applied that knowledge well to his products, but the approach of going for subjectively enjoyable sound over objectively accurate sound is definitely going to win a few detractors... especially with the profit margins Bose has.
No shame in liking the way something sounds when a brilliant engineer and academic deliberately designed it to sound pleasant. It just means Dr. Bose knew what he was doing.
Ends on Great Big Sea! One of my fav bands!
In redards to the maximum storage you can expand this to, though 4gb cards were most commonly SDHC, If I recall correct there were some 4gb cards that were still standard SD and thus could be read by deviced that didn't have SDHC support. How common they were, I cannot say.
Yeah, I remember the same. I had a pocketpc around this time without SDHC support and I remember a lot of discussion on forums at the time about supposed 4GB SD cards and eventually was able to buy one and it worked. Whether they worked in all devices I'm not sure, possibly they weren't part of the official SD specification as the vast majority of 4GB cards were SDHC.
Please tell me what that glass with the multicolored drops was.
Around the time that thing was new, I had an MP3 player that was a chunky USB thumbstick that was a reasonably decent player, that is until the lanyard I put on it got sucked up by one of my Kirbys when vacuuming (and I hadn't moved it far enough to safety), and it smashed to bits when it impacted the nozzle as the lanyard wrapped round the brushroll, that was fun, and disappointing!!! :P
Techmoan recently reviewed a Bose product, then VWestlife reviews another Bose product after him!!
Presumably, you could blank out the internal memory by connecting the player to a computer? Would be kinda funny if the only way you could get other music onto the player is with an SD card.
IIRC, you used to have the exact same Lexar player years ago and showed it in a few speaker test videos - when I saw the thumbnail, I thought you’ll gonna do a review on that one you used to have, but I wasn’t that much lucky.
At first, I was like “why Bose decided to give their customers that piece of crap as a gift when they make hi-quality products, they should’ve went with a Samsung YEPP! or a Philips GoGear (not sure if those were sold in the States) instead” but I was surprised how good that player was in the terms of sound quality and performance! 😢
Wasn’t expecting that from a player like this…
I also have a question: is this player compatible with Macs or even PCs running Vista or newer Windows versions?
This is the same one. It just took me this long to do a video about it.
"It's small" I had a Sansa Clip MP3 player from around that era which was much smaller and it had a color screen. I even installed Rockbox on it, and I could play Doom on that tiny screen. I wish I still had it, but with it's non removable battery it would've been toast by now. :-/
Now THAT is a true nugget befitting DankPods
WMA. Back in 2006 i had an MP3 player, not this one but it did have 256MB of storage. I used to rip to 64k WMA files because, on my crap PC speakers and earphones, they sounded fine and i wanted as many songs as possible. These days i have better headphones, better speakers and rip my CDs to FLAC.
WMA was a superior codec to MP3 on purely technical merits, but suffered from proprietary lock-in. It also got a reputation for being dangerous because the format supported a fairly elaborate DRM scheme that could be adapted to spread malware - it was supposed to be able to launch a web browser to go to a page and fetch licencing information and decryption keys for the file, but it could just as easily launch a browser to open a page with a browser exploit in. The Vorbis codec beat them both though, and today Opus improves further upon even that.
@@vylbird8014 i vaguely recall using it over MP3 for technical reasons. I used OGG Vorbis for a time too but during lockdown i deleted everything and re-ripped my entire CD collection to FLAC. I also ensured everything had embedded artwork, the tags were consistent (my old tagging was a complete mess and done manually over a period of years nothing was consistent) and that the folder structure was consistent too.
Vwestlife, I had an mp3 player similar to this by iRiver that remains probably the best sounding "personal stereo" I've ever had. Unfortunately, mine had no expansion slot. Was that banjo jazz track Bela Fleck?
There's a certain simplicity to portable audio players. I dislike listening to music only to have it interrupted by a notification or a call. I like to put my headphones in, and it's down to *me* when I turn it off! I still have my original 2nd gen iPod Mini from around 2005 that I bought second hand from cashies (though my hold button is broken now) which i've flashmodded with a 256gb card and slowly trying to collect all the colours of 1st gen and 2nd gen, since out of the iPods they're the easiest to maintain... It's also the reason why I like writing documents on vintage computers. Only distracted when I wanna be! :)
No only that, but you don't have to lug around that brick of a phone while exercising :)
13:00 - It's ridiculoius! (opens file hanging sized drawer of adapters and cabling) :P
Not sure if anyone else has nitpicked on this, but: 512 MB base storage would mean with 512 MB SD you double and with 1 GB you triple your storage. Not 256 MB as you said. 🙃
Yoooo. I found one in a second hand store still in the box for $5. All but the player and the Bose leaflet were missing. I don't need it. I put music on it and now it's tucked away until I feel nostalgic to enough to use it.
Would be interesting if you found the original purchaser. Her name is on the receipt!
I don't get it. Making a whole player deal was cheaper then just making an sd card?
Also love this little guys. My sansa clip plus still rock solid with a rockbox firmware, driving my coss porta pro from time to time at the weekends)
I've never owned any Bose stuff (way too expensive for me) but I have heard a few of their products, and they sounded excellent to me. I don't think it's bad stuff, just over-priced.
Sounds decent for a $0 18 year old MP3 player. I dunno much about those thing so don’t take my word for it
Similar interface to a Samsung YP-MT6 unit I have from the era.
Ooh that was nice peeling the film off that display without using a cheesy sound sample. Keeping it unpredictable - and saving time in editing. Looking at these crappy old MP3 plyers, it's no wonder the iPod obliterated them. Bose do sound pretty good. The criticisms are rooted in the fact that Bose gear costs loads and many other things sound much, much better for way less. But Bose is aimed at people who want a good experience with minimal investment of time and effort but have plenty of cash. Bose is also a bit of a walled garden... A bit like the people that brought us the iPod...
I had a Rio PMP-300, supported a whopping 32MB on board! No SD!
It sounds great. My MP3 player sounds like crap and only lasts 45 mins from full charge.
If you were using that kind of MP3 player in those days you actually did care about WMA.
Nearly twenty years ago doesn’t seem that long ago to me but in the realm of technology it has become very dated. In just twenty years mp3 players have went from cutting edge technology to almost extinct. If you are in the market for a new mp3 player today you cannot find any major brands that are still manufacturing them today.
Sony and SanDisk still do
@@dlarge6502 I didn’t know Sony was still in the mp3 market. Good to know!
As the saying goes: “The faster we go, the Rounder we get!”
>9:50
The largest is 4GB cards. it's nonofficial but should work.
I used something like that in my smartphone(O2 XDA Neo) back in the day
Lexar basically licensed premium brands like Bose, Dell, and Kodak in the 2000s for digital devices and memory cards. I’m surprised that Bose never made their own dedicated MP3 player, probably Bose had a deal with Apple to make premium iPod accessories.
I can tell you filmed this late at night 🦗
Except for the screen being black and white rather than white letters in blue it looks like one my son got as a party favor in 4th grade.
Dankpods wish they'd found this player
ps. loved the logo over the left speaker at the end
Came for the mp3 player and left listening to the Below song
Whats even the point of buying land and building the house and setling there, if they can take it all away (they dont care how much work and money u put into it, they just take it all away)
I remember when 1gb of flash memory was $100 at regular retail.
That last song sounded like a Great Big Sea song...I couldn't read it on the screen what song it was...anyone know?
Yes, it's by them. See the link in the description to the playlist.
@@vwestlife oh that's awesome! Thanks for letting me know. I wasn't aware you had listing of songs in your description
As a fellow Newfoundlander, I guess I can pick their music out pretty well then lol
When they said double or triple storage with a 512MB or 1GB SD card, I kinda thought that would mean it already had 512MB of storage built in, rather than just 256. If that's the case, guess that 2GB card would let you nonuple it's total storage.