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was a little flabbergasted when I saw this little nifty device which at first look made me wonder, “Is this the new iPod?”. The look was distinctly similar especially the center controls.

I do own the popular apple product but I can’t mod it enough for my jeep which is a top down restored mc arthur willy. Well if I park on a public place and forget to bring the iPod out of it’s dock on my jeep then it would be crying time. So I looked for and alternative, my criteria were pretty much simple; affordable, expandable, small, and sounds excellent!

My first option was a Creative labs Muvo Tx, so I went to the tech store with that purpose, and that’s where I found this hidden gem left alone in the center aisle. It was an a4tech brand and this was their first mp3 player the “T5″. A4Tech was pretty popular with interface devices like computer mouse, the first to have a battery free wireless mouse. And a couple of other niche keyboards and the type. Then they started producing multimedia speakers and other computer accessories. But the T5 was their first product to dive in the competitive market of mp3 players.

The Specs:

• Expensive Feel and Glass covered LCD display
• 4 in 1 Multi-function: MP3 music player, voice recorder, Flash Drive and Card reader/writer.
• 1 SD/MMC expansion slot with up to 4Gig support and Thumb/Flash drive functions.
• Built-in 128MB flash memory
• High quality Sigmatel 3504 chip set, Amplifier>=95dB
• 7 equalizer presets
• Supports MP1,MP2,MP3, WMV, ASF and WAV formats
• Supports special lyric synchro display
• Li battery Up time:12Hrs
• double ported high-quality earphone with in-ear options
• Adopts ultra thin 0.006mm (millimeter) high-tech earphone

What I especially liked was the expansion slot, I have bunch of extras lying around so now it could be put to good use. I have 3 extra 64MB MMC’s that I taped in an album name outside and stored the music files for the corresponding album, now I have mini-tapes. The players display is bright and clear with the blue backlight illuminating it. The controls were pretty straight-forward and most importantly the sound was surprisingly above average. And all that for the price tag of less than 100USD. So I decided to mount it in the center panel of my jeep just above the main gauge, it’s small enough that people keep asking me where my head unit is… At night I smile when I press play and the illumination starts with a welcoming shake and bake a4tech logo…

Visit the product site here: a4tech T5 mp3 Player