Coby MP305-4G MP3 Player with 4 GB Flash Memory FM Radio, USB Drive and LCD - Black

I really like this form factor. It's a USB flash drive that can play any MP3s you store on it. I mainly use it for listening to audio books. One really nice feature it has is that it saves your current position when the battery runs low, then shuts off. This means you can continue listening to your book from the point where you left off once you switch batteries.

The main complaint I have is that it's super, super slow. File transfers can take 15 minutes. Even deleting files takes forever. Just turning the thing on takes maybe 10 seconds, and since the user interface is kind of clunky, you also have to make 3 button pushes before you can listen to audio. It has a radio, which is nice, but that requires lots more button pushing and screwing around. I would happily have paid twice as much for a faster device.

But overall I'm happy with it. I'm pretty hard on mp3 players and nothing has broken.

This is OK for your first mp3....easy to use but I wouldn't purchase another one. I've used it for a couple of months and although I have not used in anywhere for it to get wet, the display screen has a couple of dark spots on it. It still plays great but harder to read the display. The fm leaves much to be desired.

It is just hard to believe that any manufacturer can put all this with 4GB of flash in a package that can go for this price.

I've had this for about a month. Since I got the hang of the cheezy double-pressing of the buttons necessary to make this work right, it has been very reliable. The audio front-end is not bad for a cheap player. A bit of low end roll-off starting at about 300Hz and probably about 6dB down by 100Hz, but what do you expect for this price? O.K., the equalizations are worthless, but it's pretty flat without them. I don't know if you can beat on this real hard - I treat electronics nicely, so I don't plan to find out. I got my son this same one three months ago - he hasn't broken it yet - that says something for it...

Three strong recommendations:

1. Get good earbuds. I have some Koss in-ear sealing earbuds that emphasize the bass a bit. Got them for $20 and they are a perfect complement to this. Shockingly good sound for such a low-cost setup.

2. I've heard of others having delays for this-and-that on this. Here's the solution: Don't bother with all that playlist/synchronize garbage, media player, etc. Just plug this in as a flash drive (Mass Storage mode) and drop your MP3s in with a file manager (like Windows Explorer). You can organize them in directories and this will handle at least 2 directories deep. I've never had any delays, lockups, or any such problems and I have it completely full. It's the only way to fly - flawless.

3. I rip at no lower than 256K bit-rate with EAC and LAME codec, so my files are crystal clear. If your files are below 224K bit-rate, don't blame any MP3 player for bad sound.

This thing is soooooo much better than the IPOD shuffle someone gave me (and I almost threw away) - worlds above that - at a fraction of the price...

Hi i'm Theo, at first when i was on here looking for a mp3 player, the coby mp305 caught my attention because it was small and looked very interesting and very affordable. I just received mine yesterday and transferring my music from my hard drive and from my actual c.d.'s to the machine are as simple and straight to the point as can be. The only things i have a complaint about is the battery you receive with the product is not a strong one, i suggest putting a new one in when it arrives. Also the memoery is about 3.8 gb instead of 4.0 gb

This is my 2nd time around for this little sleek mp3 player. The 1st unit was also this model (MP305-4G) which the on/off switch went onto sporatic after 15 months of constant use. I reviewed other mp3 units by Coby and other manufacturers and decided to stick with this model since it had everything I wanted. The unit had a change from my prior unit which has a piece of software to sync when using the MSC USB mode. I prefer to copy/delete files like any data stick so I found that if you use the MTP USB mode (default)I accomplish that.

The other change is the old model would perform a command when you pressed a button. On the new model the 1st press catches the units attention and performs the command with the 2nd pressing of the button. Once I got used to it, it was no big deal.

Love the unit and will buy it next when this one gives out. The 1st unit cost me $32 and the 2nd unit cost $24. That is how the price fell in 15 months.