Dell Pocket DJ 5GB

Posted 07/01/2005 at 11:06am | by

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Ribbed, for your pleasure

The Pocket DJ from Dell is about the same size as iRiver’s H10, and places the most important controls—play, forward, and reverse—in the most prominent positions on the face of the device. The brushed-chrome bezel doesn’t scratch easily, and we found the ribbed thumb-wheel easier to work with than the H10’s touchy touch-strip. So far, so good.

Out-of-the-box sound was fine, although the bass seemed puny compared with the iPod Mini. You can season the sound to taste with a five-band custom EQ, but you’ll get best results by buying a better set of earbuds and using one of the bass-boosting EQ presets—the results will be almost indistinguishable from the iPod Mini.

The Dell Pocket DJ offended us with a couple of easily remedied faults. Like the original Dell Jukebox, the ribbed scroll wheel protrudes too far from the face of the player, and is easy to unintentionally press in your pocket. The problem is worse this time; most of the buttons are easily activated in a back pocket, leading to unexpected track restarts and hiccups. And although the Pocket DJ can be loaded through Windows Media Player 10 (a much better option, than the bundled MusicMatch 10), you can’t transfer music or data files without installing a driver first. That’s ridiculous. Battery life was slightly above average for a mini hard drive-based player—we got a little more than nine hours at 75 percent volume.

The Pocket DJ is a stripped-down, inexpensive, and sturdy MP3 player, but for a mere 50 bucks more you can get the 6GB iPod Mini, which offers more features, better sound, driverless data file transfer, and a smaller formfactor. If you can live without WMA-DRM support, the choice is not a difficult one.
--Logan Decker

+ DJs: Very inexpensive and sturdy.

- VJs: Requires drivers for music and data, poor button design.

Month Reviewed: July 2005
Verdict: 6
URL: www.dell.com