Android 14 MP3 Player with Spotify PECSU 4 Touch Screen MP4 Music Player with Play Store Family Link

Bought two of these for my kids so that I could set them up with music, audio books, and podcasts. They have great battery life and the processor seems pretty quick for a budget device. The speaker is okay, it's basic but it can get decent volume to be useful for audio books. The touchscreen is responsive, and it looks great once you take off the pre-installed plastic film protector that it ships with. I left the back film protector on because it does seem like both sides might be glass. There aren't any tempered glass protectors made for this device, so I bought the Pecsu case for them both to have some display impact protection, you can see it in my review photo - it works fine and is tight on the player so that it won't fall out but the button feedback and ease of swiping the edges of the display could be better. It's Android 14 and appears to be a mostly stock version. If you've ever set up an Android device, you will feel right at home with it. This means you can get modern Play Store apps and side-loading works great. Parental control is excellent, just like managing a Retroid or Android phone, and I was able to remove Chrome and other means of accessing the internet so that it's safe for the kids to use whenever they want to. Now for the biggest drawback that I didn't see on the product page - The USB-C port is charge *only*, you cannot transfer files to the Pecsu G5 through the port by mounting it on a computer. The wifi speed for transferring files via the Localsend app was also very slow, but it does work. No problem streaming audio or video over it, it's just not that quick for file transfer. Instead, you will want to take out the SD card and use a reader on your computer to load files at a decent speed. The included card worked fine, and averaged around 30-40 MB per second going that way. I was able to add tons of audio books for offline playback without much trouble. I can see why some folks would choose an Android phone as a player over this since so many phones can be cheap or free with plans, but if you don't want a phone on a plan this is a fantastic little device and I recommend it. Read more

For the price, $62.99 US when I bought mine, the G5 is a good value. Performance doesn't match what one would expect of a much more expensive, name brand player but no reasonable person would expect it to. I have to say this player is mostly reliable after nearly a week of using it for several hours each day. The only significant problem I have had is that it randomly shuts down with no warning even though it is set to never shut down when idle. This only happens when the player is idle and happens infrequently enough that it is more of an annoyance than a serious problem that has me considering returning it. What do I like about it? 1. It is reliable except for the problem with it shutting down occasionally. It has a customized version of Android but that isn't so heavily altered that it is any more difficult to adjust to than when changing between the major brands of phones like Samsung or Motorola. I haven't added a large number of apps but nothing I have tried has had a problem running on the G5. 2. The volume level is stable when using Bluetooth. The two apps I use most are Poweramp and Audible. I used them on my last player and had to turn the volume up by about 30% to have audiobooks run at about the same volume. The sudden change in the volume level would get painful if I switched to music without cutting the volume first. The G5 does not have this problem and only requires a minor adjustment when switching apps. I am assuming there is a volume leveling feature but I don't know for sure (see #4 of what I don't like for more). 3. Even though the internal storage won't hold the music or books I normally keep loaded it has microSD slot that will take a card up to 1TB, ensuring that I can store as many files as I need to on the player (see #2 of what I don't like for the limitations of this feature). What don't I like about the G5? 1. The only dedicated button other than power and volume is the useless (to me) record button. I don't need a music player that can record audio from a built-in microphone. I would much prefer that it was configured as a play/pause button so that it's not necessary to push the power button and unlock the screen in order to start the music or audiobook I had to pause. I use headphones that connect to a phone and the G5 at the same time and pressing the play button on the phones usually causes Spotify to start on the phone rather than whatever app is active on the G5. 2. I don't like the file system limitation put on external memory cards. The external memory card can ONLY be formatted with FAT32. Yes, I said FAT32. exFAT was introduced in 2006 and every memory card I have over 32GB is formatted with it. That meant the G5 wouldn't read the card out of my last player which required me to use a third party app to format the card in my computer and then reload 200GB of audio files rather than simply swapping cards. I don't normally swap cards between devices but now that's not possible since no phone or other device I've used in the last decade has a card in it with the FAT32 file system. 3. The options for auto-shut down times needs to be expanded. The maximum time for allowed is 30 minutes. Its not uncommon for me to have to stop the player for a lengthy phone call or when having to take care of business where I can't keep music playing. The G5 does not boot quickly and having to wait minutes for it to turn back on is annoying as is having the battery drain overnight because I forgot to turn it off. To me, the option of adding the option of 1 hour to the timer would be reasonable. 4. The other thing I don't like is not actually a feature of the player but the lack of information for configuring or troubleshooting it. There is no Pecsu website and the manual included with the G5 is only sufficient for a user who has not previously used an Android device. Bottom line: The G5 is sufficient if you don't expect great features and can't afford to spend at least $300 or more, in some cases a lot more, for a better player for one reason or another (didn't want to tell the grandkids they aren't getting Christmas presents from me this year because I dropped and broke the player I had been using). Read more