Apacer Audio Steno AU231 512MB Review

20 Aug

Posted by Jayce as Hardware, Review

I got Apacer Audio Steno AU231 from Citibank as a free gift. It is a nice gadget. It is not only a MP3/WMA player but a SD/MMC card reader too. It has an expansion slot supports cards sizes up to 2 GB. The version I got was 512MB. Therefore, the expansion slot will be needed soon if I need to put a lot of MP3/WMA.

Apacer Audio Steno AU231

Below are the specification taken from Apacer website.

USB Interface	USB 2.0 High-speed transmission rate
Memory Capacity	0MB,128MB,256MB,512MB,1GB
SD/MMC card supported	32 MB ~ 2 GB
Display	7 Segment display with blue LED backlight
Supported File Formats	Music playback: MP3/WMA
EQ modes	Normal, Pop, Classic, Rock, Jazz
User Interface	English
Audio output	3.5 mm earphone Jack
Power	1.5V Alkaline battery (AAA)
Battery Life	While playing music files stored in SD card: up to 6.5 hours / While playing music files stored in flash: up to 7 hours*
EMI Certification	CE, FCC, C-Tick, BSMI
RoHS	RoHS Compliant
Dimension	(L)62.2mm(W)56.2mm(D)13.7mm
Weight	31g (excluding battery)
Operating temperature	-5Â°C ~ 40Â°C
O/S support	Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP, Mac OS 9.2+, (Win98SE users must install driver enclosed on installation CD)
Accessories	User manual (4 languages), Earphone, 1 AAA Battery, USB extension cable, Installation CD (Multilanguage user manual & driver for Windows 98 inside)

* Battery life will vary depending on temperature and usage.*

The package contains the player, user manual, earphone, AAA Battery, USB extension cable and Installation CD.

Its contain…

The player is not small as other MP3 player. Most of the MP3 player are small and slim. However, it is still light to hold and hang around the neck. Too bad the earphone is not design to do so. Besides, the earphone I got from Citibank is faulty. Poor Apacer quality control. They missed out to test my earphone. Anyway, the earphone is cheap in quality too.

It can be smaller

I tested the player with Sony MDR-Q67LWW earphone. It use a simple decoder and normal equalizer. However, it can produce a nice output. I cannot compare it with price/value due to I do not know the price. Anyway, it is a nice to have player.