Dell DJ Ditty 512MB MP3 Player

Reviews: Multimedia

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Mike McCormick
Brian
Dell
Feb. 14, 2006

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Taking a Closer Look

The DJ Ditty is constructed of metal and rubberized material, resulting in the most durable MP3 player that I have seen. The protective cover is nice, as it protects the weakest part of the player, the USB connector. The display is nice and flush with the player, as you would expect. The screen shows necessary information, but with the small display size, its unlikely that you will see more than 3 words at a time. The scrolling track information is a bit fuzzy when scrolling, but is crisp when the text is not moving.

There are 5 main buttons with which to control this player - six if you count the Reset button. Most of the controls are located on the edge of the player. The play/pause, skip forward and skip backwards buttons have a moderate click to them. Both the skip forward and back buttons are nearly flush to the player body and are sometimes difficult to depress. As such, I found it hard to change tracks while wearing my cycling gloves. The play/pause button is much easier to depress because it is slightly raised up from the other two buttons. The other button located on this panel is the scroll/selector button. This button has many uses, but I found it difficult to operate. The selector button protrudes from the player about 1.5mm and can be pressed left or right to adjust volume or scroll through items in a menu. The selector button can also be depressed inwards to select a highlighted option. The two major problems that I found with this button is that it's easily bumped if the play controls are not locked and that it's difficult to depress the button straight in without simultaneously pushing it left or right and thus changing your selection.

One of the first tests that I do with MP3 players is to see how intuitive the controls are. This test was inconclusive since after pressing a few buttons the Ditty was out of juice and needed to be recharged. After an overnight charge, I downloaded a few songs to the Ditty and started playing a few tunes. I was unable to find the main menu and had no idea that the Ditty functioned as an FM receiver until I read the instruction manual...

This is a good time to mention the software that is associated with the Ditty. The only recommended operating system for use with the Ditty is Windows XP with Windows Media Player 10. There is a software package that comes with the Ditty that includes Musicmatch Jukebox. Since I am old school, I still use Windows 2000. I was able to drag and drop MP3's onto the Ditty and still be able to play them. As long as you don't try to install the included software on a Windows 2000 or ME machine, I suspect that you can use it like a typical USB drive and be able to play your music.

Testing

I was immediately disappointed with the Ditty's design since I couldn't operate the skip track buttons with ease. The protruding volume control knob was constantly being bumped in my pocket until I figured out how to lock out the controls. Lastly, the only way to wear the Ditty (with the included accessories) is with a lanyard, which bounces too much while running. However, with the player's small size, it was easy to slide into my pocket.

I must admit that I was not a big fan of the earbuds. They just would not stay in my ears when I ran with them. This is probably because they are completely plastic, making them a bit on the slippery side, but they do get style points for being cloth covered and for matching the lanyard.

The Ditty comes with a few equalizer settings to personalize your listening style. The standard settings are normal, classical, jazz, rock, pop and spoken word. Ironically, these are the same settings on the stereo in the last rental car I had. You can hear some noticeable differences between the settings, though the equalizer is not one of the better ones. Also, there is no custom EQ settomg with the Ditty. There are a few play mode settings which allow you to have a shuffled list or song repeat. The FM stereo is decent, but the reception is not as good as with some other players. Even the strong FM stations would cut in and out when I was walking around the living room. The Ditty comes with a built-in channel seeker and programs the ten strongest radio stations for you. Finding a specific song on the Ditty through the menu is very difficult because you can't see a list of the songs you have loaded. Rather, you are stuck scrolling the songs one by one until you get the one that you want.

While the player's display is tiny, the information is crisp and easily visible. On the screen you will see a few words of the title, time progress, battery level and the volume level. The display is mono-colored and has a backlight. It's nothing to write home about, but it's also better than nothing.

The transfer rate on the Ditty is notable, but not in a good way. It took 11 minutes 3 seconds to transfer 482MB worth of music to the Ditty. This comes out to the whopping rate of 0.73 Mb/s. In layman's terms, I was able to eat two Macho Tacos and half my fries from DelTaco in the time it took to transfer over the music files. You can always reassure yourself that the MP3 player is benefiting from the slow transfer, however, because the Ditty is also charging during this time.

The Ditty runs off an internal rechargeable battery; there are no batteries to change. It takes about 3 hours for the battery to fully charge. From my testing I found that the battery life was about 10.5 hours of continuous play, a bit less than the 14 hours Dell advertises.

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Page 1: Introduction / First Impressions
Page 2: Taking a Closer Look / Testing
Page 3: Conclusion

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4 User Comments

1 - Posted by Brian on February 15, 2006 - 11:26 am

I don't think anyone is going to take out the iPod until someone can actually compete with iPod + iTunes. A cool MP3 player alone just isn't going to cut it.

2 - Posted by handrail on February 15, 2006 - 12:52 pm

and this dell player sounds more like the cowon ones from 2 or 3 years ago. i'm still using the iaudio4 and it works great AND has a larger colored display.

3 - Posted by Nick on February 15, 2006 - 1:04 pm

$99 for 512MB capacity? I can get a 1GB iPod shuffle for that price.

Apples-to-apples comparison here (no pun intended) is that the iPod shuffle at 512MB is $69. Maybe this is just me, but I listen on random anyway so a display isnt all that helpful and the FM tuner certainly isnt worth an extra 30 bucks. Maybe if the Ditty were $10 more than the Shuffle at 512MB I would consider it worth the price, but not $99.

All this is a moot point however as I wouldn't buy any player that only has 512MB of memory. I would definitely stick with flash for size concerns, but I think 2GB is a minimum for me.

4 - Posted by mike on February 15, 2006 - 2:16 pm

you are better off with a sandisk. Having played with 2 sandisks and this dell. Just my too sense.

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