The Bantam BA1000...




I only bought this thing because Outpost.com was liquidating a batch (at $100 a pop), and I've been wanted to get my hands on one for 2 years now. It looked pretty cool back when there wasn't 100 other players to choose from. And last year, Bantam promised to send us one for review... many, many times. But it never showed up. Read this and you'll find out why.

The Good

• It actually works, sort of
  
• It's dirt cheap (and out of production)
  
• Plays MP3 and WMA
  
• Large, hi-res screen
  
• 8+ hours playback
  
• Line-in recording up to 256kbit
  
• Voice recording
  
• FM radio and radio recording (up to 256kbit)
  
• iD3-tag sorting of content (Artist, Album, Track, Genre)
  
• Mass Storage Device complient
  
• Data files transfer to the player (through windows explorer) at USB2.0 speed
  
• Recordings are instantly accessable for playback
  
• 5-band EQ. ...something that 10 billion iPod owners can only dream of
  
• Can monitor music while recording
  
• 20 radio station presets if you can figure out how to use them
  
• Can hear the track as you Fast Forward or Rewind
  
• There is enough empty space inside the player that it should float, in case you throw it into some nearby water, which is a good possiblity once you've used it
  

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The Blah

• Line-in recording even at 256kbit is mediocre-quality. Doesn't have much life or depth to it. Use your PC instead
  
• FM radio reception is average at best. There's a fair amount of background noise on every channel
  
• MP3 playback is low-quality... more artifacts are audible than with other players
  
• The player ships (default) with the User EQ on and the bass bumped up. I guess they figure it makes up for the cheapy earbuds
  
• Voice recording does work, but at a maximum bitrate of..... 8.5kbs
  

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The Bad

• 2gb capacity... and yet it's huge
  
• Hi-res screen is wasted since track listings only use a portion of the screen
  
• BANTAM INTERACTIVE is displayed on every screen
  
• Text too long for the screen only scrolls in the Now Playing screen, not while browsing through lists of tracks (like iPod)... If the artist, album, or title is too long for that line, it's just cut off. Even in the Now Playing sceen, scrolling is sooo slow, and the speed is not adjustable
  
• Continuous battery drain like iPod. Powers up quick but it will be dead in 2-3 days even with no use
  
• No way to completely turn it off
  
• Requires Bantam Music Manager to load music
  
• Initial boot-up screen has a really annoying animation that plays back at about 2 frames per second
  
• Option to rotate the screen 90-degrees (so you hold it like an ipod) but it's totally useless since the scroll-switch is then on the bottom-side of the player where you can't reach it
  
• Setting FM radio presets should be easy, but its confusing instead... you'd have to look up how to do it in the manual
  
• Even if the player is off, putting anything metal into the headphone jack (like.. headphones) will cause the player to turn on
  
• When you're looking at the contents of an album, it doesn't show the album or artist name at the top of the screen. Instead we get more BANTAM INTERACTIVE advertising
  
• Recording levels are not adjustable
  
• No gapless playback. Every player should have this
  
• No on-the-fly playlisting. Every player should have this
  

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The Ugly

• Speed-sensitive scrolling is jacked-up. While trying to run through a long list of tracks by holding down the scroll-switch, the OS can't keep up with the scrolling speed so after a second or two it starts jumping through whole screens then the whole list. To get through just a few screens, you have to hold it down for less than a second, let go, hold, let go, repeat... so much fun
  
• Bantam Music Manager (BMM). The program looks nice but that's all it has going for it. The software will crash sometimes, but the main problem is the transfer speeds. Despite the BA1000 being a USB2.0 part, BMM transfers music at sub-USB1 speeds. An 8mb song takes 35 seconds to load. And you have to use this program to load music, no way around it
  
• You can't load music through drag and drop to the BMM software. You have to use the program to search your hard drive for music, them import it the BMM music library, then transfer it to the player. There's several more unneccesary steps involved in doing this
  
• Physical design is the worst. The only practical way to hold it is with two hands, since the scroll-switch is located on what would be the bottom-edge of other players. So, holding it horizontally, the other buttons all run along the top edge of the player
  
• The "hump" on the bottom side of the player provides space for the batteries, but it makes the BA1000 as thick as a Creative Nomad Jukebox... except that Creative's players are use 2.5-inch hard drive while the BA1000 is thick only because of poor design/engineering
  
• The player actually ships with a CD that has corrupt installation software. No kidding. You have to use thier software to load music, so you'll need to download the 17mb file from Bantamusa.com
  
• The in-line remote is the cheapest thing I've ever seen. To "lock-out" the buttons you move a switch on the side, and it actually moves the buttons themselves a little bit so they catch on a piece of plastic that keeps you from being able to depress them. Bantam should have just skipped the remote instead of making one like this
  
• The plastic cover over the screen is too soft, it manages to get scratched riding alone in my pocket..?
  
• It only plays the tracks in an album alphabetically.. instead of the same order on the CD. Other players do this automatically, but you'd have to make a playlist for each album on the BA1000
  
• The scroll-switch is very small and doesn't register clicks (select) very well. You have to click it straight in, and deep, or nothing happens. The trouble is that I have normal, human-size fingers
  
• No firmware updates or software fixes since it was manufactured
  

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Conclusion

Comparing to the other 20 DAPs I've had, all I can say is, this one sucks... bigtime. The BA1000 is the worst thing I've seen since the GoDot m7170, or well, any GoDot player. But, it was only $100, right? About what your average 128mb or 256mb flash-based player costs. Still, no, it's not worth it. The design is awful. It doesn't sound very good. Radio and recording are mediocre at best. The software will surely drive you insane.