Digital World Tokyo | Battery day: Cheapo MP3 player runs for a year on half a dozen AAAs

Battery day: Cheapo MP3 player runs for a year on half a dozen AAAs

August 27th, 2007

Let’s stick to the basics - NHC’s 34g Ecolong plays MP3 and WMA, comes in a choice of white or camouflage designs, makes a single AAA battery last 85 hours and is as ugly as sin.

NHC has a website filled with all sorts of subjective claims about how the Ecolong will stretch six batteries out over a year or how one cell sees the average daily commuter through two months of strap hanging, whether listening to tracks from the internal 1GB of flash or its FM radio. The white version costs ¥4,980 ($43), while the camouflage model costs ¥5,980 ($51) and comes with a super-tacky matching case.

As a USB mass storage device, the Ecolong is flexible enough to consider but the styling leaves a little too much to be desired.

(Crossposted to Tech.co.uk)