DescriptionHailing as the smallest MP3 player in the world, the ARTEC Jungle-i weighs in at only 8.7 mm on its smallest side and is roughly the size of a business card. Designed to be “Ultra Slim” and “Ultra Portable,” the Jungle-i truly can go anywhere. Using between 48 and 96 megabytes of on board flash memory, the Jungle-i can hold anywhere between one and two hours of music or, if one is more inclined toward business, up to 2.7 hours of high quality voice recording. The Jungle-i comes with a standard 3.7-volt rechargeable lithium-ion battery that has a maximum of 8 hours playing time and it is equipped with a small FSTN LCD screen that displays song number and seconds elapsed since the beginning of the song.
Setup
After taking the Jungle-i and necessary components out of the box, I flipped open the User’s Manual and began the installation procedure. First, I had to make sure that my computer BIOS (Basic Input Output System) was configured to the ECP mode for my parallel port. Fortunately, most new computers are already set to ECP mode, and it was not necessary to change any settings. Next, I took the cord responsible for transferring MP3s from my hard drive to the player and hooked it into my parallel port and the back of the Jungle-i, which was relatively easy. I then connected the battery charger to the Jungle-i and plugged it into a wall socket to allow the player to charge while I installed the driver software included with the Jungle-i. Interestingly, if an electrical socket isn’t available, you can plug a 9-volt battery into the charger and it will similarly recharge the Artec.
Installing the software was a no-brainer: just keep clicking next and make sure it goes into the right directory. It took me about 2 minutes to install the software on a Pentium Celeron over-clocked to 450. After the software finishes installing, double click on the ARTEC MP3 Manager icon created on the desktop, switch the player on, and you’re ready to go!
The software toolbar provides all the necessary tools to get some MP3s pumping on your new Jungle-i. First and foremost there is the File Download button. Clicking this will allow you to browse your hard drive for MP3 files and music. Next is the File Upload button, which allows you to transfer files from the player to your computer, but, for the most part, this function is disabled for copyright purposes. Then there are buttons to move songs up or down on the playlist, delete songs, or refresh the playlist. Downloading files is fairly simple, and unless your player is broken, should take less than one minute for even the largest of MP3 files (5 megabytes or more).
Performance
So how does it work? Like you wouldn’t believe! After downloading some of my favorite songs onto the player (including such bands as The Beatles, Green Day, Eels, Weezer, and System of a Down), I proceeded to fiddle with the controls. The Jungle-i has all of the standard features any MP3 player might have – play, pause, next song, previous song, repeat, and volume up or down. But, this MP3 player also has two unique controls: mode and delete. Delete is fairly self-explanatory; if you don’t like a song on the player, or have just listened to it so many times your head might explode if you listen to it again, you can delete it off the player forever. It works fairly well too. Click delete once and it will give you an approximation of the song size in megabytes. Click delete again and it will ask the all-powerful question: “Delete?” Press delete once more and the song will forever be banished from your Jungle-i’s precious memory.
On the other hand, the mode control has two different functions: if you have not yet decided that you would like to listen to MP3s, you can switch the player into voice record mode and voice playback mode, which I will describe later. The other function of the mode button is used while you are actually listening to a song. If you hit the mode button during a song, it will switch between classic, pop, and normal modes. These modes are supposed to enhance sound quality depending on the song, but in reality they don’t seem to do much at all.
Anyway, enough about the player! How do the songs sound? Well, in one word, AWESOME! In many words, the sound quality on this MP3 player is unprecedented. Of all of the MP3 players I have used (which is quite a few, since I am currently in the market for one myself), the Jungle-i has the best sound quality out of them all. As a test, I downloaded one song of every genre that I could think of (rock, rap, R & B, classical, etc) into the Jungle-i and listened to them over and over, to see if I could find any sound artifacts or inaccuracies.
Well, after hours of deliberation, I can say that there is only one problem with the Jungle-i‘s sound quality and it is that on some songs, Mixed Bizness by Beck, for example, there is often a faint fuzzy hiss in the background, only slightly audible, but annoying nonetheless. Often this hiss occurred in the louder songs, while softer songs like Brick by Ben Folds Five and voice-only songs like You’re Pretty When I’m Drunk by The Bloodhound Gang sounded fine even at the higher levels of volume. The hissing also has something to do with the sound quality that the MP3 was recorded at, so if you are ripping MP3s off of your CDs make sure you record them in 128kbit or higher. Although it may seem that the Jungle-i’s sleek shape and great sound quality is only for technophiles and audiophiles, the Jungle-i can also be used for business voice recordings. Using the mode button, you can switch the player into voice record or voice playback modes. To start recording, change to voice record mode and hit play. As long as you don’t move the player around too much, you should be able to get some good quality voice recordings. To play the recording back, simply put the player in voice playback mode and hit play. One useful thing about the voice recording is that you are able to save multiple files instead of saving it all as one big file, so it is easy to skip to certain sections of a speech, as there are no fast forward or rewind buttons.
One last thing has to be said about the Jungle-i – the headphones are very uncomfortable and do not fit well into most ears. If you are a jogger and you like to listen to music while you run, I would suggest getting better earphones, as the ones that are included with the Jungle-i are very likely to fall out.
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