The ACEplus Melody

Although the Melody is available in six different skins, this particular one has a leopard skin (pun intended). However, it isn't as impressive as you would think.

In fact, we think that this colour scheme is rather horrendous. The leopard spot pattern is so disruptive that it's hard to make out the side buttons and their labels, as you will see later.

Portable audio players are generally designed to catch the eyes of the finicky consumer, but this product begs to differ. It doesn't have a particularly unique form factor and there isn't even a LCD screen to catch attention. The disruptive leopard design certainly doesn't help it attract attention.

It is as solid as it looks. The plastic case doesn't feel particularly solid, or give you much confidence when you hold it in your hand. But it will probably weather quite a few knocks, if it's merely for the fact that it's a solid state player.

Again, this player doesn't come with any LCD screen so you cannot ID the track before it plays. This can get very annoying when you looking for a song, as you need to listen to the track for a few seconds before you can skip to the next song.

In addition, the lack of display means you will never know how much battery life you have left. It could run flat and you will never know it until it drops dead.

Incidentally, the ACEplus Melody does not come with any built-in memory. That's probably how they keep the price low. Instead, it comes with a SD/MMC slot on the left side, although no SD or MMC card were included in the package.

Of course, ACEplus has a line of SD/MMC card available for you to purchase, which is pretty convenient for them. However, this is pretty counterproductive as without a memory card, this product has little purpose except to serve as a card reader or a Bluetooth transmitter.

You can also see from the pictures that the labels for the buttons are hardly visible against the disruptive background colour scheme. You really have to strain your eyes to identify each button.

Specifications

Let's take a look at the specifications of the ACEplus Melody :