Page 3 - Usage and User Interface
Holding down the "Power" button for around a second will boot up the Nextar T30. For a flash based unit, it doesn't boot particularly fast; the Nextar logo animates for for than a couple seconds. After that, the main menu, as shown above, is displayed.
The use of the warm orange gradient in the background and smooth, clean, and high resolution icons are definitely surprising in a good way. A bar permanently stays at the bottom with a battery meter that displays in quarter increments. Text in the middle shows what function is currently selected right now.
A total of eight icons are displayed in what is perceived as a circular selection menu, allowing the user to scroll left and right via the tactile buttons at the top. Each icon well represents its function; in clockwise order, we have Music, Settings, Explorer, Record, E-Book, Pictures, Radio, and Video. It would be really sweet if the menu corresponds to a touch screen -- or even if the scrolling icons are animated at the least -- but it's not. The control buttons in relation to what's appearing on screen also has a noticeable delay.
The 3.5" 320x240 screen offers quite a bit of room, especially in the music displaying screen. A status icon is shown in the top left corner. Beside is a progress bar, showing elapsed time and time remaining of a certain track. A wide volume bar is situated above a large bars-and-wave visualization. A few button-looking graphics shows miscellaneous info such as play mode and bit rate.
If you're going to skip through a bunch of songs with the skip button, the button lag and some unresponsive buttons after quick successive presses will be extremely frustrating. The skip/repeat as well as Vol+/Vol- buttons are also used frequently when navigating through menus, so the unresponsive-after-fast-clicks issue is also a problem.
Regarding the Music screen, there's quite a bit of problems associated with it in my opinion as well. The large area is overly filled with information; and while the orange gradient background works great with the main screen, it would be nice if something else is used here -- if not allowing the user to select their own background image. Additionally, ID3 tags are not read; it only shows the file name. Album art is certainly out of the story.
Generally speaking, there are much better ways to use all the room in this screen.
The Explorer screen; which can be accessed in any player menu when hitting the Return button at the top. The button issue as well as somewhat unintuitive screen and button coordination will inhibit speed and accuracy of the user when accessing features on this digital media player. Again, ID3 tags aren't displayed; and the list is displayed in no particular order (???) -- I think it's done in the way of the order of the files being added. Not good.
A blue gradient background covers the FM radio screen. It retains the element placement scheme of the music playing screen, which is great as it retains a degree of consistency with the player's user interface. There's no FM recording function available.
The Video screen. A progress bar and volume display is located at the bottom during the beginning of the video. The included CD of this player provides the user with a software called AVIConverter 3.0, to convert videos compatible with the Nextar T30. It's incorporates an extremely generic interface of typical, low quality, no budget software (There's much better freeware out there, I promise), but that's beside the point -- it's reasonably easy to use simply because it's so simple and only designed to do one thing. Point is, the Nextar T30 video function is extremely picky and accepts 320x240 AVI contained DivX files. Anything else, well, no go is all I can say.
The Picture function works as expected -- display pictures in full screen mode, and with slide show functions as well. Interestingly, I still have something to complain about -- large files will load reaaallllly slooooooowly. Funny picture by the way, as shown above. Get it? Hahahaha. Point made. :P
The Record screen. A bit of deviation from the rest of the player design, but I'm glad this function is available. Sound is off its condensed mic onboard the Nextar T30, and is recorded into standard WAV format. Generally, quality is acceptable from the condensed microphone.
The Settings menu.
The equalizer screen. The adjustable range isn't high; and the player's DSP does not reprocess the audio much with EQ on to make a significant audible difference.
Generally speaking, in terms of usage, certain aspects are arranged illogically and the controls are sometimes a nightmare to use. I see tons of room for improvement in this regard. The user interface's main screen is quite outstanding in its own right, but everything goes downhill from there -- such as the poor usage of screen area in the Music screen.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. Physical Look - Outside
3. Usage and User Interface
4. Testing and Conclusion
