DELL DJ 20 Review
02/26/2005
Written by: Josh T.
So, I finally broke down and splurged. I was caught up in the heat as to whether to get an iPod or a Dell DJ. Dell was having a $212 sale for the 20 gigabyte version of theirs, which ultimately swayed me over in the end. A couple checkout buttons and a week later, I had a new toy sitting on my doorstep.
The DELL DJ 20 comes in a rather, large, box. You open it up to find another box inside and half of the box empty. You open up the smaller box to find the DJ packed tightly face up in all it's glory. Quickly glancing over the instructions, you'll see that you have to charge it for 2.5 hours before use. Bummer. That's like getting a Corvette and saying you can only look at it for a week.
I snapped the DELL DJ into its hybrid type plug. The cord is mainly a USB cord but has a small plug to hook up the AC adapter. The DJ can be charged from either AC or USB. This is really useful if you travel a lot. You can leave the AC part of the cord at home and bring the USB to charge from your laptop.
Charge complete. Yes! Unplugging the DELL DJ triggered it to start up, with a DELL logo showing and the blue backlit screen lighting up. The DELL DJ interface is plainly modeled after the iPod, but who cares really? The DJ 20 comes with MusicMatch, a popular jukebox type program for your PC. This is also used to transfer music to your player. Installing the software is a breeze and in the matter of a few minutes, your transferring away. It only took about 3-4 minutes to transfer the 1.7 gigs of music on my system to my DJ. I don't think any of us could live without USB 2.0.
So I did what anyone would do, grabbed my headphones and snapped them into the port. DJ comes with the option to change equalizer settings. You can choose from presets or customize the individual sliders. Some more features are a calendar, sleep timer, date & time, and most importantly: music! You can view your songs by playlist, album, artist, or genre. You also have the option to play all tracks on your DJ.
Now, after a few minutes of playing, I did what any geek would do. Does it really get the battery life they say? I set my DJ to loop some songs and let it sit on my desk the rest of the day. Upon 11 hours, still going strong! It held out for 11 hours and 53 minutes. Not bad! The estimated battery life is 12 hours. Now, keep in mind, if you are rapidly scrolling, skipping tracks, and having the backlight on, you'll drain the battery very quickly.
The DELL DJ 20 itself is a bit heavy, but really compact and small. It is right about the size of an iPod. The DJ 20 features main buttons on the front such as back, forward, and play/pause. Above those you'll find a back button, your scroll/clickwheel, and a home button. This is your navigation for your DJ. The clickwheel is much different than the iPod's scrollwheel. On the top of the DELL DJ you will find a hold switch, independent volume buttons, and a power button. The DJ powers up rather quickly. Less than a second after hitting the power button, your music is playing.
You can also store files and backups on your DELL DJ. The software comes with a plugin that makes your DJ show up on your local harddrive list. The only con about this is, you HAVE to install the software otherwise this feature isn't available. It does not work like a plug and play external harddrive. So if you want to give some stuff to your friends, you have to install the software on their PC as well.
Playback is rather well on the DJ. Sometimes it takes a few seconds to actually queue up a song, but the lag is liveable. All in all, I love the DELL DJ 20. If you are in the market for an MP3 player, this is a wonderful choice.