My experience with the Mechen M30 mp3 player

I originally got the device a few years back, but sparsely used it until the last 6-8 months when I actually began to download music versus just streaming it off of Youtube. Overall the device is okay, however there are a few issues that can be a deal breaker for some people.

Positives

The Mechen M30 is made of aluminum, and is on the heavy side. It is on the thicker end, and possesses a physical volume wheel along with a smattering of buttons (It also has volume buttons as well for some odd reason). The audio is wonderful, the firmware possesses a good EQ mixer to get the best out of various songs, and the stock SD card is 64gb so storage is not an issue. Battery life is also long-lasting, personally I’ve never had issues with the battery dying on me.

Issues

Unfortunately, the software does not support decoding .opus files and overall feels cumbersome, even for basic actions. Also the device has no support for user-created playlists other than three presets which I find ridiculous. Additionally it cannot read .opus files, and sometimes has trouble detecting labels on music files; in one case I tried to put the Half-Life 1 .flac* tracks onto the player and while they played, the player wouldn’t sort them by artist or album. To make matters worse, 3rd party firmware cannot be installed as the Mechen M30 does not contain enough storage for Rockbox to work. The player also uses microUSB to charge, but ultimately that’s a minor issue in comparison to the first two.

Overall while it’s a good mp3 player, I kind of wish I had done a bit more research, even if I would have to spend more.