Many people regard Chinese gadget companies as innovators of knocking off mainstream designs and producing questionably-crafted clones of popular (Apple) devices like iPods and iPhones. But Hacha, a relatively unknown company outside of China, may be on its way toward bucking that trend with its upcoming line of affordable and feature-heavy digital media players.
Hacha’s first player to garner positive worldwide attention is the R280S, a 3.4" x 2.2" x 0.4" device featuring a 2.8" display (320 x 240, 16 million colors), miniSD card slot, line-in recording capabilities, FM radio, games, integrated speaker, and 30-hour audio (MP3, WMA, WAV) and 8-hour video (XviD) battery life.
I ordered the 2GB model (1GB and 4GB versions also available) for about $100 from China a few weeks ago and received it this afternoon.
Here’s a quick unboxing:
I don’t really understand the "Just Myself!" tagline on the back of the box, but some of the early images of the player showed that it was also printed on the back of the player. (You’ll see below that it’s not there anymore. )
Stuffed into the right side of the inner box is an impressive amount of excessively branded accessories.
From top to bottom, left to right: wrist strap, USB cable, USB mini connector, cleaning cloth, Chinese manual and paperwork, drawstring pouch, lanyard, software CD, line-in recording cable, earphone extender cable, stereo earphones with volume controls. This is an accessory bundle!
Here’s a brief but closer look at the player:
The R280S looks very much like it could have been designed by iriver, don’t you think?
It actually bears more of a resemblance to the S10 or first-gen clix, but the clix 2 is a reasonable comparison, too.
