Kingston K-Pex 1GB PMP (K-PEX100) Review

K-Pex Design
The Kingston Portable Entertainment eXperience wouldn't strike you at first as a PMP, it looks more like a GameBoy Micro, about the same size with the usual D-Pad on the left and two prominent buttons on the right. The conservative design allows for a larger screen in the center at the expense of a one-handed experience, although it's still easily pocketable with the height of an iPod nano and thickness of a DVD case. I am slightly concerned about the player's durability however, as all of the casing is made of plastic and it creaks slightly when you push inwards on the face of the unit. The silicone does provide some protection against drops if the player falls, but with it on the ugly factor skyrockets.

iPod nano 8GB (2G) sitting right beside the K-Pex

On the right is the D-Pad, an Exit button and a power button, while on the top right are the Select and Esc buttons that are most frequently used, just above the play button in the bottom right. On the underside is a hold switch and volume rocker, and on the topside next to the headphone and line-in jacks are three buttons for quickly changing the equalizer, repeat mode, and starting a recording session. In the center of either side of the player is a small slot covered by a plastic tab, one for the micro USB connector, the other for a miniSD expansion card to hold more content. Finally, a small mono speaker is on the backside that's automatically activated when no headphones are plugged in, great for sharing clips with your friends.

K-Pex fit snugly its silicone case.

As you can imagine, the button layout is just about impossible to do with one hand, so if you're looking for a cheap player in the car, keep looking. Otherwise, read on. The buttons are quite small and have little travel distance, but are highly tactile with a very loud click to them and after a while are a pleasure to use. The volume buttons are a chore to operate however, although volume can also be controlled by the D-Pad in the Now Playing windows.

Classic Interface
The interface that ties all these buttons together is quite colorful and intuitive, the fullscreen menu items resembling those found on Symbian phones and the older Archos PMPs. There's 10 main menus - Music, File Manager, Game, FM Radio, Record, Video, Text, Photo, [USB] Host, and System setting. Some items have a few submenus, such as the Equalizer settings being placed under Music.

It's so simple to use, anyone can pick it up and start using it without reading the manual. On top of that, the interface can be somewhat personalized with your choice of 12 colors and transparency effects, as well as having the screen flipped upside down for lefthanded users. Unfortunately, the interface has one major quirk that can prove to be frustrating - it takes around 30 seconds to boot up, so users may find it helpful to increase the 1-minute standby time as soon as they pick it up.

Audio
Music on the K-PEX100 was very gratifying, close to flat with support for several audio formats including MP3, OGG, and even protected WMA (non-subscription). Unlike the high-end MP3 players however, navigation is based on the archaic folder based structure, with no catalog available for quick searches by artist or album. Rather, one must actually keep their music organized neatly, which can easily be done automatically for the lazy among us using either Windows Media Player's built in synchronization or the free iTunes Agent plug-in.

Despite the folder navigation, when properly organized it was easy to quickly find certain tracks, and there's repeat modes for all music, all music within a certain folder, a single track, and shuffle everything. There are some limitations though, such as if you organize songs by artist then album, selecting the folder repeat mode will only sort through one album, not the artist. As for shuffle, it can't even be restricted by folders. Still, when you're only dealing with 1 or 2 gigs of music (unless you're using a MiniSD card), there's not as much of a need for restrictive play modes as there are with larger 4GB devices.

When in the now playing mode, users are greeted by an oversized visualization of the EQ or L/R audio levels (again of their choosing), and scrolling track and folder information at the bottom with other snippets of information such as the bitrate, play mode and EQ mode. It's possible to enable ID3 tag display information, although I took the liberty of disabling this feature since it's on the same scrolling line as the filename and doesn't properly display the ID3 tags for the majority of my music collection.

Audio quality was very nice, although the supplied earbuds could have been better. (They stick in the ear well but lack depth). Users can tweak the way their audio sounds by using one of 5 EQ settings (Jazz, Pop, Classic, Rock, and 3D Sound - not recommended), or by using their own custom 5-band EQ that adjusts the music in real-time. Additionally, it's possible to speed up and slow down tracks to make them sound like the Chipmunks or James Earl Jones. Kingston rates the battery life at 17 hours of continuous playback, I managed to get just over 16 at a moderate volume using headphones.

Visual
PC users can use the included Transcoder software to convert any files they have that play in Windows Media Player to work with the K-PEX100. Outputted files are saved in the proprietary .MPX format that's basically MPEG-4 with MP3 audio and a 15fps framecap. Unfortunately no solution for creating these files on Mac is currently available.

Most TV shows and cartoons look great on the 2.0" screen, as the colors really shine through and the LCD is far from dim, though not bright enough for viewing in direct sunlight. Due to the relatively low framerate compared to the source file, files will appear slightly jerky, but still smooth enough to be enjoyable. Only real quirk I had here was the lack of any volume normalization in the Transcoder application - all my TV shows are too faint to hear on the built-in speaker. Doing a loop of a 90 minute TV show and two shorter 11 minute shows, I was able to get a satisfactory 7 hours of continuous playback.

In addition to video, the K-PEX100 can view JPEG files while the music is playing in the background. No thumbnail previews are available, rather photos must be sorted through by folder and filename (which I actually find easier). Once selected, photos may be browsed using the left and right arrows on the D-Pad, or set to playback in a slideshow.

Extras
While practically all of the extra features Kingston threw into the K-PEX100 have been seen before in other MP3 players, the sheer number of them thrown into an entry level device is quite impressive. First, as mentioned previously the K-PEX100 is a USB Mass Storage Device, meaning it can be used as a portable hard drive for lugging documents from one computer to the next. This includes files on the miniSD card, which shows up as a second drive letter.

Second, like several other devices out there it's possible to read standard .TXT files, great for quick grocery lists, directions, or news feeds on the run. Third, it can read, copy and delete files from other USB Mass Storage Devices - including flash drives, hard drives, and a few cameras that support the UMS protocol. WIA cameras are excluded from the list unfortunately.

K-Pex's USB OTG at work.

Fourth, the K-PEX100 ships with two games, a space invaders type game that doesn't require you to mash the fire button, and a top-down mech adventure game that plays like Yoda Stories, only with Japanese characters and a slot machine. There's no other games currently available from Kingston, although these two titles have done plenty to keep me occupied.

Fifth, there's an FM radio built in. This isn't so high on my list of useful features due to a clumsy preset system, a lack of recording, and the simple fact that I'm not overly fond of LA radio and commercials, but then again it's a good way to catch the latest tracks and news.

And last but not least, the K-PEX can do recordings from either the built-in microphone or line-in jack (cable included), which is automatically encoded into WMA format up to 128kbps. When doing line-in recording, an optional auto-sync function can automatically split the audio into different tracks when there's a dead pause in the music. Great for um, borrowing music from a friend before you purchase the CD yourself. Yeah, that's the ticket. (Seriously now, support the artists).

Recap
Over all I was quite impressed with Kingston's first attempt at creating a Portable Media Player. For an entry-level device priced lower than an iPod nano, you sure get a lot more bang for the buck with the ability to playback a variety of music formats for your friends to hear using the built-in speaker, watch slideshows and videos on a bright 2" screen, record and offload tracks on the fly, and play a couple of addicting games. Only major drawbacks in my opinion are the somewhat archaic folder navigation, two handed interface and questionable build quality. Still, I wish I had one of these back in high school. If you're doing any holiday shopping for students this year, be sure to put this one on the list.

By Scott Clark, Consumer Technology Editor