Digital Trends

MSI Mega Player 516

October 28th, 2004 | by Ian Bell

Features and Design

MSI has always used unique designs when it comes to their digital audio players. When we first got our hands on their Mega Cube 515 player, we thought it was odd they decided to go with a square shaped player.  But other than the way it looked, it performed very well. The same can be said of the Mega 516.  It, like its sibling, looks different then any other players out on the market but performs above average. Its design resembles a hard drive based player, but at a scaled down size. The front and back of the player feature brushed aluminum plating melded with grey plastic that is used on the sides. In the middle of the front faceplate is where the OLED display and FM/Play/Power buttons are. The microphone and other controls are on the left side of the player while the USB, headphone and external microphone ports are on the top.  The menu joystick and media card slot are on the right side. The tiny reset button is found on the back of the player. The design of the Mega 516 is very attractive, and certainly an improvement over previous MSI audio players we have seen.

The Mega 516 performs some standard functions. It plays MP3 and WMA audio formats but not AAC or Ogg Vorbis files.   This is not surprising since many players do not playback AAC or Ogg. Using the built-in microphone you can record conversations or FM radio broadcasts via the integrated FM tuner to the WAV format for playback at another time. Powering the Mega 516 is an integrated 420mAh lithium ion battery and 60mW of total amplifier power to the headphones. The Mega 516 can also be used as a regular external hard drive so you can store your valuable data files on the internal memory or media cards.

The Mega 516 is compatible with Windows 98SE, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP Home/Pro, and MAC OS 9 or above. Apple users finally have something they can write home about. MSI packages the Mega 516 with software to get it up and running, a USB extension and adapter cable and an A/C adapter so you can charge the internal battery by plugging it into the wall.

Setup and Use

We were able to plug the Mega 516 into our computer and have it recognized immediately by our Windows XP Pro based test machine; there was no need to install the supplied software driver. If you do have Windows 98SE then you will need to install the driver provided by MSI before you can start using the player. Our system recognized the Mega 516 as two separate removable hard drives. One drive being the internal flash memory and the other being the media card we had inserted into the player. Once the player is plugged in you can either drag and drop files you want onto the drives to transfer them over to the player, or you can choose to use MSI's included software to manage your audio and data files. Because the Mega 516 uses the older USB 1.1 standard it means that transfer time is relatively slow. We would expect USB 1.1 on 256MB or smaller audio players, but because the Mega 516 supports more memory through the media card slot, it would have been a good idea to have a USB 2.0 controller instead.

The software that comes with the Mega 516 is amateurish at best. It does little more than moving files to your player which you can do through Windows anyways. There are no MP3 encoding features built into the software whatsoever. If you need to convert audio to MP3 or WMA formats, then we would recommend using the freeware Freerip program. You can edit the start up logo of the player using MSI's software and also create play lists. Overall MSI really seemed to drop the ball on the included software.

When it comes to audio playback, the Mega 516 has a ton of potential because of its built in 30mW of power going to each channel. The problem is that the wrap-around headphones included with the Mega 516 are very poorly designed. They sound very weak and flat sounding and do not do any justice to the system regardless of the genre of music being played. MSI also decided to use a mini-jack input on the player itself which means you cannot add aftermarket headphones or ear buds to the system. This was a very poor decision on MSI's part.

Files that are on the internal system memory and the external media card are bunched into one large play list. You cannot choose which folders you want to playback; you are forced to play all of the songs. There is no mention of ID tag support on MSI's website or the packaging, although the player was able to read our ID tags created by Winamp 2.8.