The INOi MP180 is a hard drive based portable MP3 player containing a back-lit LCD screen with ID3 tag information, USB 2.0 interface, 1.8 inch 20GB hard drive and a 1200 mAh Li-ion Polymer Battery. The unit itself is constructed of white and silver plastic (that feels almost like metal) and seems solidly constructed. It comes with a carrying bag, earphones, hand strap, AC adapter, USB 2.0 cable, User's Manual, Installation CD containing a utility (for Windows 2K and XP) to manage playlists.

On the top of the unit are a 1.8 inch headphone jack and a “hold” button that prevents accidental button presses.

The front of the unit contains 5 buttons. The center button is a multi-directional button that allows the user to increase or decrease volume and to skip ahead to the beginning/end of the song or to play the next/previous song in a folder.

The upper right button is a power-on button that also doubles as a play and pause button.

The upper left button toggles you into a Music Library mode where the user can then use the center directional button to go directly to any song or file in the hard drive. This button is also use to enter the device into the USB hard drive mode if it is connected to a computer with a USB cable. In this mode, the unit functions as a regular USB hard drive and can be use to store and retrieve any type of file.

The lower left button brings up a MENU screen where the user can access the Equalizer (with settings for Normal, Rock, Pop, Classic, Jazz, Hall, Bass or Treble), Play Mode options (Shuffle and Repeat), Setup (where the user can adjust the Contrast, Language, Backlight, Date & Time), and Information (which shows the current firmware and allows the user to upgrade the firmware). There is even a Game (Snake).

Finally, the lower right button is an A/B button. I don’t usually use this button but it seems to allow you to create a loop in a song that plays over and over again.

The bottom of the unit contains a standard mini-USB port and an I/O port for the AC Adapter. There is also a tiny reset pin-hole next to the USB port. One nice feature is the ability to charge the unit through the USB port so the MP3 player doesn’t become useless if you misplace the AC Adapter.

The MP180 supports the following file formats: MP3 (32 to 320 kbps with ID3 Tags) and WMA V2/V7/V8/V9. Unfortunately, it does not have the ability to play DRM protected WMA files. The hard drive is formatted in the FAT32 format. Each folder can contain up to 5000 songs with up to 1000 sub-folders (up to 11 levels deep).

The built-in 1200 mAh Li-ion Polymer Battery can supposedly supply up to 13 hours of continuous playtime (128 kbps MP3) but from my experience I only get around 6 to 8 hours using variable bit-rate encoded WMA files. I have been using it as my main MP3 player at work and really like it. The ability to function as a USB hard drive has also come in handy for moving large files (unfortunately since it is FAT32 it can only handle files up to 4 GB) between computers.

With 20 GB, I can easily store my entire music collection with plenty of room to spare (so far I have 10 GB filled up). I currently use Windows Media Player 11 as my main music manager to rip my CDs and store the songs into variable bit-rate WMA files. Unfortunately, Windows Media Player doesn’t see the MP180 as a portable music device to allow syncing up with it but since the MP180 functions as a regular USB hard drive I just manually copy over the songs to the MP180’s hard drive. The main drawback is that it doesn’t handle DRM protected WMA files.

As an MP3 player, I think it sounds great. When I first used it I thought it sounded noticeably better than my previous RCA Lyra MP3 player. I could hear more detail in the songs and everything sounded crisper. During my year using the unit, I have not had any problems with it except for one time when it locked up. Even resetting the unit did not fix the problem. I had to leave the unit on until the battery drained before it was able to work again and it has been working fine ever since. Overall, I consider the MP180 to be a reliable piece of hardware. I bought this when it was on sale at CompUSA for $99 and it was one of the best purchases I have ever made. For $99 I got a device that functions as both a nice MP3 player and a 20GB USB external hard drive for the price of a standalone external 20G hard drive.

Pros:

• Sounds great
• Large 20 GB Storage
• Replaceable batteries
• Upgradeable firmware
• Chargeable through the USB port (don’t need the AC adapter)
• Functions as a USB Hard Drive

Cons:

• Doesn’t support DRM protected WMA files.