Iomega HipZip
The Iomega HipZip is arguably the best looking of the units we tested. It has a silver front and back with purple rubber sides and a purple plastic top, and most of the trim is black. It is a little larger and heavier than the other compact units, but it is certainly light enough to carry in your pocket.
The playback media is a 40MB removable disk called the Iomega Pocket Zip (it used to be known as the Click). This is enough room to fit most of an album (without those couple of songs you never liked anyway). You get two disks with the unit and more are available in pairs for AU$50. This makes them a similar price to a retail CD, but recordable. We thought that the moving parts might make the HipZip prone to shock but we found it had no problem with either jogging or even fairly solid knocks.
The display is a lovely backlit LCD, larger than the Nomad IIc. When a track is playing the display shows battery strength, volume, song title and band name (scrolling), play indicator, track number and time, EQ setting, and sequence setting. This is quite awesome for a small screen.
The front of the unit has play/pause/on controls, plus forward, rewind, and stop/off. The left side houses the headphone socket, power in, lock, and USB. The right side has rubber buttons for menu/select, up and down. The top cover flips back to allow insertion/removal of the Pocket Zip disk.
The PocketZip supports both MacOS and Windows, with the Windows software mounting the PocketZip through the player as the E: drive on the test machine. This means you can also use the PocketZip as a standard removable disk to backup your work.
The HipZip was the fastest to transfer files, which is interesting as most of the others were solid state memory rather than a disk which has to spin up. The battery is an internal, non-replaceable type with 12 hours between charges.
The HipZip ships with two Pocket Zip disks, headphones, carry case, charger, USB cable, and software. The headphones were the real letdown in this unit. They were uncomfortable to wear and had poor sound quality.
If you're looking for a unit to take for a jog, but also want to have changeable media for variety in a long car trip, this is a good unit. Media price is excellent, but leave the supplied headphones behind.
Iomega HipZip
Company:Iomega
Ph:1800 466 342
Price:AU$699
Speed Rating:
Earphone Quality:
Features:
Ease of Use:
Overall Score:
4%
4%
