JVC's first take at a portable audio player has finally arrived, offering a wholly integrated headphone solution. Sindre Lia looks at the JVC XA-A50.
Weighing in at 57 g, the XA-A50 headphones boast an audio player with 128 MB of flash memory and support for MP3 and WMA formats. Wearing the player is a comfortable experience, but at the same time they're also thick enough to make ones ears triple in size; be prepared for some casual staring. Also, as the ear loops are of the one-size-fits-all kind the headphones also tend to be a tad on the loose side, and especially so when wearing glasses.
Skipping tracks, adjusting volume and changing modes are all tasks of which are easily accomplished through buttons residing on the right-ear headphone. As the XA-A50 naturally don't have a display, it delivers user-friendly voice guidance during setup and use. The unit also provides eight preset EQ modes to choose from, including SRS TruBass, WOW mode (1, 2 and 3), Rock, Pop, Live and Classic. Overall, the XA-A50 offers a surprisingly full and bassy sound which a great many audio players are unable to match out-of-the-box.
When switched on instantly after connecting to a PC via an USB 1.1 slot, the XA-A50 provides easy transfer of approximately 30 MP3 or 60 WMA files as well as M3U format playlists. Unfortunately, the easy part of the process ends there: an incomprehensibly strong DRM scheme will cause the XA-A50 to delete without any warning all non-DRM MP3 and WMA files stored in memory upon every connection to any and all PCs - including the one from which files were originally copied.
Had it not been for the limited amount of memory available, the inconvenience presented by this DRM implementation would have been a marring issue for the XA-A50. As is, however, users are likely to only connect the XA-A50 to a PC when wanting to severely update or replace its entire music library - a saving grace if we've ever seen one.
JVC claims a battery life of up to 20 hours for the AAA non-rechargable battery in the XA-A50, whereas we experienced a battery life of approximately 15 hours during the test period.
Availability
The JVC XA-A50 is at the time of press available in all European markets, selling in the 100 EUR price range.
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