4. Sound Quality

The 310 has extremely solid sound quality for a player in this category, holding its own against the iPod Shuffle and beating the Sansa c150 easily, even with the supplied ear buds. The volume range is good, the bass is strong, and while you can get better the 310 wins out in the Price to Performance category.

There is a slight double popping noise when some tracks switch, but it hardly ruins your day. An interesting feature of the headphones is that if you remove them from the jack then the player will automatically switch itself off. Plug them back in again and the player picks up right where you were.

In Conclusion

The T.Sonic 310 is an impressive player, beating the Sansa c150 with a very big stick on sound quality, and it even manages to compete with the mighty iPod Shuffle in this realm, slightly dodgy controls aside.

Battery-wise Transcend promises 18 hours of audio playback, but in reality this is closer to 15. The lack of an indicator to tell you exactly how much charge is in the battery can make charging and using the player a hit-and-miss affair, and the best you can hope for is to look for the Play/Pause button flashing red when the battery is low.

The lack of an FM radio will irk some, but not others. The standard (non-proprietary) USB connection, coupled with an included extender cable, marks up the 310 a few points in my estimation. The other extras, like the ability to lock your computer with the player, are a lot more useful than the dodgy color screen on the Sansa c150, but they are not key to the final mark the player gets. What the 310 will ultimately live and die by is its file support or lack thereof.

Having support for only MP3 and WMA will not cripple your ability to listen to music, but it will hinder it. It should make you think twice before purchasing one of these units, though personally I don't mind it, being of l33t ability where audio file management is concerned.

If I didn't already have an iPod Shuffle, and if I weren't so attached to the beautiful simplicity of having iTunes provide all of my content, then I'd buy a 310. For anyone who quite specifically doesn't want an iPod Shuffle, this is a good buy.

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