Buzzsonic.com

BenQ are Taiwan’s market leading flash-based MP3 player manufacturer with around 20% of local market share and are cashing in on the increased demand for larger capacity players with the release this month of the Joybee 720, which was originally unveiled in prototype form at Japans Createc back in October.

The 99 x 58.4 x 14.7mm, 114gram sized player looks like it’ll be aimed at the UK and Australia outside of the local market where its list price is $9900Taiwan ($311 equiv.). The 5gb player uses a Seagate 1 inch drive and has a slot for SD/MMC cards.It has the standards like WMA and MP3 compatibility, FM radio, 1.8 inch color display, USB 2.0 and 10 hour battery life.

Oddly there is no voice recording facility, something which usually comes as standard on these things. Again, a nice looking, full featured player in the increasingly busy mid sized market, but it’ll take something more to dislodge the iPod mini which is expected to increase capacity early 2005 from 4 to 5GB (using the same Seagate hard drive).

Related Reading

Apple Begins Manufacturing New iPod Mini Player [AppleInsider.com]
Apple Readies 5GB iPod [theRegister.com]
Creative Zen Micro [Creative]
Zen Micro Review [PCMag.com]
5GB MP3 Players [i4u.com]
Micro Hard Drive MP3 Players [CNet Reviews]