14 DAY TRIAL // The Taiwan-based company has presented at Computex two devices resembling flagrantly the little digital player manufactured by Apple. Quite obviously, Steve Jobs &Co were not at all pleased with these products proposed by the Asian manufacturers, even more so because the Top Tangent and EZ Tangent models presented now are improved versions of the Super Tangent player, acquired by Apple in March following the international technology fair in Hanover.
All three players produced by Luxpro are small, slim and have a parallelepiped shape, with rounded corners. The control buttons are set in a circle on the front side, and the buttons for extra settings can be found on the backside. The USB connector is covered by a protective lid.
The Luxpro players are compatible with the MP3, Windows Media (even WMAs protected through digital rights management) and WAV formats.
We can see some differences between the new models and the one previously presented at CeBit, the new Tangents being fitted with an OLED screen, which in the case of Top has 64 x 48 pixels, and for EZ Tangent, 128 x 64 pixels. The models can display information on the song they're currently playing, read from the MP3's ID3 tag. Other differences with respect to the original model are the presence of a radio-FM module and the possibility to use the player as a voice recorder. The TOP and EX Tangent models will be available in 512 MB and 1 GB versions, coming in white, black and red, and the battery life has been reduced from Super Tangent's 12 hours to only 10 hours.
These players are to be manufactured starting with July, but the prices haven't been yet announced for any of the models. It is estimated, though, that they will be more expensive than the original models, due to the OLED screen, but the difference shouldn't be more than 5, maximum 10 USD.