Never has a gadget looked so luscious in the darkness of your unlit bedroom as Bantam Interactive's BA800. From the anime splash screen racked with DJ imagery to the flashing CooLights, the BA800 has raver toy written all over it. Revel in its charm on tonight's "Tech Live."
Pulsating jelly belly
The BA800 is an MP3/WMA player and digital photo viewer that happens to have a built-in light show. Like a digital chameleon, its semi-translucent body morphs from orange to turquoise to lime, then into 253 other colors, all synched to the broken beats of a jungle track. Photographs in all their poignancy and richness burst onto and fade from the egg-like device's 1.8-inch color LCD. A digital slide show of my family, accompanied by Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" and The Escape Club's "Wild Wild West," moved me.
The BA800's body only lights up when you press the exclusive CooLights button on its top. CooLights allows you to customize the player with one of 256 colors. The lights can also be set to change intermittently or "dance" to the beat.
The BA800 features 256MB of internal memory so you can store a good amount of music and digital pics, including JPEG, TIFF, BMP, and GIF files. Using the included Windows-only BitExplor 3.0 software -- which is adequate for moving files but could use some work -- I was able to squeeze 56 MP3s and 33 JPEGs and TIFFs onto the player. In case you need more space, the BA800 has a top-loading SD expansion slot.
You'll find the player controls quite simple. Audio control buttons line one side and a soft-to-the-touch but somewhat awkward navigation controller lies underneath the colorful, hi-res screen. The BA800's underside features headphone-out, a USB port, and a port for the included docking cradle. The backside sports a hold switch.
Many modes for your media
Toggle this gadget between three modes: music, images, and control panel.
In music mode, the squishy (in a good but awkward way) navigator joystick controls volume and EQ settings (there are five, including Latino), and allows you to browse through audio files. In this mode, each song has an accompanying digital photo. The audio decoder sounds better (or gives the impression of sounding better) when you're viewing complementary images.
In image mode, select one of five transition effect settings. I like "push," in which fresh images push current images off the screen. You can also browse through image file names or manually control a slide show.
Control panel simply lets you tweak settings such as auto power-off, display controls, and slide show interval.
Pretty doggone fresh, but...
- You can't really see the LCD in daylight, even with contrast and brightness tweaked. Forget about dazzling your friends with the CooLights unless you're in a dim room.
- The LCD is both sweet and sour. It's colorful and sharp, but occasionally stricken by an annoying flickering.
- The gadget now sells for $179.99 -- not a terrible price considering you get 256MB (my personal minimum for a Flash-memory player), a picture viewer, and really "CooLights." But before buying, be aware of other options, such as a $299 iPod that can hold 10GB of music and other media or Archos' beefy $360 Jukebox Multimedia 20, a music and photo player that holds 20GB of data.
Summary: Bantam Interactive should have no problem selling this cool, portable audio-visual device. Stick a bunch of pictures and MP3s on it, find a good couch or cafe table, and zone out.
Pros: Nice, intuitive interface; CooLights; innovative form factor; 256MB of memory
Cons: LCD and CooLights are useless in daylight; software rough around the edges; bothersome on-screen flickering
Company: Bantam InteractivePrice: $179.99
Available: Now
Platform: Windows
Specs: 3.5 inches by 2.8 inches by 1.6 inches; 3 ounces; ships with earbuds, USB cable, recharger dock, AC adapter, software
