Digital Home Thoughts: Olympus m:robe 500i

The music playback mode is a fairly self-explanatory concept. Using the provided m:trip software one can organize his or her entire music collection to his or her liking. I found this feature very useful due to the fact that many live mixes that I’ve downloaded (legally) or recorded are poorly tagged and bad tags on a portable device are just inconvenient! After you sync your now organized music, you can choose to sort it within the device by the regular categories of artists, genres, dates, and others. A particular favorite of mine is the “favorites” folder. While a song is in playback, you can touch the heart-shaped icon on the screen and that song is instantly added to your “favorites” folder. This feature extends to the remote, which is compact and stylish, and has the ability to send a song to the “favorites” folder by pressing a single dedicated button. With regards to the small number of buttons present on this device, the power button doubles as a hold switch for the device which is obviously very sensitive to touch. Once the m:robe is in hold mode and your favorite music is banging away, the m:robe sails smoothly as you listen to your musical collection.


Figure 5: The remote follows the elegant design scheme of the device.


Figure 6: The remote allows you to add songs to the favorites folder.


Figure 7: The m:robe has a special jack for the remote as well as an opening just for headphones.

Camera phones are cool. Camera PDAs are even cooler. Camera MP3 players are out of this world! The m:robe is equipped with a 1.3 megapixel camera with its own camera light. The viewfinder is non-existent, but the gorgeous LCD more than makes up for it. The setting menu allows you to choose between 1280x960 and 640x480 captures. With 20GB worth of storage, I don’t think size should even be an issue. The m:robe allows you to create folders to store photos and even features a neat focusing system. In order to focus in on an object, one must touch that object on the LCD display. Crosshairs will appear and the image will freeze as the hard drive records it. Since there is no flash, the photo light is a great source of ambient light that is often needed for indoor and overcast outdoor shots. Nothing beats the convenience of having some sort of camera with you at all times.


Figure 8: The back is garnished with the camera light and the lens itself.

When I said that nothing beats the convenience of having some sort of camera with you, I forgot to mention that there is a feature that is even more convenient: having an entire picture album with you. The LCD on the m:robe is brilliant, there is no other word for it. The colors appear vibrant and I did not find any dead or hot pixels on my unit. The picture album functionality is augmented by the inclusion of PictBridge. Any camera compatible with this system will be able to transfer the contents of its storage medium onto the m:robe for storage and viewing. Certainly the m:robe can’t view raw files, but that's why we have dual recording right? All of these features are good, but the Remix function makes them great. The Remix function allows the user to pick certain pictures, combine them with a song they have on the device, select some awesome looking transitions, and show the world an exciting slideshow. This function is really top notch, but since the device is not huge it is not a family event type of slideshow, but don't fret - the m:robe dock has an AV OUT port that allows for all the contents, both audio and video, of the m:robe to be displayed on a television screen. You can now gather the family to watch all the great pictures you snapped with the m:robe or any other camera. Throughout the testing process I always carried around some photos I took months back to show all my friends and family. The Remix feature is something that really ties together the audio and photo aspects of this device and gives it greater purpose than a shiny box full of bells and whistles.


Figure 9: The Shuffle mode allows for fun musical slideshows with cool transitions.


Figure 10: The dock allows the m:robe to project to any TV screen. Family slide shows are redefined.