Thanks in no small measure to our Japanese friends, the predominant fashion in gadget-land at the moment is to strive evermore to reduce the size of our technological devices to the point at which a mere sneeze in the wrong direction could see us loose just about every gadget we own and the issuing of a major insurance claim.
The TA454 Digital Video Player (apart from having the most awe-inspiring and catchy title ever devised – I mean, they could have at least have deliberately mis-spelt “Player” in a bid to be at least a little stylish) serves to push these boundaries ever, well, smaller with an extremely versatile, highly portable device that is little bigger than an average coin.
Unlike the TAO Digital Picture Keychain, the TA454 Digital Media Player has a number of tricks up its sleeve in that it can serve as a jukebox, a photo viewer, a movie player and a radio.
Packing a 1.5” TFT LCD screen and integral speaker the device comes with 256MB of onboard memory which can be expanded via a SD/MMC card whilst media is transferred to the device via a USB connection (what would we do without the trusty, ever dependable USB?). The TA454 supports various file formats including SMV, MP3, WMA, JPG and even eBook – though reading an eBook on this device may prove a little taxing.
What is surprising is that the price of this device – as advertised on this site - is a very reasonable $79.95 so, what with the silly season soon to be upon us, this could prove to be a great stocking filler.
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I have this an it is AWSOME! It exceeded my expectations in every way. I especially like the SD card expansion and the bundled program to shrink videos down 200MB per hour. It lasted 2 weeks on the rechargeable lithium battery with daily audio recording and playback; the screen shuts off after a couple of minutes. The menu is bright and intuitive. Recording works good but a little tricky stopping and starting recorder. The one I have came with a music video that I’d love to find out the Artist’s name. Overall, an outstanding value.