Epson P-2000 Multimedia Storage Viewer 40GB

The unit is nicely built and finished and exudes quality. It comes with very few 'extras' - a good sign - all the production money has gone into the product and not the cheap add-ons.

Battery life is very good - about 3 hours, dependant on what you are doing. Spare batteries are prohibitively expensive, but if you are reasonably handy you can make an external plug in battery from 4 NiMH batteries, a block battery holder, lead and plug from Maplins for about £10.

The 'on board' software is pretty good though I could pick small faults. However, no software is perfect; it's all a compromise and providing it does the job well - which it does - that's good enough. There are quite a few workarounds if you are reasonably savvy with a PC. Firmware upgrades are simple to carry out requiring only a formatted C/F card onto which you copy the downloaded files from Epson. I've read other user comments about the copy and not move issue. I believe this is sensible, Epson are playing safe by duplicating. Better to have two copies than no copy! Commonly identified 'problems' associated with transferring named folders, creating nested subfolders, copying music, playing other than default music during a slide show and the like can all be easily done; you just need to think about how to do it!

It's pretty quick downloading your card contents, about 6 minutes for a 1gb C/F. Transition effects are very nice, music reproduction is average - buy an iPod if this is what you really want and navigation is a breeze.

I have no major criticism to direct at this bit of technology. If you need 'field' storage to release your C/F cards, or a top class screen to show important shots to clients, or a means of critically checking technical aspects of your shots, or simply a home photo album then you cannot get anything better than the Epson P2000.

Buy it for what it is marketed as, and you will not in any way be disappointed. If you want further comment contact me; johnatbiofosdotcom and I'll be pleased to help.

Good points:
The screen is amazingly clear, colourful, and detailed with the best resolution on the market, nothing comes close. I found the menu really easy to use, forget the instruction manual to a large degree! It comes with a nice little case although there is not enough padding. It's quick and very easy to download your memory cards onto the device. I successfully downloaded RAW files onto it and viewed them (may not work with all RAW formats). The battery lasts a while and you can choose when the thing shuts itself down or turns the screen off to save power. You can even view the histogram and EXIF information for the photos taken which is very handy. It plays videos and music too. The black casing really makes the colours stand out. It never stalled or crashed once, it always worked perfectly. There are very nice transitional effects you can use when you choose to have a slideshow. It acts as an extra hard drive when plugged into your computer and uses USB 2 which is very fast indeed.

Bad points:
There are more bad points but I want to stress that this doesn't mean at all that I think the P2000 is bad, it's just easier to think of the minor niggles I had. The battery door is a bit flimsy, a tiny chunk of plastic broke off mine during my holiday in Turkey and the door no longer locks closed (I've sent off for a replacement). The music files cannot be viewed as a list but only as icons. On my unit the screws were screwed in so tightly that hairline cracks appeared around the screws over time. When you copy the photos onto the P2000 to put them in an album on the device you can only copy and not actually move (like you would "cut" on the computer) which means you end up with two lots of the same photos and the need to delete one lot which uses valuable battery power. When you download the albums you have created and named on the P2000 to your computer the names are forgotten and instead appear on your computer as numbered albums. The speaker is on the back which makes it a bit hard to hear as well as being a weird place to hear sound from. I didn't think the sound quality of MP3 files was that great but then I had converted WMAs to MP3 so it may have been my computer software and not the P2000. You cannot choose to have a slideshow if you have saved files in anything other than JPEG format. The background music for the slideshow is horrendous and you cannot use your own as background music. You cannot organise files by date only by album. The resolution dropped significantly when I viewed RAW files from my Pentax *IstD, fine for my Canon Powershot S70 RAWs.

Overall despite being picky this is an amazing piece of kit, I'm just trying to be fair. It's not perfect but it is a darn sight closer to being perfect than what else is on offer. The P2000 will impress everyone who sees it and that includes you when you take it out of the box. It's very plush and it does what it is supposed to very well. It's a bit bigger than some other offerings but it's still not that big and who cares when it is this nice. A bit pricey but heck this is something you won't regret buying.