Review of Playaway

Since my previous mention of Playaway Digital's new audiobook/player combo, I have been in touch with the their Director of Marketing, John Lotenero who was kind enough to ship me one.

I choose the The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown as it seemed timely. I had just finished reading the special illustrated version of the book and the movie starring Tom Hanks is due out in about two weeks.

The hard plastic wedge-shaped device is very light, and even smaller than I was expecting. It is about 2/3 the size of a standard deck of cards, and about 3/4 as thin. The graphical operational instructions were printed on a small piece of paper and were hardly necessary as its operation was quite self-evident.

The battery was preloaded, and all that was required was pulling the tab to activate it. A second battery was included since one battery is good for about 12 hours, and this unabridged edition runs 16 hours. The buttons were sturdy rubber and presented no problems. The LCD screen was quite viewable, although it larger would have been nice.

Not usually one to hang things around my neck, I immediately made use of the handy lanyard and found that I hardly noticed the weight. The earphones are of average sound quality, not bad, but not spectacular although acceptable; it's likely that you'll want to probably use your own very good set to enhance your enjoyment.

I really enjoyed using the Playaway, except for the fact that it was a bit hard to do so in public, see the email below for details. The sound quality was excellent, and the performance by Paul Michael was very good. All-in-all, I highly recommend the Playaway. I hope that they soon have dozens of titles available, and that they quickly institute an affiliate program!

Here is the email I sent to John this past Friday:

Greetings John:

I have received the device, picked it up today from my mailbox, and opened it right away. Thanks so much. It's even smaller than I was expecting.

Immediately, the folks who work there wanted to try it out. Right beside where I get my mail is Tim Horton's, one of our chain coffee stores, and when I went in to get a drink, it took forever because everyone there - from staff to customers - had a lot of questions about it, and this was during the lunch rush.

Then I went across the road to one of our nation-wide big box book retail stores - Chapters Indigo - http://www.indigo.ca - to grab some magazines, but I very wisely put it in my pocket. It's actually huge, and spans two floors and has a Starbucks inside too. I stopped at the special orders desk to show it to the guy who runs that area and who likes to keep up with new things in the book trade. He called his general manager and they tried it out. I gave them your website, but that was not enough for them and they asked for my email address because they wanted to get in contact with you directly after they heard I had a personal contact there.

While I walking in the store a bit later, the general manager came up more than once with various staffers to examine it. Finally, when I was at the cash, he brought over an exec from head office who looked over the device, the instructions and the packaging. She asked a lot of detailed questions and she then took several pictures of it with her camera phone. Their level of excitement was off the scale.

It's a very simple device really, and I knew all about it (titles, price, technology, general workings, etc) from the site and from our emails. Consequently, I must have sounded quite knowledgeable on the subject because she said that I should work for Playaway Digital. I gave her my business card after being made to promise that I really would get back to them with your contact info. I've bcc'd you on my reply to them.

Getting home was also difficult, and I've concluded that I really can't wear it in public if I want to enjoy it in peace.

Kind Regards.