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Another reason these eco-machines aren’t iPods: loading them with music, video, text and photo files is a fully manual operation. You connect the player to your Mac or PC with a U.S.B. cable and then drag files onto its desktop icon. Copy-protected audio formats need not apply. Each player recognizes only one video format; if you have videos in other formats, you must first convert them using a Windows-only utility program. You can add more storage with an SD memory card (up to 2 gigabytes for the Solar, 8 for the Eco).
In short, fans of elegance and simplicity may turn red while deciphering these green players.
Featurephiles, however, will have a field day. Both machines can play music, videos and photos. But they also have built-in microphones for audio recordings. The Eco player has a Line In jack for converting analog audio (from cassette tapes or record players) into digital files.
Both machines can display text files, for your e-book reading pleasure. The eMotion Solar surrounds each line of text with a bright red rectangle — yet another design bafflement — but it offers a truly wacky bonus feature: it can read those text files aloud in a reasonably fluid computerized voice as you trudge along.
Both players have great FM radios built-in, too. And both, believe it or not, have built-in L.E.D. flashlights — neat.
The eMotion Solar goes off the oddball deep end with its inclusion of four old Nintendo games, just in case you plan to be stranded on a (sunny) desert island. In this mode, at least, those Game Boy-style buttons make sense.
These eccentric machines are idiot savants: half muddled, half genius. In software refinement and quirkiness, they seem to have come tumbling out of the 1980s. And yet their ability to charge themselves and other gadgets works incredibly well—so well, in fact, you have to wonder what the rest of the electronics world is waiting for.
If you are indeed a camper — or an executive road warrior who’s tired of playing Plug In My Gadget — then putting up with these players’ quirks might be worthwhile. The Baylis Eco Media Player, with its superb sound and tolerably pocketable size, is especially likable.
If you’re anyone else, consider one of these players only if you think the emergency-power features might come in handy. If not, consider them the advance team for a new, very promising, very green world of products.
David Pogue is a columnist for the New York Times and contributor to CNBC. He can be emailed at: .
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