Producing an MP3 player with 128Mb of memory - about 40 songs - for under £70 is a hard task and unfortunately one for PikaOne that in our opinion too hard a task.
The first problem is a lack of design on anyone’s part. The design team must have been down the pub when the design meeting happened. Based around the slim USB storage key, the PikaOne is slightly bigger than its data brethren, but it seems that no attempt has been made to distinguish the two.
Other problems that dog the player is a small LCD display that has tried to cram in too much information and an annoying button selector that like the screen tries to hard to do to much.
Moving the button from side to side allows you to skip tracks, but hold the button in that position and you change volume. This combined with the same button being the start and stop button - you have to press the button down in the centre, but it has a tendency to veer left or right - and you’ve got a control mechanism that causes too many headaches. Too many times when testing did we skip tracks rather than turn the volume up or down or stop when we meant to go forward.
Our quick take
The PikaOne Groove Stick sets out to do a hard job - create a large solid state MP3 player for a very cheap price. Like the £40 cameras of this world, the results are disappointing. Our advice, save up that extra £40 - £60 and buy something that works a whole lot better.
PikaOne Groove Stick - 2.0 / 5
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To recap
This price point’s too low to get a good MP3 player yet and more recently the £30 Proline MP3/CD Player works better for less.