Ruizu X06 Review.

It's been a long time since I invested in a mp3 player, about 12-14 years in fact - that was the CMTech CA-F200 that I have posted about here already.  That 'only' has 1gig of memory, though for the time, was seen as more than adequate.  But time marches on, so after buying a MPow Bluetooth headset on Amazon, I figured a mp3-player upgrade was also in order - enter the Ruizu X06.

First off, price-wise, this is a steal, especially when you consider what I payed for the CMTech model - around $80 versus the $21 I paid for the Ruizu X06!  Spec-wise, it is also far better.  Playback-time is spectacular (allegedly, I haven't had it long enough to know!) at around 80 hours - that's about 4 times the once-amazing 20 hours from the CMTech.  Memory wise, it's 'only' 4 times that of the CMTech, coming in at 4gig. However, this is almost not a consideration since it has a micro-SD slot, taking cards up to 64GB.  Like the CMTech, it also has a built-in FM radio that allows the user to record broadcasts in either WAV or MP3 formats - a huge plus in my eyes, even though after 14 years, I have used the same functionality of the CMTech only a couple of times.  But it's nice to have!  Then there's the main reason for buying the Ruizu X06 - Bluetooth audio-streaming.  Finally, the icing on the cake, support for multiple audio formats - as well as the standard mp3, wma, and wav formats, it also handles ogg, flac, ape and aac.  Ogg playback was the one I was most interested in, given that I convert all of my audio-books (400+) to this format.  It also has a cool colour LCD 1.8" display that allows you to watch (converted) videos, or to read ebooks.  Personally, to me these are just gimmicks and something that I'll never use.

So, how does it perform?  To begin with, I was anxious to find out if it worked with my Bluetooth headset, as I'd seen a few people complaining that it didn't work with theirs - it does, perfectly!  Sound quality is also excellent.  Although it comes with a manual of sorts, it is in fact easier to figure things out for yourself.  Once this is done, the flaws start to become apparent.  Hardware-wise, this seems a sweet deal - its problems are firmware-related.

What quickly becomes apparent is that the Bluetooth feature hasn't been properly implemented - you might even say that it looks more like an after-thought!  You can have the sexiest hardware in the world, but it all counts for naught if you don't have the firmware to exploit it - and this seems to be the case here.  The Bluetooth firmware addition is clearly a software-bodge that has been added to the already-existing Ruizu X02 firmware, and it shows.  Entering the Bluetooth menu, you find that once you enable Bluetooth, you are then 'locked' in the Bluetooth menu - you have rudimentary playback options that allow you to playback music from here, but you cannot simultaneously listen to music via Bluetooth while accessing other non-Bluetooth menu options - ie. browse folders, change playback-style, read ebooks, browse album-art etc. etc.  You cannot even fast-forward/reverse through an audio track from within the Bluetooth menu.  In other words, all of the stuff that is accessible & usable when using wired headphones, cannot be used when listening using Bluetooth - no doubt because it was easier to bolt on a software 'kludge' to an already-existing piece of firmware, than take the time to properly integrate the new Bluetooth features!  This also means that during any mp3-player session, you find yourself continually having to re-enable Bluetooth every time you access any of the non-Bluetooth menu options, which gets real old, real fast!

What really pisses me off about this 'Bluetooth-bodge' is that it also contains a huge ogg-specific bug.  With Bluetooth enabled, you find that the ogg-format is no longer available as a playback option, even though it is available & plays fine when using wired headphones.  How can a so-called software developer have signed-off on this firmware without checking basic stuff like this first?  Other users are complaining about playlist-sorting bugs, ebook viewing bugs, no 'lock-keypad' option etc. but imo these are small-fry problems compared to this.

Moving on, next up for critique is the Ruizu X06's 'Playlists' feature.  This mp3-player is capable of holding 64gig + 4gig of music files - by any standard, that is a potentially HUGE number of music tracks, in the order of tens of thousands of files for any reasonably large mp3 collection.  One would therefore think that a mp3-player manufacturer, Ruizu in this instance, would provide firmware capable of catering for such music libraries - not a bit of it!  The 'Playlist' option, where the user is allowed to build lists of favourite tracks, is a case in point.  While you can indeed theoretically add any file from your library to a playlist, what you find is that in practice, you must potentially scroll through EVERY file on the system in order to do so!!!  This is perverse!  It will not even allow you to select single tracks from individual folders (never mind, 'add the entire folder') in order to create your playlist - it just lists alphabetically the entire contents of internal memory or any SD-card!!!  Potentially 10,000+ files to scroll through if the track you want begins with 'Z'!!!  This is unbelieveably stupid!  It renders the Playlists option unusable where any large music collection is concerned.

Lastly, there's the playback of music itself.  This is a confused mess.  You start playing music by way of 2 different routes (3, if you include Bluetooth, but for simplicity, let's forget about that one!) - the 'Music' menu, and the 'Folder view' menu. First off, why are there 2 (3) routes, when all achieve the same thing - more bloody stupidity!  Going via the 'Music' menu, you are greeted with various 'hard-wired' track-sorting methods - 'All Songs', 'Artist', 'Album' and 'Genre' being the main ones of interest.  Being 'hard-wired', none of these sorting methods can be enabled/disabled by the user - it's a case of take it (one option), or leave it!  The problem with this is that this setup depends entirely on the mp3-tags being set correctly - which is very often not the case - otherwise you are often presented with almost-empty folders.  More to the point, what happens with compilations that contain many different artists, from a variety of different albums - take the 'US Billboard Top 100' for instance?  It renders it almost unusable, is what happens!  Which I suppose is why the firmware developer(!) added the separate 'Folder view' menu - so let's try it!  Navigate to a folder, and click on a track.  One might reasonably expect that music would be played from that track, onto the last one in the folder - and one would be wrong!  What actually happens is that it plays to the end of the folder, then starts the next one - and on and on till it plays every track on the system.  This happens because there is no 'Play music from... [option]' selection-menu here, like there is available from the 'Music' menu...

Confused enough?  Well, like I said, the firmware on the Ruizu X06 is a convoluted, confused mess!  The firmware on the old GMTech CA-F200 is a dream in comparison.  It really sticks in my craw that someone actually got paid for producing such a pile of poo.  It really stinks.

But every firmware has bugs I hear you say - wait for a version upgrade!  In an ideal world, yes - unfortunately, although Ruizu supply a firmware upgrade app, they (apparently) do NOT provide firmware upgrades!  After much searching, this seems to be the general consensus as well, which sucks - probably something to do with the extremely low prices they are asking for their players.

This would have been a beautiful mp3-player with well thought-out firmware - unfortunately, what you get is fine hardware let down by some awful firmware, with seemingly no hope of future firmware upgrades.  Shame.

Edit1:  Well, that's a mite depressing.  I've just done a battery-endurance test and I'm underwhelmed.  With a fully charged battery, and the volume set to a comfortable listening value of 7 (of 30), I got a run-time of about 38 hours - a long, long way from the 80 hours quoted, never mind the 100 hours that is sometimes mentioned.  Up to hour 37, the battery indicator was still showing about 70% remaining - so it's a fairly crap indicator in practice!  Just goes to show why most seem to take Chinese manufacturer claims with a pinch of salt.

Edit2:  After a little more research, I find that hardware-wise, the Ruizu X06 is almost identical to the AGPtek A06, though the internal memory is twice that (8gig) of my Ruizo X06.  I gather from a AGPtek-forum comment, that the AGPtek A06 is the model that is marketed internationally, with the Ruizo-brand aimed more at the Chinese/Asian market.  AGPtek more realistically list its playback time as 50 hours, which tallies more closely with my finding.  Battery life while using the radio is quoted at just 10 hours, about the same as achieved by the old CMTech CA-200 [new CMTech radio-test: with a freshly-charged Eneloop 1900mAh AA battery, and with a pair of headphones attached at volume-level 12 (of 30), it achieved an incredible 21-22 hours!].  However, another black-mark against the Ruizu is that its FM radio is mono-only, at least according to the the AGPtek A06 manual!  I actually dug out the old GMTech and did some off-air recording with both - sure enough, the CMTech records a stereo-track, while the Ruizu's is in glorious mono!  [New research: Ruizu uses a single Bluetooth/stereo FM-radio i.c. (RDA5876).  The CPU (SoC ATJ2127) also has 2 channels for stereo-FM, but appears to be 'sacrificing' one of them to the Ruizu's voice-recorder function].  Even when using the Ruizu's own earphones (as antenna) with the CMTech, it also has far better reception as well.  There apparently was a reason the CMTech was more expensive than the Ruizu - you get what you pay for I suppose!
 
The good news is that there is a software upgrade available for the AGPtek model, which should also be compatible with the Ruizo X06 - downloadable from here.  From reading AGPtek forum comments, the bad news is that I probably have the most current firmware already, so there would be no advantage to reflashing the unit.  I would also end up seeing a AGPtek logo, rather than a Ruizo one, at startup.  It's nice to have for emergencies though.  The 'no ogg with Bluetooth' bug is also known about with AGPtek, but they view it more as a limitation than a bug!  Call it what you want, it still sucks!

Edit3:  Another really stupid firmware bug that has become apparent is that whenever the unit is powered-off via the software route, (holding the red button down for a second or so) it will invariably power itself on again on its own, after a certain amount (an arbitrary amount, it appears) of time.  Initially I thought  that it was a 'feature' that I had accidently enabled, but there's nothing (bug, excepted) that should cause that to happen.  Stupid software developers!

Note:  This 'bug' turned out to be temporary in nature.  After restoring its factory settings, the problem vanished.  HOWEVER, I've also just noticed it powering itself up, just for a second or so, before powering itself off again - not like before, where it would continue to operate until the battery was exhausted.  [Nope, I have now observed this 'auto-power-up' happening so many times with the Ruizu, that it almost seems like a 'feature' - sigh...]  So, yeah, flaky firmware affirmed.

Edit 4:  Just happened to do a search on Youtube and found this link to the X06 firmware - finally!!!  Also pointed to in the comments section, there is mention of someone upgrading the Ruizu successfully with AGPtek software.  Well, after successfully upgrading the Ruizu with the Ruizu firmware, I thought, what the hell, so tried flashing it with the AGPtek firmware as well.  Mistake - it flashes ok, but I was left with a white screen, no graphics whatsoever.  Thankfully, reflashing with the latest Ruizu firmware again rectified the situation.

And what refinements are introduced by upgrading from 1.00 to 1.10 firmware?  As near as I can make out, zero, as far as added options are concerned anyway.  I was at least hoping those clowns would add a lock/unlock keypad feature, but all that's apparent is a new "Welcome" startup screen graphic that replaces the original "Ruizu" graphic entirely - so maybe another reason to not upgrade.  No doubt there are also bug-fixes as well, but seeing as I'd come across no major bugs with the version 1.00 software, who knows!

In case anyone finds it of use, or it vanishes from the Youtube link above, I've uploaded the Ruizu X06 firmware (including flasher app) to Google Drive, downloadable from here.

Note, in the comments below, one user 'bricked' his X06 after flashing it.  The same thing happened to me - it would no longer switch on - BUT it was not a terminal condition.  While my Ruizu was no longer seen by the computer as "Ruizu" per-se after being 'bricked', it was detectable as an unknown USB device once the USB cable was removed/reinserted.  It was then restored to life by reflashing.