Credit: Frontier Labs

Not long ago, we reviewed Frontier Labs’ latest NEX 3+ MP3 player that’s, from the looks of it, designed for athletes, and rather rough ones at that. Our experience with the NEX 3+ wasn’t all that great due to many reasons. The most inviting drawback was the distasteful color scheme with an outer coating of rubber to make the player more rugged. Now, don’t get us wrong, there’s nothing erroneous with a player with a rubber exterior, especially if it’s designed for athletes, but Frontier Labs could’ve done a better job in presenting the product. With competitors like Samsung, Apple, iRiver, Creative and Sony in the market, there’s nothing exciting about the NEX 3+ in general that would make you want to purchase this player.

The battery life was also an issue for us. At only 15 hours for flash, it’s surely not enough to justify a recommendation. Besides, Apple’s iPod Nano only has 15 hours of battery life as well and with a slew of features, there’s no reason for anyone to opt for the NEX 3+. If you read our original review of the player, we mentioned a few other drawbacks as well, but in terms of audio quality and onboard features, the NEX 3+ competes quite well with the rest of the crowd. Unfortunately though, we missed the audio enhancing technologies in the NEX 3+. When compared to Samsung’s flash players, technologies like WOW was something we really expected. Regardless of where the NEX 3+ stands, there’s always a company that’s delivery a better package than Frontier Labs.

Today we have the standard NEX 3 MP3 player from the same manufacturer. This is the exact same player as the NEX 3+; hence the reason for an overview, but with limited options. Instead of integrating the FM tuner and a set of recording options, Frontier Labs has decided to skip on them in order to reduce the cost of the player. Clearly, we don’t see how this would increase sales for Frontier Labs, but it’s another option should this be the player of your choice. Needless to say, our recommendation is the same as the NEX 3+.

For a full review on the Frontier Labs NEX 3+ MP3 player, we recommend you read our in-depth review here.