Alienware CE-IV Personal Media Player

by Matthew Perry
02/19/2006

Recently, I purchased the Alienware CE-IV Personal Media Player. A small device that plays MP3s, WMAs, and other formats, as well as supporting voice recording and the ability to be used as a portable drive, the CE-IV (close encounter of the fourth kind) looks to be a promising little device. Is it?

When I was looking for an MP3 player shortly after Christmas, I wanted something small, simple, and cheap. An iPod didn't really fit any of those, and I hate proprietary hardware and proprietary formats. So I kept looking. There were a lot of players around, most of them rather expensive, and a lot of them depended on proprietary software. Being an Alienware owner and a level 3 client in the company, I get e-mail notification any time something cool brews up in their Miami-based labs. I already knew that the CE-IV existed, but it was time for me to learn more about it.

The site brags about the player's sound quality, built in equalizer settings, and the fact that it's the only personal media player that supports SRS WOW technology. It also gave a lot of mention to the CE-IV's bundled headphones, which supposedly immerse you in your music with noise cancellation techology and music quality that's better than any other player on the market. The CE-IV is offered in two sizes: 512mb and 1gb, in black and silver respectively, and both models support expandable memory via a SMC flash drive that's built into the back of the device.

As with all of my Alienware purchases, I got the CE-IV faster than I expected, and right away I was amused. It came wrapped in a relatively easy to open package, always a plus... and the packaging was shaped like the trademark Alien head company logo. Once open , I noticed that instead of proprietary batteries and a charger, something that I personally despise, the CE-IV runs on a single AAA battery. I scrounged my room, found one, and popped it into my new toy, and turned it on a with a press of the Play button.

Let me say beore I continue that the CE-IV is a pretty device. It has only eight buttons: play/pause, menu, mode, equalizer, volume up and volume down, next and previous, with the last four all being part of the center control panel, which of course continues the alien theme. The buttons are just the right sensitivity; they're not too hard to press, but they're not so sensitive that I can't have the thing in my pocket when I'm going to class. The entire device is only 3.1" x 2” x 0.7”, weighs 1.3 ounces, and is a great aestethic pleasure.

When I turned on the player, the pre-loaded music immediately began to blast out of the decidedly alien looking headphones. I turned the volume down so that I didn't go deaf, and put the little ear buds in. I first noticed the awesome quality of the music - sure enough, the SRS was on and everything sounded crystal clear. I quietly scanned through the sample tracks and satisfied with the sound quality, I decided to see what some of my music sounded like.

photo of Alienware's CE-IV Personal Media Player in Black

photo of Alienware's CE-IV Personal Media Player in Black

The first track I decided to load onto my little 1gb flash disk was my favorite Heavy Mojo song, "Dirty Water", and the vocal power of B Dirty, Simon Temple, and Priest Shooby almost made me get up and dance like a fool by myself in my room. While I did manage to still my desire to dance, I did have to sing along - and this when I noticed something else about the CE-IV, specifically, about the earbuds.

I couldn't hear my own voice!

Sure enough, Alienware really does believe in truth in adverising and the little plastic flowers that I thought were just for comfort inside my auditory orafices actually made it impossible for me to hear anything else. While I may not want to take them down to the firing lane when I'm opening up with Smith and Wesson .500, I wouldn't spend money on another pair of headphones like I usually do when headphones come bundled with a device.

At this point in time, I found myself quite happy with my purchase, and so I slipped it into a pocket and took off for my calculus class. I didnt hear the voices of anyone around me as I walked, and I couldn't even hear the bus when it pulled up in front of me. As I sat in class, I was going through the menu and I noticed the voice recording feature that I had previously totally forgotten about. I turned it on and started recording my lecture. The voice recored takes audio in as a .wav file, which is rather cumbersome in terms of file size, so I decided to only record a tiny bit. Overall, I was pretty happy with the quality of the recording; it was better than I could have expected for a built-in mic, and I now use the voice record feature as a sort of party favor. Playing back a conversation that just happened seems to always amuse people.

Overall I have to say that the CE-IV from Alienware is definitely a worthwhile purchase. I bought it a while back when the price point for the 1gb was still $180, but you can get a 1 GB model like mine for just $123.49, or even a 512 MB version for $99.99 from Amazon.

I really only have two complaints about the device, the first being that it doesn't have a library interface, meaning that I can't go directly to a song without first going through all of the other songs before it, but that might be fixed in a future firmware upgrade. My second complaint is more of my own idiocy in that the device is so small that if you misplace it, it can be a major pain to find. For example, I was originally going to take pictures of my CE-IV for this article, but my device has somehow been absorbed in the Lovecraftian abyss that is my room, and has been missing for a few days now.

On the upside, however, the sound quality is excellent (w00t for SRS!), the earbuds are simply amazing, the battery life is good (around 12 hours per battery, and the completely non-proprietary plug-and-play interface has the computer science leftist in me all giggly. It you're in the market for a media player, I would definitely recommend the Alienware CE-IV.

But the 1 GB version from Amazon

Buy the 512 MB version from Amazon

Buy the Hub from Amazon

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