Besta MT-7000 - Two Way Chinese-English Electronic Dictionary and E-Tutor

Technical Details

• Real-time bidirectional translation system, using the Oxford-Besta dictionary, delivers accurate and concise translations.
• E-Tutor:uses interactive Flash-based modules which provide a "face-to-face" environment together with accurate pronunciation tips.
• MP3 - enjoy your music wherever you go
• Video - 4.0" mobile vista video playback
• Recorder - captures the sounds of life

I've bought for two reasons. First to do sentence translation from english to chinese. Second as a learning tool to help me learn the language. In both areas the product is a little bit better then OK and in some areas good. Some background, I'v been to China 5 times so far - each time with a electronic translator of some kind. I started out with a simple BBK 100, simple unit worked did the job only 120.00 not feature rich but again did the job. It ate batteries and had a poor backlight LCD display; but it did the job, luck would have it I lost it. I buy another one, go to China again, same unit but no backlight and ate batteries. So, I'm in China, find myself in an IT type mall (what fun) and I run into a vendor selling translators. I pickup a Besta unit designed for the Chinese market, was pretty nice. Managed to get it work in english mode. Good display, good rechargeable battery etc. Translations was pretty good, but not better then the 120.00 BBK; but i could see the screen. It saved my bacon. However, It had a serious problem after 20 mins of sentence translation it would reboot - was terrible. Digging into the unit it had a software version of 1.0 and you couldn't update the thing.

Going back to China, so I decided to get a new Besta unit as they seem to be good and some sort of market leader. The one I got in Beijing was good, but the reboot issue an lack of support was a show stopper. Perhaps a shiny new updated unite designed for the english market would be much better and if it rebooted, well i could probably get better support. So I went and spent the nearly 400.00 for this unit. First off, it's got a really nice display, easy to see, good colors and great batter life. Sentence translation isn't any better then my other units, but this is an area that is tricky to get right. The learning materials in the unit aren't bad, some are very good - like chinese classroom (an SD card that came with it). The E-C dictionaries are good. It also has some nice PIM features but in the age of iPhones these are useless features to me.

My real grip with the unit is that it doesn't offer enough learning material for english speakers to learn Mandarin. It has way too many learning tools for chinese to learn english - but I thought this was designed for the english speaking market (i called Besta to confirm this). So overall, it is a fairly good unit. It is well built. A little expensive and it does make for a good electronic dictionary. I just wished it had a better interface, more learning tools for english speakers. language talking translator

The PM features are ok, but a waste of resources (if you've got a smart phone). I would recommend this unit if the learning materials for english speakers were better, however, at nearly 400.00 in it's current state of development I couldn't recommend it. Besta could help itself, by simply making their website more accessible to english speakers for updating the unit download more material - but in it's current state, their website is terrible. I do plan on keeping the unit (hoping this will get better via their website). I'll be taking it to china in a week and we'll see if it's better then others I've got.

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