The Insignia Pilot is part of Best Buy's ever growing stable of private label products under the Insignia name. All are aggressively priced and positioned to compete with the brand names likely sitting right next to them on the shelf. But to really compete, Best Buy knows its store brand needs to offer a little something extra to really set it apart, and the Pilot delivers this with Bluetooth technology.

That's right, the Insignia Pilot can stream music via Bluetooth to wireless headphones (sold separately). Add to that a host of welcome extras such as built in FM tuner, recording capability, and better-than-usual video and image viewing, the Pilot offers up a lot for the money.

But there are sacrifices, not the least of which is ease of use. The player promises to work Mac OS 8.6 or higher, making this one of the few devices to do so with drag and drop capabilities directly from Apple's iTunes. But it's an empty promise and after many tries, we gave up and switched to our PC, where things got easier, if only slightly.

Once we loaded the software (two different kinds), downloaded more additional components and restarted the computer a couple of times, the Insignia works as promised--a portable music player with cool Bluetooth technology.

The design is sleek and iPod-like, with a large 2-2/5-inch LCD color display, click wheel control and a SD slot for expanded memory. The Pilot supports most audio files including subscription services, but is designed to work with Rhapsody; specifically Best Buy's version of the service. Saved songs from selected Rhapsody channels easily transfer to the player and a warning helpfully sounds when tracks are about to expire. But audio quality is disappointing for a player at this level, regardless of brand, and scrolling through menus can be sluggish.

The Insignia is a fine portable music player and it's nice to see a company finally take advantage of Bluetooth technology to free us from one more set of wires. But it makes something that has become second nature--downloading and managing music and photo files--into something far more complicated than it needs to be.

Pros: Bluetooth technology frees the portable player from the ear buds, good video quality
Cons: Complicated software installation despite promises of Mac OS compatibility, poor audio quality

Warranty
1 year