[tbcollins1]

I have updated from 1.3.3 to 1.5.0 and now my device is bricked. Wont turn on wont show up on my computer at all. The companion software now does also nothing, shows nothing, I can't even exit from the software because the exit, minimize and maximize options wont load leaving me to end the task in the task bar.

Yet I do not care anymore about this device, I NEED my money returned, or I will sell the paper weight to someone that is willing to resurrect it. This is my opinion, the Hifi walker is such an under-powered device in comparison and is half the price, yet when I run RockBox on it I can load music infinitely faster than the Tangara, I do not understand why an already made software like RockBox is just not good enough and all this flashing and extra companion software is for some reason better. I really wish this was a device that just ran RockBox. I apologize for my anger yet I spent $250, waited months for delivery withour any information and the software needs monthly updates that can cause a complete bricking of the device ugh! I just can't do this anymore. 

Again, I need my money back or I will sell this thing to anyone.

FWIW - I shared a lot of your frustrations with this device and ended up selling mine as well. While mine did not brick, it was essentially a brick with me trying to use the way I wanted to. The limited time I used the device it still felt like a project that was very much in beta, and in some cases even alpha. It does not handle big libraries with thousands of songs well at all, despite the marketing material boasting that it supports up 2TB cards (good luck trying to use even a fraction of that on this device and it actually work), the menus were slow and buggy to scroll through, the random crashes, the number of times I had to pull the SD card to get it to boot.. etc Things that should just not happen on a $250 device.

Two months ago I moved to a 2nd gen iPod Mini, built in 2005(!) that is just light years ahead of the Tangara in almost every way. 31k songs (>300GB) - not a problem! It takes a little while to boot, but they're all there and playable with some minor caveats, and that's on the Stock OS that Apple never even intended to be used for that many songs!! And it's even a more in-depth experience with Rockbox (itself an open source project!!!), which takes far less longer to initialize the database than Tangara did AND it actually gets every song. And yes, Tangara does have the option to navigate to songs through folders, but they don't display in ABC order, making this feature effectively useless. The USB 2.0 speeds on iPods definitely makes transfers a long affair and there's no bluetooth (but you can add it with a dongle), but those are small inconveniences to deal with IMO.

Now, I know this is an unfair comparison in many ways - iPods had tons of $$$ poured into R&D and Apple was able to manufacture them at scale, while Tangara is a fully open source project built by a small team. I LOVE that part about it! But I still find it to be sad and disheartening that a 20 year old device is far more capable than something built today. I really wanted to love Tangara, but it seems like the users it would be most inclined to (musicphiles with big libraries who want a simple offline experience that just works) are gonna be really disappointed, and it's more of a novelty than anything else in its current state. It requires tinkering and fiddling - it's not just plug and play. Progress is ongoing to make it better, but I just cannot recommend anyone spend $250 on this thing until it becomes far more fleshed out and is able to do more of the basic things you'd expect from an MP3 player in 2025.

Best of luck in getting yours sold - I was able to offload mine pretty quickly without issue, and it's much better in the hands of someone who will love and use it compared to just sitting in drawer like it was for me.

I hope to see the Tangara project continue to improve and one day would love to return it once it becomes capable of doing what I want it do - play music without frills.