Years ago, if you wanted a portable media station, you had to go see the latest James Bond movie. Nowadays, with companies like Apple, Creative, Dell, Sony, Rio, and iRiver, you don t have to be a dashing British secret agent to have incredible portable technology at your finger tips (though it probably wouldn t hurt).
iRiver put itself on the map with the release of the H320 40gb mp3 player, the h10 5/6 gb, and the newest addition to the family,
h10 20gb (see my review for the full lowdown on the h10 20gb). And with the release of the U10, it s only getting bigger and better.
A quick look at the U10 1GB (from http://audiovisual.kelkoo.co.uk):
Category: Portable MP3
Brand: iRiver
Type of player: Multimedia player , MP3 player
Memory size: 1GB
Memory type: Integrated
Screen size: 2.2 ''
Screen resolution: 320 x 240 pixels
Weight: 70 g
Radio: With Radio
Audio/Video formats: MP3 , ASF , Ogg Vorbis , WMA , MPEG-4
Image / Other formats: JPEG , TXT
PC Interface: USB 2.0
Battery life: 28 hours
Battery type: Lithium Polymer
Recorder type: Line-In Recorder , Radio Recorder , Voice Recorder
Miscellaneous features: ID3-tags , Games Signal-to-noise ratio 90 dB
Height: 4.7 cm
Width: 6.9 cm
Depth: 1.6 cm
Remote control: Wireless Remote
Supplied headphones: Earphones
Service & support: 2 year warranty
Design Basically, the U10 is a small rectangular screen. But there is oh so much packed into that little screen The player is a 2.2 inch rectangular screen, that comes in a very stylish and classy black and white (supposedly iRiver may be releasing the U10 in other colors in the near future). The whole package weighs about 70 grams, and feels very light in the palm of your hands.
The U10 features an innovative new form of navigation, the D-click (direct click). The closest thing this can be related to is the classic touch screen found on PDA s. There are four buttons under the screen (on each of the four sides of the screen), and to perform whatever action, you press on the appropriate button, or side. Onscreen directions will help you figure out what side you need to press but in general, right clicks are the equivalent of a select button, left clicks bring the menu screen up, and the up and down buttons let you navigate though the menus. The only huge problem with this is that, you have no choice but to leave fingerprint smudges all over your U10, when pressing on buttons. Luckily, there is a small display wiper that comes with the U10, but it does get somewhat frustrating having to constantly wipe the screen.
Features The U10 has a rich color scheme, and good looking menus. The background changes color every day of the week, however, you can opt to put your own custom pictures instead.
At first, I bought this player for its
video capabilities. I didn t expect DVD quality, but with a fairly large screen, rich colors, and a 320 x 240-pixel display, I did expect its video playback to be fairly strong. Unfortunately, I was somewhat wrong. The movie quality is pretty good (3 out of 5 stars), but the major problem is that the U10 can only play AVI files using an MPEG-4 SP profile, meaning that it can t play any of your other MPEG, WMA or any other movie files you have. What is even worse is that iRiver didn t include any sort of file converting software with the U10, so users could convert some of their movies on their PC.
However, the media player does have many other features. The U10 comes equipped with
Macromedia Flash Player profile (Flash Lite 1.1), and plays certain Flash games in color, using the D click system. Most of these games are pretty basic, including snake, some simple memory games, and puzzles, however, a software developing kit is available on the Macromedia site that allows users to make their own games which they can then upload onto their U10 s. According to some sites, it is also possible to upload .swf files (flash animation clips), but I personally haven t tried it. I never really make much use of the games function because of how basic they are, and the space that they take up.
What is more important to many customers, and what was very important to me, was the U10 s
music playing abilities, and in this area, the U10 comes out a champ. Quality is up to par with the best of the mp3 players out there (including the iPod), and comes with 12 EQ settings, and SRS WOW 3D sound. I can t really say how many songs the player can hold because it really depends on the amount of pictures and movies you have, but with 2 GB, you can probably expect around 500 to 1000 songs ( correct me if I m wrong). So far I have abut 300 songs, 10 pictures, and 3 very short (about 1 to 2 MB) movie clips.
Like more and more portable media players, the U10 has an fm tuner and a voice / fm recorder/ line-in recorder, text viewer, and photo viewer. The photo quality on the U10 is basically exactly the same as on the H10 and photo iPods. Transfer rates are a slow 1.98 MB per second, however, an added plus is the fact that you can drag and drop files from other computers, not only yours, unlike the iPod.
All in all, I have to say that I was somewhat happy with my purchase. Picture, music and video quality are all fairly good. The design is one of the best on the market, a 28 hour battery life is amazing, and I m still in love with the D-Click system. But the lack of adequate movie playback still bothers me. And of course, the memory capacity is definitely pretty low compared to most mp3 players that are already available. Honestly, I would tell most consumers that this is a very good purchase, but waiting for a better video player might not be a bad idea
For related articles, check out:
-
The iRiver H10 20gb -
The 60GB Apple iPod photo 
