iRiver H10 (20GB, Remix Blue)
-
"Best WMA 20GB out there currently. works great if you follow the 'rules' when syncing" on by sonicbum
Pros: Great screen, good interface, cheep (BB has for $255).
Cons: No USB host feature for sync w/ camera, slider can be troublesome, occational device lockups with WMP, can't play album songs in track order (only alpha by title tag or random), no dock or remov batt.
Summary: My Best Buy is having high return rate... so you may want to buy the performance plan as people often complain about iRiver support (my one and only call had me on hold 45min), and they just said 'take it back' when a tech got on. I had to return the first one after 2 days because I tried to create a folder on the device through Windows Explorer. iRiver support says DO NOT try to create a folder on it or you'll be returning it. The 'proper' way is to copy the files over by drag-n-drop, or using WMP. I classify this as a 'bug' (firmware 1.01). My WMA tags were a mess, so I had to spend 4 days making them consistent (I recommend Tag&Rename, which did everything I could wish for in a music tag organizer). The sound is great, lots of SRS and mixer options. No docking cradle, and the usb cable is proprietary and also carries the DC adapter. Comes with a nice semi-transparent case w/ belt clip that can remain on while using (holes for buttons). Feels solid and well built. Buttons respond well, but the slider can be tricky (sometimes it scrolls up while you scroll down, or sometimes you have to press harder then others for it to move, etc. But it's partly a user getting used to it I imagine.) No removable battery, and haven't tested full runtime yet. iRiver seems to be sold out of all accessories until aug 2005 (like dock). Would still by again… best 20GB for the money. Looked at Creative 40GB but it looked 20% bigger. This thing fits well in pocket.
Updated
Well after almost a month, and moving my full 5000 song collection onto it (96k WMA) I quickly realized that anything I did became delayed, maybe a second, but up to 20+ seconds on listing artists (even just artists in a genre). Also, the battery gadge stayed 'empty' after the first time i drained it. Then weeks later it just started to work again. This being the 2nd H10 I'd had issues with (broke the 1st by creating a folder on it through win Explorer), and knowing iRivers lack of good support, and that my 30 day best buy return option was about up, I traded it in for a Samsung YH-925 GS. The interface looks nicer (and brighter), it seems smaller (although I don't think it is) and doesn't have the touch scroll that I had fits with on the H10. I'll write how this Samsung does in a few weeks. -
"A Great Mp3 Player.... with a few SERIOUS Flaws" on by DanTunes
Pros: large storage space, color screen/jpeg viewing, recording feature (fm or microphone)
Cons: scroll pad makes it nearly impossible to scroll through all your songs
Summary: I bought my iRiver open boxed at Best Buy, everything worked fine out of the box, and the construction of the player is solid. I really just wanted a player i could keep in the car and drive around with.
Here's the bottom line on this product...
Its basicaly the same size as the thicker iPods, except it has a few more features, and the better features are offset by a few fatal flaws that makes it basically on-par with the ipod in terms of general quality.
If you have 20gb of storage space, you're going to have a LOT of songs on your machine... if not, you probably would have bought the 5gb or 6gb version, right?
Well, the problem with this iRiver is that it has one vertical scolling pad to page through your music. If you really wanted to scroll through a list of 3,000 songs like most people who have 10-15gb of music, you would quickly have a calous on your thumb the size of texas! It takes about 65 seconds to scroll through the list when you're holding down the down arrow on the pad. This is an ETERNITY in terms of mp3 players.
On my girlfriend's iPod, you can scroll through a list of 3,000 songs in an instant, find any song you want, by scrolling faster it accellerates with the speed of your finger... Not with the H10 iRiver. It takes forever to find a song.
It's not terrible if you make some playlists, or organize your music and use the file-browser feature on the iriver, but I was very dissapointed by this feature once i loaded all my songs on. I am waiting for the next firmware release to hope that this improves the performance of the scroll pad. That's one reason i haven't returned this product. So if you can bear with that, then the rest of the product is fantastic.
The only remedy to this right now, until iRiver updates the firmware is to store your songs in folders that make sense. This also means not using Windows Media Player for transferring songs. I personally found this to be horrible on the iRiver because it organized all the songs on the iRiver by artist name. The good side of this is that I was able to manually transfer all my songs onto the iriver just like looking at it as another drive on my computer. The iRiver has to update its database whenever you do this, but it doesn't take too long if you're only adding a few albums. Others have complained about this not working, however I've had no problem with this.
The internal microphone on the iRiver is the main reason why I keep this thing. Yes, it is a fun mp3 player, but the microphone is fantastic for bootlegging concerts and recording, literally, anything. It records at 128k mp3, which leaves something to be desired, but still does the job of a high quality recroder. One suggestion i would make to iRiver is that the microphone doesn't have an input level adjustment, which would be nice for recording loud or soft volume stuff. I am a sound mixer and recordist in the film and video industry and I know what a good microphone sounds like. This thing is great. I usually run all the mp3's i record through a notch filter that removes an annoying soft-ring at about 8,000hz from all the recordings, but its still well worth the money.
Another point that sucks is that iRiver america has touted this thing as having Line-in Recording, but they haven't yet released the required dock to stores yet. The dock for the 5gb/6gb player is out but it doesnt fit the 20gb, so technically this is deceptive advertising. Supposedly it should be out by august 2005.
If you really want to listen to songs and thats it, I would get a 20gb ipod. if you need color, get the color ipod. but if you really like to bootleg concerts, look at pics, and have an mp3 player with some slightly annoying features, the iRiver h10 does the trick. -
"Fatal flaws forced a quick return" on by Sirocco
Pros: Meaningless in light of fatal flaws
Cons: Fast forward/rewind cause havoc
Summary: RE: The iRiver H10, 20GB mp3 player/recorder. Purchased 5/29/05. Returned 5/30/05.
The pros: it has a metal case and is heavy. These 2 qualities have always symbolized high quality. Even the blue color is a beautiful, deep color that’s not going to come off if a fingernail scrapes against it. The case even resists fingerprints. The materials and design of the case itself are, well, perfect. Esthetically, it’s perfect. I think even the crystal covering the screen is the same material used on expensive watches. In that regard this thing should be on display at MOMA (Musuem of Modern Art), and deserves respect. Hold the unit in your hand, even turned off, and you could just stare at the thing.
But, and I do mean but. Where do I begin? First, this device makes me rethink the whole concept of “portability”, that just because something is small, it’s portable. Because this thing is definitely small, and will fit in your pocket, in fact appears to be designed to be portable, but, sorry, it is definitely not portable – keep it at home on a table, where you’ll need to be to use it.
The design of this device is seriously flawed. Serious enough to cause a health hazard under some circumstances. Because by touch alone, it’s impossible to operate. I did not say difficult, I said impossible. But this is what people need to be able to do when they’re driving, jogging, biking, etc. (Warning, do not use this when biking.) You WANT buttons to stick out a little, to be distinguishable from other controls or the main case. In fact, to operate this thing, one must sit down, pick it up and VERY carefully push the right buttons or operate the slider. This greatly diminishes the utility, and portability, of the device. Half the time I was sliding my finger downward on the slider, the scrolling effect was upward! The buttons, all of them, are so flush with the main case, and small, they’re basically impossible to locate by touch alone. And the text on the screen is simply too small to decipher if one is doing anything else, such as running, driving, god forbid operating heavy machinery.
Here are some particular complaints, which you may agree are siginificant: You can’t delete files. I consider that to be an out and out defect.
The device receives FM, and will even record FM. It can even be programmed to record FM at a certain time, for up to 255 minutes in a single session (although the unit itself can store over 336 hours of recorded music, at the higher of 2 quality settings). That’s impressive. So let’s say I’ve recorded the H. Stern show, which lasts 4 hours. This thing will actually record and store 96 shows in their entirety. It records an entire 4 hour show as a single track. Now, evidently, the device is basically designed to play back tracks from the beginning of the track. But when I’m playing back a recorded show in my car, and get to where I’m going, I want to be able to leave and come back and start listening again at the point it last left off. Does this make sense? But since the unit always wants to restart the show from the beginning, I can’t do this. And I’m not keeping track, mentally, at what part of the show I last stopped listening, so even the ability to fast forward would not be helpful. So this is a serious problem. There’s another, more idiosyncratic problem with the fast forward/rewind function, when playing back long recordings (and even regular music tracks) that is quite honestly nerve racking and reason enough to make this thing unusable: You have to keep the button pressed down – if you slip and end up pressing the button for just a second (such as might occur when you’re running your fingers along the edge, feeling for the feather-touch buttons) the track suddenly starts playing back from the beginning! THIS IS A BIG PROBLEM!!! When I’m in my car, somewhere in the middle of a 4 hour H. Stern track, in the dark, and I want to fast forward through 15 minutes of commercials, and I don’t know exactly, or even generally, at what point in the show I am, I don’t want to suddenly be at the beginning of the show because my finger wasn’t pressing the button the right way!!!!! In fact, it should be IMPOSSIBLE to suddenly go to the beginning or end of very long recordings, unless the user specifically wants this to happen. The fact that this is LIKELY to happen at a time when it is least desireable is simply and comletely unacceptable. It is a *serious* design flaw. One doesn’t need a long list of design flaws to avoid buying something, all you need is one, and this may be it. IRiver gives me the ability to make long recordings - they need to give me the ability to play these recordings back in a reasonable time frame.
I don’t have any of these problems with my cassette tapes. Good ole, reliable analog!
This is either a problem or just irritating, you decide: the title assigned by the device to FM tuner recordings looks like Tuner050528003,mps (imagine small, hard to read text) which can’t be edited. Try looking for that from a list of similar titles while driving in heavy traffic. Or in the comfort of your living room, what’s the difference? Why not just display this information so it’s more readable, like May 28, 2005 #3, which is what it means. This actually takes up less space, and is obviously more meaningful, especially in light of the tiny text size, where the legibililty issue only compounds the problem of interpreting this “code”.
Would you spend $315 for this?
Some notes on sound quality: the quailty of the voice on a radio program I tested seemed OK, at the higher bit rate. And the preloaded music iRiver supplied was just fine, comparable to the FM reception, which is fine in my area. Some FM stereo music I recorded at the higher quality was, surprisingly, jumpy for the first 30 seconds. Ouch. It also has about 30 equalization presets (all mostly the same) plus an overly fussy 5-band graphic equalizer. But the shortcomings I described are way too critical to be compensated for by the cool graphics on the sharp, colorful display.
Another problem with sound: the line-in/line-out cable needs to be purchased separately. When you’re paying this much for something, everything should be included, and something as mundane as playback on a car stereo shouldn’t require the purchase of “special equipment”. I tried one of those FM transmitters in my car, which I happened to have already, and the degradation in sound quality was simply horrible, not to mention introduces static and other noise. In theory one may use one of those cassettes that have a wire coming out the side that sticks into the headphone jack, but please, more wires? Let’s everybody have a reality check: sound equipment needs to be built into the dash if you want high fidelity sound and to travel safely, without fussing with wires, batteries, and constant repositioning of the device to avoid static.
This device (nor possibly any MP3 device) is simply not a solution to any problem I’m aware of, nor is it fun, ultimately, to use. Long live analog!
iRiver. Who? I’ll stick with Sony. -
"Suffles all Songs?" on by waggers
Pros: Sound, Interface
Cons: Suffle function
Summary: This is a very good player but, I noticed that the shuffle ******* when used to play all titles will only shuffle blocks of songs. I have around 2400 songs on my player. When it plays back songs it will play titles starting with "A" to songs starting with "D" then move on to "E" through "H" and so on. I would like it to mix all songs equally to have a truly shuffled song list "A" to "Z". I am hopeing iRiver fixes the problem with the next firmware update. I love the player exept for this one flaw.
-
"Very Cool Player BUT..............." on by pauliej
Pros: Excellent design
Cons: Music lag with subscription based services
Summary: This is a very nice player that is easy to use with great sound. (player is for sale on irivers website now) However it takes almost 30 seconds between song for player to recognize subscription based services. (I have Yahoo.) Hopefully firmware updates will take care of this, since player is great in every other way
Write a Review
Where to Buy
Pricing not available
%20-%20MP3%20players%20-%20CNET%20Reviews&srcUrl=http://reviews.cnet.com//4852-6490_7-31383679.html&x_breadcrumb=8900:6450:6490&x_arw_bkts=MAD:high_wireless_switcher){kind=small}