iRiver H10 user reviews (20GB, Trance Red)

4.0 stars

"Solid choice" on December 23, 2005 by cedelman

Pros: Sounds good, .txt capable, Good FM radio, picture viewer, Pretty good screen....PRICE!!!

Cons: Charger/USB connector have to be used together. You can't edit the menus. Rew/FF buttons for radio tuner are backward - the up arrow moves tuner down. no removable battery.

Summary: I've finally decided on an MP3 player. After reading countless reviews and trying out several from Best Buy and returning one, I think I finally settled on one. Although I'm not too excited about the way this looks, it'll grow on me I'm sure. I bought the Creative Zen Sleek, which in my opinion is light years ahead of this in styling, and it seemed promising but after I used it I just had to return it cuz the FM reception was poor and the recording has a whine in it everytime the hard drive spun up and down. But that's another review. As far as the iRiver goes, I like it. I mainly needed it for recording and FM recording and it seems to have a pretty good Tuner in it. It pulls in stations (albeit a little staticy) that the Zen Sleek didn't get at all. I dislike the rew/fwd buttons to tune the radio because the display shows the stations from left to right whereas the buttons are on the side of the player and are up and down. So when you press the Up button, the radion tuner number goes down. That is backwards in my book. But it's not really that big of deal....just a quirk.

I wish it had a removable battery. It's still pretty new and I haven't had any problems with the battery yet but all batteries will eventually start to not hold a charge as well so I hope it's not going to be too expensive when it does go bad.

I don't like the fact that you can't change the menus around. (The Zen Sleek you could though)I don't organize files by albums or artists or anything like that so it's irritating that I have to use their ideas of organization. But to get around this, I just go into the broswer function (which is nice) and view all files and this solves this.

I also don't think you can delete files from it by itself. (unless i don't know how) This is annoying cuz you have to connect to a computer in order to do that.

I like the fact that I can just drag and drop songs on this like a folder in windows and I don't have to install and learn any new software on my computer. (When are peripheal companies going to learn that we don't like their crappy software and NO! i wouldn't like a free 6 month trial to AOL!!!!)

Now this isn't a big deal but it made me feel better about buying it.....it came with a free (included) rubber protective case. It's just nice for companies to give you stuff like that. Even though it only costs them like 10 cents to throw that it, it's makes me feel like, "OH look, they threw in a 'free' case too." Sort of like cracker jack mentality.... "free prize inside". Plus I don't have to shell out 20 or 30 bucks for an aftermarket one.

Plus this has a cool feature that you can make this look and function like an additional drive on your computer. You have make sure it's not connected to the computer and turned off, press the reset button, connect it to the computer, and then press and hold down the select button as you turn it on. This makes it boot in some mode where your computer sees it as a big drive. That could come in handy!!!

So all in all, the fact remains that it has way more features than anything else in it's price range. I got it from Best Buy for 269.99 with a $50 gift card, kinda bringing down the price to 219.99. At that price, it's a no brainer. And it does what it's supposed to. As far as I'm concerned, it's the one to get.

I didn't give it a 10 because of a few quirky things but nevertheless, a good bargain.

0.5 stars

"This player is not worth the packaging it comes in." on September 29, 2005 by skydivingfreak

Pros: Their technical support allows you to solve your own problems.

Cons: Where do I start?

Summary: I really have nothing good to say about this product. The player would randomly loose some operating system files that would require reformatting the entire unit to restore the files. This also meant that you have to reinstall all the files onto the unit. Even though it is a USB 2.0, it still takes considerable time to reload the 1000 songs I had on the player. I then had problems with my computer recognizing the player, and attempted to call iriver for technical support. I first tried to resolve the problem using their self-help web page. After trying everything suggested on the page I decided to call. I waited on the phone for 4 hours, only to be hung up on after talking to a rep for only five minutes resolving nothing. I decided to try sending an email. I sent the email request for support on Aug 31, 2005, and finally got a response on Sept 29, 2005. In their response, all I got was the information from the self-help web page pasted into an email. Fortunately, instead of waiting to resolve this problem I returned the product three weeks ago and got a similar player from another manufacturer. The color display could have been a nice feature, but the limited viewing quality discouraged me from attempting to convert all of my pictures into a size and format that the player would recognize.

3.5 stars

"good player" on February 24, 2008 by awk91

Pros: battry life

Cons: Touch pad is a bit finiky

3.0 stars

"Pretty good playe, a few improvements needed though" on December 8, 2006 by mcm5109

Pros: love the style, great sound quality, excelent voice recorder

Cons: a litttle hard to navigate, can be slow, manual sux, say it supports music videos but I can find no way to put one on it.

Summary: Had the potential to be an excellent player but there are so many kinks. Mine has gone crazy twice in the 18 months that I've owned it. I had to return it once, but the customer support was great all I did was mail it in and they fixed it at no cost, no questions asked. I've grown up with electronics so, unlike my parents, I can usually figure out all the features in about a day or so, but with this player you have to read the manual for a lot of things and still a lot of things aren't even in the manual.
When I bought it it was over $200 but it seems more reasonably priced now which makes it a better buy, but for the money that I payed it's a piece of junk.