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CNET editors' rating:
stars
Very good
Detailed editors' rating - Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 35 reviews
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Product summary
The good: Durable, sporty design; small but bright color screen; FM tuner, voice recorder, OGG, WMA DRM 10 (Janus), and basic picture support; awesome battery life; excellent sound quality and overall performance.
The bad: No line-in recording; bulky, awkward design; pricey; USB cover doesn't stay closed.
The bottom line: The hunky, feature-filled iRiver T10 can play subscription-based music, but it might take time to acclimate to the awkward design and control buttons.
Specifications: Device type: Digital player / radio ; Flash memory installed: 1 GB ; Digital player supported digital audio standards: ASF , MP3 , WMA , Ogg Vorbis , MPEG 1 Audio , MPEG 2 Audio , MPEG 2.5 Audio ; See full specs
CNET editors' review
- Reviewed on: 11/01/2005
- Released on: 08/29/2005
The outdoorsy design, which integrates a handy carabinerlike belt clip, a full-circular-motion hold switch, and an armband, will appeal to many users. However, because of its rounded backside (which accommodates a AA battery), the iRiver T10 will not sit stationary on your desk--it wobbles. The awkward side location of the headphone jack also adds girth to the player, and any T10 owner with any pride will find the unclosable rubber USB flap an eyesore.
The four-line, 1-inch LCD is small, but the 65,000--color screen--especially on the bright and color-coded main menu screens--makes navigation easy on the eyes and mind. It requires some experimentation (or a read of the manual) to find all the features, and it usually takes a short tap of a button here and a long hold of another button there to discover everything. Tinkerers will love the iRiver T10 in this respect. A long hold of the select button opens the main menu, which includes Music, Browser, FM, Recording, and Settings options.
Like most iRiver MP3 players, the T10 lets you browse for audio files using folder-tree navigation--nice for customization but not good if you want to browse by album, track, genre, and so on. The iRiver T10 supports playlists but not on-the-go playlists. We really like the T10's cool screensavers, which include a sound spectrum, a graphical waveform, and the iRiver disco dancer. As an extra, the T10 can display 24-bit BMP images, but they must have the odd resolution of 128x256 pixels.The iRiver T10 plays MP3, OGG, WMA and WMA DRM 10 (Janus) subscription-based files. We tested it with all three major subscription services, including Napster To Go, and everything worked well, though Rhapsody required a T10 firmware update. The T10 also works well with Windows Media Player 10 for music transfers. We were pleasantly surprised by the T10's Janus efficiency, as many other players have suffered performance delays when playing subscription songs. The FM tuner has excellent reception, and its 20 presets can be automatically filled and individually deleted. You have your choice of three MP3 quality levels with voice (via the built-in mic) or FM programming recordings. Voice recording is a tidy process, thanks to the prominent red record button, but try not to touch the T10's body during recording as the mic picks up on the noise. Strangely enough, iRiver has omitted a line-in recording feature, though if we had to choose either FM or line-in, we'd go with FM for sure.
The iRiver's good sound quality (90dB signal-to-noise ratio) improves further with the five-band user EQ and the SRS features turned on. The play mode menu, an important option in folder-tree-style players such as the T10, is accessed by pressing the record button during playback. A long hold of the A/B button opens the EQ window, and you can preview your selection in real time.While we prefer not to buy batteries, it's nice to know that the T10 surpassed the company's claims of 45 hours per AA cell. CNET Labs got 47.8 hours, which is definitely impressive. Transfer rates over USB 2.0 came in at an average 1.9MB per second. The iRiver T10 ships with decent earbud headphones, a standad USB cable, a neck strap, a plastic carrying case, an AA battery, and software.
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User reviews
- Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 35 reviews
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Showing 3 of 35 user reviewsSee all 35 user reviews
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5 out of 5 people found this review helpful
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9 out of 16 people found this review helpful
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4 out of 4 people found this review helpful
"Great for a first MP3 player, even though it may be hard to learn the button functions at first."
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