Click Here - Orb Audio Speaker Sale
- Average user rating: 4.0 stars out of 401 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
-
1.5 stars
"Great while it worked."
Pros: Audiophile quality sound. Small (for a CD player). Plays MP3s.
Cons: Expensive. Get's stuck in the middle of a song. iRiver has no out-of-warranty repair.
Summary: Lossy formats like MP3 are great for carrying around a lot of music on a small player, and they sound pretty good on most headphones. But I wanted a portable to sound punchy and lifelike when connected to a stereo system or really good pair of headphones, so I needed something that played CDs. When I read that the iRiver SlimX CD player was highly recommended by Headphones.com, I bought one. I was not disappointed. The sound is clear, detailed and dynamic with a transparency not usually associated with portable CD players. Plus, it had the added bonus of playing MP3s burned to a CD. That's the good news. Now for the bad. About a year after I bought it (of course right after the warranty ran out), it began stopping in the middle of a song. At first it only did this occasionally, but after a few months, it got stuck more often until now it won't even play through a song. I emailed iRiver customer support requesting the cost to have it repaired. After two weeks I got a response back that they do not repair out-of-warranty units. I don't consider a $100 player to be a throwaway, especially after little more than a year. Given the number of reviewers reporting problems with these players, iRiver will need to provide support after the warranty period before I would ever consider purchasing another product from them. Which is really a shame since this is such a great sounding player.
