Small and Stylish Mp3 Player
Written: Mar 30 '03 (Updated Mar 30 '03)
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Pros: Small & Lightweight, Strong Battery Life, Featureful
Cons: Puny backlight, Confusing Button Operations, No data storage capability
The Bottom Line: The iRiver 128MB player is an amazing little device given its voice & radio recording, design, all the features and its informative display.
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| NightShift8's Full Review: iRiver iFP-180T (128 MB) MP3 Player |
I have been lurking around the mp3 player scene on and off for a while and I decided to hold off until they progressed a little. As I was deciding on my new gadget for the new year, I started looking at the mp3 players again. There are many to choose from so it can be a hard decision. Luckily one night skimming through a section of a new issue of PC World, a beautiful gadget caught my attention and I said to myself "owww, what’s that" and realized it was an mp3 player as I read on. When a reviewer like PC World dedicates some of its highlighted section space to a product, you know it has to be good. From the little impression that it left on them, I knew my mind was going to be pretty much set. I bookmarked the page for the next day when I could research it further online.
All looked good to me including the price, so I decided I have waited long enough. I figured the price would be cheaper online since everything is, but surprisingly Best Buy featured the player for the lowest price I could get it online. This was a plus since I didn't have to wait for it to be shipped and I could see it in person. A few days later I went to Best Buy and picked it up along with some new headphones since the cat ate my Kenwood’s for the 5th time - I was sick of fixing them.
Package
The iRiver player is small - always smaller than I imagine things. When I first took it out of the semi-heavy package the player was so light I was wondering if everything was put inside it when it was made. The package was still heavy, so after taking out the headphones, neck strap, and instruction guide, the AA battery came out. The packaging and battery were the heaviest objects.
The supplied neck strap is a translucent plastic-rubber with a metallic string inside. You can tie one end to the player, and it can detach from your neck string with the built-in clip. Unless you want it around your neck, you can easily fit the player into your pocket.
First Impressions
So first off, the player feels extremely light and in a way cheap without the battery in it. When you feel something this light and pay so much you feel kinda cheated - feels like it's worth $20. Other than that, the triangular prism design is really cool with the plastic chrome and the iridescent lettering on the display.
Using the player
Popped the battery in, connected the headphones, then I had to do something I normally don't have to do - read the instructions! There are a few buttons, but they aren't exactly labeled optimally. So I got it to turn on and since there were no mp3s (I thought), I tried to change it to radio, but couldn't figure it out so back to the instructions.
Backlight
Since this is sort of a big issue to me I wanted to add a side note about the LCD display. It is a nice thing to have, but should be done right. The contrast could be a little darker, but a good backlight is important to me. I would have liked the unit much better if it had a bright blue backlight rather than a just-bright-enough pea green display. Hopefully it is something I can mod later on.
Radio
The radio isn't anything special, but it's a cool feature to have. The reception I’m sure is good depending on where you hold it or are standing - I haven't taken it outside yet. When the signal is good, the stereo sounds great. And a great thing about it is that you can record from the radio. Once you get used to the buttons and their functions, you can define presets, seek and all of that.
Voice
The iRiver mp3 player also lets you use it as a voice recorder which is really cool. High, medium and low quality let you record up to 20 hours of voice. The highest quality doesn't sound crystal clear, but it gets the job done.
Mp3
Onto the main feature of this unit...the mp3 player. First off, navigation takes a while to get used to. Even when I expected to have it down, I still didn't know how to change modes, stop/pause the play, and get back to the song folder. It starts to make a little better sense now along with the visual display of the directories (folders). I still didn't take the time to learn how to make playlists or program lists. The player does come with one pre-insatlled mp3 file, which I'm not sure if you can remove. The song is iRivers' sample song at a high bit rate (320kbps). It lasts about 30 seconds and does some neat stereo effects to impress ya.
Transferring Files
To transfer files onto the player, simply plug the supplied USB cable into the player (behind the rubber flap) and the other end to your computer's USB port. The player still uses USB 1.1 even though 2.0 has been out for a while....go figure. You must turn the player on and load the iRiver transfer software (that you install earlier). The interface is pretty simple - find the mp3 files, and drag them into folders in the bottom pane. You can also create directories on the player before you move them so you have a folder to place them in. The files seem to transfer in a timely fashion. The player won't let you shut it off before disconnecting it so I just rip the plug out and it goes back to player mode.
Quality
Once you get your mp3s playing, you can skip through the song (FF/RW), pause it, stop it, scroll through the few different preset EQ's (classical, rock, ubass, normal, user). The volume adjustment goes from 0-40. I find anything under 20 is useless, and 27-35 is my normal listening volume, so if you need it any louder, that's tough nookies. So I think that’s a drawback of this player.
Other than that, the sound quality is great depending on the bit rate of your mp3 and the set of headphones you use. The supplied ear buds do a pretty good job. I don't normally use ear buds, but these ones don't tend to stay in my ears. If I walk around I risk them falling out easily, so I don’t know how you can jog or do activities with these. They are loud so you have a lot of extra volume to adjust and they have a lot of treble but not bass of course - you can't expect much out of ear buds. They also supply ear bud pads.
Settings
You can go into the settings and specify Bass and Treble ranges (user EQ setting), specify how fast you want the forward and reverse scanning, set the display contrast level, backlight duration, voice recording quality, sleep and power off times and many other settings. All these settings and more fall under 6 categories: General, display, timer, User EQ, mode and control.
I haven't had it long enough to test the battery life, but it seems to be holding up strong and I am sure it is accurate of its claim of about 20 hours.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 139.99
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Epinions.com ID:
NightShift8
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Member: Frank
Location: NY
Reviews written: 26
Trusted by: 1 member
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