yusakugo's Full Review: iRiver H10 (5 GB) MP3 Player
Why do I keep buying these things... well, for $179 through the NapsterToGo deal (the first 1000 to sign up for a full year of NapsterToGo got the iRiver H10 free!) I couldn't say no!
Heck, even before that, the svelte stylish H10 had me looking twice... I decided to look at the iRiver website to upgrade the firmware on my iRiver iMP-400 (Slim-X CD-MP3 player) and saw the ads for the H10. I was blown away... but decided that I had just bought the Zen Micro, I shouldn't even bother with the H10. To be honest, I was perfectly happy with the 5GB Zen Micro and my older iPod mini... no plans to buy the H10. Then the $179 deal came up... and out came my wallet and here was the receipt from the NapsterToGo purchase.
I can now do a head-to-head-to-head with the iPod mini and the Creative Zen Micro... and so far the iRiver H10 excels at points but some of the interface leave much to be desired.
Price
Note that I got the H10 at a ridiculously low price compared to the MRSP of the H10. I saved over $100 because I got the player and 1 year of NapsterToGo (which I could fill my Zen Micro player too!). The MRSP is $279 so expect to pay around that price. You can read my epinion The Art of Buying... Getting your money's worth! for some tips on trying to get a better deal online.
Short Take
The H10 at first glance is an attractive looking player with the upscale styling that the iPod mini invokes as well as hints of younger hip styling that the Zen Micro summons. Looking at the box... you see the huge laundry list of features with a 5GB hard drive that screams you're getting the best bang for your buck.
Truth of the matter is that the H10 is one of the most feature rich mini-hard drive MP3 players on the market. It plays multiple music file types, FM reception in several countries, voice and FM recording, line-in recording, photo viewing, text file viewing, portable hard drive capabilities, and tons of equalizer settings! That trumps the feature list of the Zen Micro! The sound is slightly better than the Zen Micro and the iPod Mini and the H10 performs at least above average in all of its listed functions. iRiver even made the H10 menu very intuitive and graphically appealing. This just gives the H10 a perceived huge advantage for just $30 more than the competition.
But the H10 has a few problems that you may find a bit nagging. The interface feels sluggish compared to the iPod mini and the Zen Micro even though the interface is well designed. The touch strip interface could also be tweaked... like a double tap could act as the enter button instead of pressing the small button to the side of the touch strip. Some of the advanced features are not available unless you purchase other accessories... like the line-in recording (you must buy the cradle to use this function at this time!). I'm surprised that iRiver left out OGG music file playback as well... that's something I though iRiver would put in there.
The H10 is certainly an extremely capable player but interface needs a bit of tweaking and a little more of a speedier response (actually, the interface just needs to be more responsive to manipulations through the touch strip). However, to fully use all the features of the H10, you definitely have to spend extra money on accessories like the cradle to access them.
As of now, I'm still splitting time between my iPod mini and the Zen Micro... the sluggishness of the interface turned me off (plus picture viewing was not a big deal for me). Things may change if I decide to buy the cradle for the line-in recording functions.
The Look
The H10 is certainly an eye catching design... the initial runs seem to be colored a dark gunmetal gray (iRiver calls this Lounge Gray) with black and silver highlights. The 1.5 inch color screen is extremely clear and quite crisp although it will wash out in bright sunlight. The controls are overall well placed... the face of the player consists of the long scroll strip with a small back button and a small accept/select button (one to each side of the top of the touch strip). There is a dedicated power button on the top left side with the built-in mic just above it. There are three well sized buttons on the right side of the player for play/pause, fast forward, and rewind with the play button being slightly recessed to help you identify it on touch. The top of the player has a dedicated hold switch, a remote control jack, and a 3.5 mm headphone jack. The bottom of the player has a proprietary port that allows the USB 2.0 connection to the computer via cable or cradle as well as likely future peripherals. The battery forms the bottom part of the back of the player.
Dimension wise, the H10 is 95.5 X 54.6 X 15 mm and 96.2 gm... i.e. 3.8" x 2.2" x 0.625" and a weight of 3.4 oz. Compare this to the Zen Micro at 3.3" x 2.0" x 0.7" and 3.8 oz. and the iPod Mini at 3.6" x 2.0" x 0.5" and 3.6 oz. So the H10 is comparable in size to the competition. It has a fairly solid feel and is easy to manipulate with one hand... everything important is reachable with your thumb (as long as you use the H10 in their right hand).
The Sounds
I think the H10 has the best sound of the three mini-hard drive players I own (based on the included headphones in each player). However, the difference is much less marked if you use the same high quality headphones on each player. Strangely enough, iRiver rates the H10 as having a signal-to-noise ratio of 90dB minimum. The Zen Micro is rated as having a better (a higher number in this case... 98dB as per Creative for the Zen Micro) S/N ratio. That just goes to show you that the numbers don't tell the story. The volume runs from 0 to 40 with 20-22 being adequate for listening in a mildly noisy background (i.e. I had to use a 25-26 setting while sitting in a pediatric waiting room). The setting of 40 is excessive and likely dangerous to your ears. Listen responsibly... okay?
Before getting to the other features... how's the interface?
Well... the interface on screen is eye catching and pretty. Unlike my other experience with iRiver players, the menus were nicely arranged and much easier to navigate. The sections were nicely arranged into music, FM radio, recording, photo, text, browser, and settings. Each one of these sections having multiple options and subsections that are pretty clearly explained.
Although the touch strip is similar to the Zen Micro system, the touch strip is used purely for navigation. You can move your thumb or finger up and down the strip for slow scrolling or press on the very top or bottom of the strip for fast scrolling. However, you cannot adjust the sensitivity of the touch strip yet (maybe in future firmware updates). Secondly, I got used to tapping the strip as the select button (from the Zen Micro) so the H10 doesn't quite feel as intuitive to me (again, maybe because I been using the Zen Micro for over two months and got used to that system).
As nice and organized the interface is, the system responds quite sluggishly. I don't know if it is because of the hardware or the software but I had to wait a second or two after using the touch strip to see a response in the interface. However, once you get the response on the screen, there is little lag time moving from menu to menu and selection to selection... at least until you take your finger off the touch strip. Hopefully it can be corrected when iRiver releases a firmware update.
The interesting feature is that the H10 does a good to above average job of multitasking... like playing music while viewing pictures which goes off without any major hitches.
By the way, the H10 plays WAV, MP3, WMA, and Audible audio book files. Sorry, iRiver didn't add OGG music file playback in this model... sigh.
Photo Viewing
The H10 is capable of displaying JPG picture files only. The manual makes special note that Progressive JPG files are not currently compatible with the H10. The H10 displays JPG files quite well considering the 1.5" screen. Colors are fairly accurate and details crisp enough. Display time after picking the picture file depends on the size of the file. A 3MB file from my Canon S70 took on average 1 1/2 minutes to display and a bit longer with MP3s playing in the background.
You can view photos as a slideshow or individually. Again you can have a music file playing in the background while viewing images although that slows down the speed of displaying the pictures. Note that picture files synced through Windows Media Player 10 will display through the Photo options (unless I did something wrong on the H10 and its supposed to detect all JPG files automatically). However, the Browser menu allows you to view any picture files on the H10.
FM radio
The H10 can tune into FM stations to within 0.1 MHz... well just like a regular FM tuner. Like other portable devices with an FM tuner, the reception is decent and dependent on the earphones to act as an antenna. While I can pick up NYC radio stations WPLJ, Z100, 103.5, 106.3, etc... from Edison, NJ, with a few difficulties, I can only pick up 106.3 from Northport, NY (on Long Island). Within Manhattan, I had no problems with reception.
Recording
The H10 is capable of voice recording with the built-in mic. The built-in mic is fairly sensitive and could pick up a lecturer with decent to good clarity when I was 4 rows from the main stage. The recordings are saved as MP3 files which means you can record hours upon hours of audio. The voice recording capability is more than decent for most uses.
FM recording is available (through the FM menu) but I have yet to try it yet.
A pleasant surprise is line-in feature... however, you can't use it without buying the optional cradle. Since I don't have the cradle, I can't say how well this feature works.
Text
Urmmm... haven't tried it yet... thinking about the size of the screen and how much information you can display on it. I don't think I will try it anytime soon.
Browser
Basically, this allows you to play or view any single file on the H10 as long as the H10 supports it. You don't have access to special viewing/playback features through the Browser menu.
Settings!
The standard features are all there... that includes settings for the sleep timer, the backlight, power-off timer, alarm, FM recorder timer, and other basics. You also can adjust recording settings for voice, FM, and the line-in. Even more impressive is being able to set the FM tuner to dial into European, Japanese, or Korean radio stations (if you're traveling in these areas... you can't pick them up through the H10 in the US).
Most importantly is the equalizer and 3D sound effect options! You can customize 5 equalizer settings and modify 4 different SRS (3D sound) settings.
Battery life
3 full recharges so far and I would average from 11 to 12 hours of battery life based on 90% MP3 and WMA file playback. The rest of 10% of the time was used for about 30 minutes of voice recording and the rest was using the FM tuner.
As a Hard Drive
The unit is detected by my computer running WinXP as a removable drive. The H10 supports USB 2.0 and the H10 does show some zippiness in transferring files although it wasn't scorching. Dragging and dropping about 500 MB of files took just under 15 minutes. Not as good as some high end flash drives but decent... at least better than USB 1.1 drives.
Software
Urmmm... I found only Windows Media Player 10 in the box. No other software is included. The H10 seems to sync without issues with Windows Media Player 10.
In the box?
You get earphones (which I think is of slightly higher quality than the included standard buds with other MP3 players), a USB adapter, the power adapter (which connects into the USB adapter to charge the H10), and a silicone protective case. The case also acts as a belt clip but it really takes away from the look of the player. The case is pretty functional however allowing direct access to most of the buttons on the player as well as the ports.
Accessories
I haven't seen anything specific for the H10 from iRiver yet but I would assume a wired remote and a portable line-in accessory can't be long from being announced. The only specific accessories for the H10 is extra batteries, and portable cradle, and the wired remote so far (all documented in the H10 manual already!).
My other mini-hard drive MP3 player reviews
Creative Zen Micro 5GB MP3 Player. Note that Creative is releasing 4GB and 6GB versions in addition to the current 5GB supposedly by the summer of 2005. Creative had a display of a Zen Micro with a color display but no date announcement.
Apple iPod Mini second generation 6GB iPod is the latest iPod Mini from Apple. Boasting a battery life of 18 hours and more space for the same price as the original iPod Mini. However, you lose the AC adapter and the Firewire cable.
Apple first generation iPod Mini 4GB MP3 Player. Apple dropped the price of the iPod Mini 4GB version 2 to a low $199 now and updated it with brighter colored casings and a reported 18 hour battery life! No color screen though... but for $249 you get a 6GB drive iPod Mini! If you can find the first generation iPod Mini, the price will be around $179 to $199 and you get the AC adapter, Firewire cable, and USB 2.0 cable but the first generation iPod mini is rated for only 8 hours of battery life (although I've pulled off 10-12 most of the time).
Compact, lightweight 5 GB hard drive multimedia player in Charcoal finish--weighs only 3.4 ounces Compatible with MP3 and WMA; also Secure WMA from on...More at Amazon Marketplace
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
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