3rd time is a charm...
Written: Mar 23 '05
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Pros: Great Sound! Great Screen, Ogg support, FM, Recording capability
Cons: None yet.. well maybe the case
The Bottom Line: If your objective is great sound, look no further! Great screen and very cool!
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| northxne's Full Review: iRiver H320 (20 GB) MP3 Player |
I've had the 320 for just shy of a week and I am in heaven! It has exceeded my expectations.
I have been using a Sony Mini Disk for the last couple of years. Good sound and great battery life but too much of a pain to carry the disks around. So I decided to buy something with a hard drive.
Being a fan of Apple, I headed off to the Apple store the on the first day that the new iPod mini 6GB, 18 hour battery unit was released. I bought a silver mini but returned it 3 days later. The sound was anemic.. particularly at the low end. The EQ presets were pathetic. I use Shure E3C earbuds and I was constantly searching for a good sound setting. If I switched ear buds it got a bit better.. but overall I was tremendously disappointed with the iPod mini.
I thought about waiting for the new Sony NW HD3 to come out but I instead picked up a Creative Zen Mini. Nice unit, great interface, small, nice interface, but.... poor low end sound. The upper range was great.. lots of detail and clarity.. much better than the iPod. So after a test of playing the same recording on my old Sony mini disk and on the Zen and swapping the ear buds back and forth... It was back to the store with the Creative Zen Mini.
At this point I was pretty much resigned to keeping the mini disk player. However I was into the search for quality sound and after searching on the internet, I became aware of the iRiver 320 and it's reputation for high quality sound.
I read reviews at epinions, and many other sites as well as spending some time on the misticriver.net iriver users site. It sounded like something was different with this unit. I kept hearing comments about how great the sound was. I also began reading about ogg format and how the 320 supported recording this format.
After checking the return policy at amazon(the apple store wanted to charge me a restocking fee...), and contemplating the wait for the new 20GB iRiver H10 soon to be released, I ordered a 320.
All I can say is that I am VERY happy with this decision. It has a beautiful screen and the sound is just terrific. I actually heard(actually understood), for the first time, what the announcer at MSG says at the beginning of the Get Yer Ya Yas out concert!!
The interface is fine.. the unit is not too thick.. not mini sized, but we're talking a serious unit here... Other stuff that is not particularly important is nice.. like photos. The recording capability - both FM and in-line has great potential and I will likely use both. However my focus remains the reproduction of audio and it is scores a "10".
Bottom line - Great sound. Great display. Cool package.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 290
Recommended for: Music Lovers - High Capacity Storage for an Entire Album Collection
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Epinions.com ID:
northxne
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Reviews written: 1
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