iRiver H320 (20 GB) MP3 Player

Pros: Feature-packed, plug-and-play, excellent sound, color screen, primitive video feature.
Cons: Occasional problems with playlists and a buggy database feature.

A Note to the Reader: Well, it’s now been over a year since I last wrote a review here, and for a while it seemed as if I had run out of things to write about. But my absence was really due to a lack of time. After graduating, a new road of life ...

Pros: Plays by folders, Play lists, FM radio, excellent voice recorder
Cons: HD Spin bug, short battery life, difficult to navigate in some conditions

After weeks of using the iRiver H320 (and going through other MP3s to get to this point), I believe I am ready to give an informative review of the endangered iRiver H320. Endangered because iRiver seems to have stopped support for it, and seems to be ...

Pros: Nearly everything!
Cons: No alarm or PIM functions, but boo-hoo!

Lately, I've been in the market for a digital music player with lots of room. I was using my Palm w/a memory card to listen to music, and I've realized that 256mb just isn't enough room to store all the songs I like. I'm constantly having to work with ...

Pros: Firmware can be upgraded, above-par battery life, music, pictures, movies supported.
Cons: Slightly larger than an iPod.

iPod killer? I'd say so. If you're looking for an mp3 player and don't want an iPod like every other person in the country these days, look no further than the iRiver. I needed a good mp3 player, but wanted something more... unique. After some ...

Pros: More features than a cinema multiplex, battery enough for a flight to New Zealand
Cons: It'd be nice if the controls were more intuitive

I had a little Rio Karma, and I loved it dearly (even though I went through three replacements before I got one that worked).Unfortunately, it got lost recently. Since my husband may have been instrumental in my losing it, he offered to buy me a new MP3 ...

Pros: Great looks and color screen. great sound and equalizer options. Lots of space.
Cons: Takes a few glances in the book to learn everything.

My wife bought me this to replace my busted 10 disc CD changer in my car. We thought about replacing it with another changer but they were $250 or so plus installation. Then I decided to check into the new MP3 player craze and I came across this, the ...

Pros: Cheap, Color screen, good sound quality ,FM radio can be used as HD
Cons: Bulk, hard to navigate,misses a scroll like the ipod

I just bought this item has my Ipod is now a year old and I am fed up with the bugs, the damage it has taken and the poor quality user control. The iriver is a joy if you want something which you can have a bit of fun with as well as just listen to ...

Pros: Great sound, nice color screen, excellent customer service
Cons: Not very reliable, somewhat big compared to other MP3 players.

I have owned my H320 for just under a year. I selected it in part by the reviews on this web site. After I bought it and got it charged up, the first time I turned it on to add some music, the hard drive would freeze up and not allow me to do anything. ...

Pros: Most features, Least restrictions on song copying, Most user oriented.
Cons: More difficult to learn right outta the box some instruction reading involved.

I recently bought a iRiver h320 about 2 weeks ago and i have been comparing it to the apple and the other hard disk players. On the Ipod (about $300), there is a cable for usb and firewire and a charger plus headphones which are included in the box. ...

Pros: Great price for hard drive space. Solid unit
Cons: Quirky with Napster to Go unless you read this review.

For the extra $100 I couldn't be happier. I wanted to use Napster's "to go" service, and started with a Dell unit. What a disaster!!! The H320 was a little bulkier than I expected, so if small size is a big deal for you, look around. On the other ...

Pros: sound INCREDIBLE w/better earbuds, color screen BRIGHT
Cons: Absence of iRiver support has caused me to look elsewhere.

I have to admit that I LOVED my H320 for the first 12-15 months after purchasing it. I am not a hi-tech person at all. I simply drag and drop music from my home PC onto my H320. I keep folders on my home PC such as Christmas, Country, Pop, Alt Rock, etc. ...

Pros: Build quality. Sound quality. Recording function
Cons: Not intuitive. Lack of recording level indicator

The H320 has a nice solid feel, which is reassuring. I am not sure how durable the hard disc would be if subjected to the kind of jolting while in operation which portable CD players are designed to withstand. I am always careful to handle the machine ...

Pros: Nearly everything. Color screen and sound are great. Transferring files & playlists is simple.
Cons: No "Page Down" function in navigation. No updated firmware for US version.

I've been playing with my new H320 for a week, and so far I have been very impressed. The color screen looks wonderful and is great for displaying song information. It's a little small for viewing pictures; but that is just a bonus feature as far as I ...

Pros: Great Sound! Great Screen, Ogg support, FM, Recording capability
Cons: None yet.. well maybe the case

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 ...

Pros: Sound, Compatibility with most formats, Looks great, Voice Recorder,
Cons: Scrolling for music, minor glitches, bulky, not for clumsy people, small screen

The functions on the iRiver are better than average: the voice recored, fm radio, pictures, and music are all shown or heard with quality. The bulkiness and the lack of easily scrolling to songs are the biggest setbacks. Now...the iPod has video, bigger ...

Pros: Color Screen for pics, Radio Tuner, Ease of use, Compacity, Text Viewer
Cons: None yet

Overall this little gadget is amazing. It has all the features I was looking for with a brilliant color screen. This comes in handy to load some digital camera pictures and other text articles. I paid only $315 from best buy (had coupon). Although it is a little thicker than the ipod it is much much better for what I need. Also I think the ipod screen is just dull to me.

Pros: Sound puts others to shame, plays video with a firmware change
Cons: Somewhat awkward interface, discontinued.

This is a truly great personal music player that doesn't lock you into a particular system or format. It can handle DRM'd music, but is equally at home with MP3, WAV, and (best of all) OGG files. Almost all computer systems automagically see it as a UMS (USB Mass Storage) device, including Linux.

The sound quality from the Philips UDA1380 chip is superior to that from almost any other portable. Couple the iRiver H320 with a decent pair of headphones such as Grados and you'll be amazed at the sonic quality.


"Come with uncle and hear all proper. Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones. You are invited!"

Pros: GREAT Sound
Cons: none

I have a H20. My wife has a Nano. No comparison. Iriver is easy to setup as a regular HD on the cpu, no mess with media ports. etc.

The unit is rugged, and should be as it is 5 times the size of a nano. GREAT SOUND in my Infiniti and on my home BOSE system.

Pros: Well built, bright screen, great sound.
Cons: Complex interface, small control buttons

I purchased the H320 about a month and have taken it along a several trips since, using the IRiver wireless to play through the car radio. The sound is excellent, the screen is large and very bright. I replaced the earphones with after-market for comfort.

Setup was breeze, since the H320 thinks its a 20gb hard-drive and you just copy files over using Explorer. Navigating around is a little counter-intuitive but you get used to it. Playlists, which required you to download WinAmp and build them on your computer, are a little complicated but work well once you get everything straight.

The unit is well-built, which is a plus if you are like me and tend to drop stuff or let it rattle around in the car. The buttons could be a little bigger, so that they are easier to use but they're tolerable. Battery life is great and I really appreciate that you can charge it via a USB on the go, so you don't have to carry an extra AC adapter.

All in all, if you like having LOTS of music to listen to, this is a great unit, with a great design and phenomenal sound.

Pros: Hold Pics, Color screen, Looks cool
Cons: Takes long to turn on, controllers are hard to use

The Iriver H320, is the best in its class. Its can hold jpeg images, 20 gigs worth of songs, you can record form any device; u can plug it into a cd player and copy that cd(with out needing to use a computer). You can still use a computer to transfer songs. It also has a feature that is very rare in mp3 players, 2 head phones or ear phones can be pluged in at one(so two people can listen at onece). The coolest thing is that you can use it as a video player, only if you know how to video types. There are only 2 bad things, one is that it takes a long time (1 min) to turn on. The other is that the contriollers are hard to use, u have to get use to them.

Pros: Battery Sound File Tree and ID3 Support Beautiful Screen
Cons: Navigation Design

I've had this product for around 10 months now and I'm reporting it's still in great condition. The battery life is still great and a new firmware has been released called "rockbox". Visit rockbox.org for more details. This player has incredible sound quality that every type of music lover can enjoy. If you like lots of bass, you can adjust bass levels, it has set EQ's and sounds fine under most headphones. The file navigation is sub-par but I don't really mind it. The database mode "ipod type navigation" takes around a minute to boot up and is very annoying. That's why I use just normal folder view.The h320 is also equipped with a beautiful color screen which with new firmware from iriver can display movies at 10 frames per second.

Pros: Great sound quality on FM tuner
Cons: Software problems and lack of support.

The insstruction manual states that if you have a Windows
SE operating system you must install the software and
driver provided. Did that, but the installation process cannot recognize the driver file iRiverH.inf file. I then tried another computer with XP Professional OS, this time
the install hardware procedure could not recognize the
existence of the H320.
Internet support: miserable contradictory information and
no drivers available. Then spent 26 minutes on 800 number but never got through. I am returning the H320. Too bad because it has great features.

Pros: Records high quality audio, plays wavs, plays video avis (reformatting for size is needed)
Cons: Case problems, and the database sometimes loses the ability to recognise dragged music files

Excellent device, but beware of the carry case with the press studs -- I dropped two H300s in quick succession and in different ways with this.
[1] Screw holding case top belt clasp was supplied loose and dropped the device on my first walk outside. It survived the drop perfectly, but was bizarrely stolen soon afterwards
[2] Replacement fell to the ground (despite the screw being fixed with superglue) when the lower fastening of the case unbuttoned without warning -- seemingly when my jacket tugged at the earphone cable slightly.
Again, the H300 seems unaffected by the fall onto the pavement, another plus.

Pros: No software needed plugs into any comp, sound quality, picture quality,ease of use.
Cons: So great a product someone may steal it

The sound quality is awesome, plug and play is so easy to use and the device can also be used as a portable hard drive. I've now bought a second for my daughter.Much superior to my old ipod.

Pros: Lots of space, portability, easy to use
Cons: Instruction manual could use more explanation.

The iRiver is amazing. It has great portability, a beautiful color display, user friendly buttons and an overwhelming capacity for MP3s and WMA files. I did find that the instruction manual needed more information. I also had some difficulty when first plugging in the device with the USB cable. Although the user manual indicated that software installation was unneccesary with Windows XP, it repeatedly prompted me to insert software disc and install, which I did. This created problems with my computer freezing, but once I uninstalled the driver software, everything was fine! Also, it was not very clear how to manage files/folders on the device. This is done on your computer by connecting the iRiver with the USB and then clicking on the new drive that is displayed. You can also upload pictures, but I find that I don't use this capability much. It comes with a durable hard case and head phones. I love it!

Pros: The player RAWKS!
Cons: The company sucks!

I will start with the good. The player itself is pretty rock solid. Awsome features for a great price! Now on with the not so great things. The player itself is incredible! The company itself is horrible! They chose to not include USB On The Go in the US version but did with all other countries. They have not yet updated the firmware on the player. Any other version of the firmware will play videos. They chose to not include a remote with the retail packaging in the US. They launched the player with NO accessories to sell and are still, 6 months latter lacking many of them. They have a horribly slow turn around time on support requests. One request took 3 weeks to get a response for. The program that they give you to make the catalog of files on yoru player is total garbage. The player itself supports WMA, mp3 and OGG, the software (Mood Logic) only reads MP3 files.

I have been without my H320 for about 2 weeks now due to a hard drive issue. iRiver has yet to get back to me in regards to the warranty work.

:-(

Pros: Smaller than Ipod when you consider all the features it has.
Cons: None.

Supports most audio formats, FM radio with 20 preset, records from built-in internal mic, external mic, inline, etc. in other words it records from all sources, view photos, read text, and plays video with digital sound! With a firmware upgrade (v 1.25k) from iRiver's international site, the H320 and H340 plays video. Video has to be formatted to the required specs but that is not a problem. Go to misticriver dot net for all the info and if you don't beleive me! Can your Ipod do all that? Only if you pay an arm and a leg for a video camera or portable dvd player, ipod fm receiver, ipod external mic and the latest, most expensive ipod that lets you view photos. That comes to about US$1,000.00. Don't worry, carrying all of your cool Ipod stuff shouldn't weigh more than 10 lbs. I'd guess around 6lbs.

Pros: Great playback and features including recording with internal or external mics.
Cons: You have to look up some controls. A problem if you have goldfish-like concentration.

I've had one of these players for about 3 months now and during that time have used it pretty much everyday.

I bought this player as a replacement for my old minidisc player and was especially keen to get a player that could also record using an external mic as I make music with found sounds.

It took me a little while to get used to the navigation and other controls but now that I am I find it very easy to use. The sound quality on playback is very good and it's also a good recording device with low enough noise for my purposes.

I like the idea of upgradeable firmware and have upgraded so that I can now watch film on it and play back wavs should I want to (Having said that I haven't tested the film playback but there's plenty of info on this on iriver forums.)

Overall very pleased with this and have been listening to more music than ever as a consequence.

Pros: Durable, Open Codec, Superb Sound, Color Screen
Cons: Manual is too simplistic, heavy, no USB on the Go

I am more than happy with this amazing device. I agree with all the reviews. I bought this unit instead of buying more memory cards for my camera. I have not yet 0figured out how to save files directly from my camera without computer...but I am getting closer to figuring it out.

I believe iRiver manual is so vague because this machine has so many options and many could be viewed as illegal. This is to the consumer's benifit. You will not have to purchase more software. Although I did purchase Moodlogic.

Do not buy a fm modulator for your car. The quality of those devices are horrible. You are better off upgrading your car deck to include direct plug in.

Buy this thing!