iRiver H10 20GB MP3 player review
| Design |
| Let’s start with the looks. The iRiver H10 is a chunky square device with slightly curved edges at the bottom to stop things from snagging. It comes in a range of four colours none of which are black or white. Your flavours are triple platinum silver (which we particularly liked), ocean blue, steely grey and vibrant red. While it’s chunky, it’s not overly big, only weighing 116g. Get a tape measure to it and you’ll notice its 4 inches by 2.4 inches by 0.8 inches. Even though it’s slightly bigger than the iPod it’s still small enough to carry around comfortably even when down the gym. At the front of the H10 is a decent sized 1.8 inch LCD screen that is bright and clear. To navigate around you use the vertical touch strip that takes you through the different menus giving you access to your music, the radio, your pictures, text facilities and also a browser that works like the folders on your computer. And on either side of the navigation bar are the back button and the select button. Player controls line the iRiver H10's right side, and a power button and a microphone are situated on the left. Up top are the hold switch, as well as the headphone and smart jacks; a wired in-line remote is an option. There’s a USB 2.0 port for quick transfer of music and the player also comes with some funky Sennheiser headphones. The same USB cable is also used to charge up the irremovable MP3 players batter. |
| Features |
| If you want to get away from the, oh so boring, everyone’s got one, iPod, then you’ll like the iRiver H10. There’s plenty of stuff packed in this 20GB player. The H10 supports WMA, JPEG, text files and is fully compatible with Windows Media Player which makes life much easier when you’re trying to swap music over. The 1.8 inch colour screen is going to be loved by anyone who buys this product because it provides great images and when looking through your photo album it shows pictures in thumbnail size, making it easier to scroll through. On this same screen you’ll get information on your music such as the artist, album title and genre, and you’ll also get other information like the filename of text files, how much battery life there is left, a clock and play time. In terms of music you can have a list of your songs and you can also make your own playlist on the go, which is known as QuickList – and this is something the iPod doesn’t do. There’s a FM tuner with 20 autoscannable presets, as well as the easy-to-use voice recorder. |
| Performance |
| There’s fears about the potential damage we’re doing to our ears by stuffing headphones into our ears and pumping loud music through them. Well if environmental health issues are a priority for you the iRiver H10 is good as it doesn’t have an overly load sound but it means a) you won’t be disturbing people sitting next to you and b) you’ll be able to hear better in your old age. There’s also no dedicated volume button on the H10, instead you have to go to the screen and adjust the sound. There’s more that 30 preset EQ options for you to tinker around with to get the best sound quality too. The machine had a tendency of being a bit slow sometimes when changing tracks and looking for music but the photo downloads seemed to be fairly fast as was transferring music to the iRiver through the USB 2.0 socket. However a drawback with the USB cable is that you also have to use it to charge up your H10 which is fine when you’re at home or in the office and sitting next to your PC, but makes it a bit more complicated when you’re on your jollies, unless you take a PC with you. The music is categorised easily in different folders where they tell you what’s in your library and give you an option to set which music you want to listen to. Which leads us onto the QuickList. This is great, it’s really easy to set up your own playlist while waiting for the bus or just hanging around, and it still remembers it even after switching off the player. The vertical navigation control on the whole is easy to use, although sometimes it wasn’t sensitive enough and other times it was far too sensitive. You also need to use the back button which is a pain, so you’re allowed to scroll through things quickly using the nav tool but then have to click the select button to select, and the back button to go back. What we really liked about the H10 is it is designed to synchronise with WMP 10 via Windows XP. It means you can easily sync music you’ve ripped and photos across to your player. The pictures could look a bit grainy when you load them across and we found it was better to optimise photos to a smaller resolution before sending them over. The only quibble we’d have was the device comes under My Computer and doesn’t give you full access as a removable drive. The radio was a bit of a surprise as generally in our experience at Unbeatable we’ve found FM radios never seem to work well in combined products. But both the radio and the recording facilities on the H10 were good. |
| What's In The Box? |
| iRiver H10, Sennheiser headphones, a USB cable, an AC adapter, software, and a rubberized protective carrying case with a belt clip. |
| Overall Opinion |
The iRiver H10 MP3 player is just a lovely looking machine that has all the potential in the world to be a best seller. The design is gorgeous which is why we threw away the case cover, it just didn’t do anything for the H10, the sound is good and the storage capacity is great. The fact it can sync with WMP makes life much easer and gives more flexibility. There’s a radio, voice recorder and facilities to see photos. This is a winner. |
By Babita Wakelin
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Pros + Great design + Good sound even on FM radio + Quality of pictures is good + Decent battery life |
Cons - Sensitive controls. - You have to carry around the USB cable to charge your machine up. - no album art support - non removable battery |
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Appearance 9/10
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Songs Capacity 9/10
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Build Quality 9/10
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Ease Of Use 8/10
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Value For Money 9/10
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Overall Rating 
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By Babita Wakelin
20/7/2006 at 1:00:41pm
20/7/2006 at 1:00:41pm
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