iRiver H10: A Winner

I have tried many, many mp3 players out, between store demos and the ones I own, and this is my favorite yet. I like to break my reviews up into sections, so:

1)Sound Quality: Some of the best I have heard out of a DAP yet. It's crystal clear, and very accurate. It supports SRS WOW for 3d sound, though Im not sure how much of a difference that makes. It has a good volume level, and a ton of different EQ's and a custom one. Being a musician, but more importantly a bass player as my main instrument, I always listen to whats going on with the bass. Which is what always disappoints me -- it's never what I want. I was actually very surprised by the bass response on this sucker. Just using the stock headphones (which are some of the best *included* ones Ive heard), I was able to hear the bass very clearly and distinctly. It certainly didn't shake the walls since this is just a portable player, however I was able to pick up what the bass player was doing with ease. The very high sounds come through clear and undistorted too.

2)Navigation: This is a ridiculously easy to use mp3 player. If you cant figure this out, you shouldn't own one period. It is entirely possible to use with one hand, and you can sort all your songs by Artist, Album, Genre, and Title. You also switch between the players features by going up or down on the touchpad. Once you highlight the selection you want, just choose it with the select button. There is another button to move back to the main menu. There are three buttons on the side of the player to skip through songs, and play/pause. It's only drawback really is that the touchpad's speed is NOT exponentially increasing. Meaning that if you move your finger down the touchpad really fast, and then really slow, you'll get the same each distance. This means it can take awhile to navigate if you have a-lot of songs. Of course you can set the scroll speed to 4x, but still this is not exponential. Hopefully this will be fixed with a firmware update. misticriver.net has a video of the navigation on the unit. I haven’t tried make a play list, but it seems easy. Rating songs is very easy. You just hold the select button and choose from 1-5 stars.

Playback: The unit can play mp3 and wma files. It is a bit disappointing that it does not support OGG Vorbis - my favorite format. Previous iRiver's had supported this. It is also compatible with DRM's, like napster-to-go, and Yahoo Unlimited! (which some other player isnt). I know while listening to Operation: Mindcrime there was a minimal gap between songs, which is good since the whole album is the song really. Another thing that made me happy is that it doesn’t do alphabetical order, rather it goes in the order it was synced. Which I like, because with stuff like OP: Mindcrime, it has to be in the right order to make sense, and sound right. 20 gig's is also enough for 90% of music lovers out there. 10,000 songs, and even more if you use WMA format.

FM Tuner: The FM tuner seems to pick up signals very well and clear. It takes a bit of getting used to to navigate through the stations, but its very simple and you can set presets. My favorite part is the ability to record FM stations, so if there is a talk show or song you really like, you can just record it onto the device and listen to it again.

Voice recorder: The voice recorder has three quality settings. Low, Medium, and High. I found it very simple to use and it was clear enough. The recordings are listed in the player under the "recording" section.

Photo viewer: As a kind viewer pointed out, it actually is rather easy to sync photos to the device with WMP. It works pretty much like songs. Photo quality is manageable. Not great, but what did you expect from an mp3-oriented device? It also doesnt have an AV out, so you can view pics on a TV.

Text Viewer: I was actually surprised to find that the text was very easy to read on the unit with the text viewer function. OF course, its probably not good for people who need reading glasses.

Battery Life: I would say 12-16 hours on battery life sounds about right.

Aesthetics: It actually looks quite nice. It's basically the same size and weight as an iPod, and looks much better in my opinion (the color screen, different look). IT really sticks out from the crowd in a good way. Especially when everybody it the crowd has an iPod.

Transferring music: I found transferring music very easy. There is no extra software. Just use windows media player ten to sync to the device, and with the blazing fast USB 2.0, you'll be set in no time. As a side note, this means that for most people who use Windows Media Player, NO transferring songs/ changing file formats (like the iPod). For those of you who must have UMS capabilities, it's not a native function. However, there is a trick to get it to load as a hard drive as your computer. You'll have to search this one. Drag-and-drop files can only be accessed through the mp3's file browser, which should be fine if it's well organized. There is also a program in development (EasyH10) by somebody with an idea iRiver should have thought of: You can generate database entries for files put on in drag-drop mode. Meaning you can access them by genre, artist, etc..
Realize that is not being developed by iRiver. Google EasyH10 (google it for more info). Again, realize if YOU DONT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING, IT COULD MESS THINGS UP. The only complaint here is the cable: It's proprietary, with the USB and AC adapter being on the same cable. So it splits into two separate cables. Nothing major, but a bit annoying.

I personally rate players based on how the handle the features they HAVE, not the features they don't have (especially since I've since players with enough features to be a pc, except none of them worked right). Which is why this player is a five star. If the features are right for you, then this player does a very good job with them. However, I wish iRiver hadn't reduced the features that the H320 had (video, line in, etc.); but it would still be my first choice right now.

**Firmware upgrade V2.5 has fixed several bugs, and improved/added features. Most notably the player scroll speed is very fast and efficient now. I still wish it played Ogg Vorbis however.